The Afghanistan we never see
The war in Afghanistan has had much more severe consequences for the civilians in rural Afghanistan where the media are not present.
By NAGIEB KHAJA
07/06/2013 23:24
I started the documentary project My Afghanistan out of frustration with the stereotyped, simplistic coverage the conflict in that war-torn country was receiving. As a journalist, I had covered Afghanistan before, and almost every time I returned from an assignment there I saw pictures and stories of an Afghanistan I did not recognize.
On the one hand, the war was being covered from the peaceful areas in the bigger cities, in fact almost exclusively from the capital, Kabul. We saw pictures of progress, hairdressers, middle-class Afghans enjoying coffees and food in new restaurants. There was no war in Kabul – there were unfortunately suicide bombers, etc., but there were no military offensives, with tanks attacking neighborhoods or planes bombing villages.
On the other hand, we saw rural Afghanistan from within the ranks of Western militaries, through the eyes of journalists and filmmakers embedded with the military. However, the problem was that when a journalist or filmmaker is embedded with Western military forces it becomes almost impossible to get in touch with the local inhabitants, who are afraid of being perceived as affiliated with one of the warring parties, or accused of assisting either party, which could get them killed.
I decided I wanted to tell the story of the numbers, statistics and obscure figures we never hear about from the embedded journalists, as well as of the faces and background stories.
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/The-Afghanistan-we-never-see-318957