TRI In The News

Great Deal to Learn on Afghanistan

From The Daily Progress

Original article available here

After 10 years and more of American engagement in Afghanistan, you might think you know plenty about that country by now.

A contingent of Afghanis might disagree with you.

Again this year, the Rutherford Institute has hosted a group of government leaders from Afghanistan who are in the United States through a State Department program in order to learn about American democracy, education, culture and more. This year these half-dozen leaders visited The Daily Progress to discuss press freedom and press responsibility.

But in addition to learning about America, they would like America to learn more about them — “the Afghanistan of the 21st century.”

Much of the reporting about their country is undeservedly negative, they believe.

Of course, much of the reporting about their country involves war — an intensely negative subject. And that reporting often is filtered through a Western sensibility centered on whether events in Afghanistan are serving our aims — such as denying international terrorists a fresh foothold there.

But life in Afghanistan is immeasurably more complex than this, these Afghan officials suggest. They are proud of what they have accomplished in the past decade, proud of their march toward democracy, proud of their strides toward a more universal justice.

One example is an improvement in the handling of sexual assault issues, and an abatement in the crime of sexual assault. Afghani women seem to be at a stage that American women faced just a few decades ago — courageously breaking free of the stigma of assault as somehow their “fault” and their burden alone to bear, and instead willing to see this as an issue of justice and themselves as worthy of that justice. More and more women are prepared to take their cases to the courts, the visiting Afghanis say.

And whereas they suggest that international press reporting has given Westerners an unbalanced view of their country, they say that reporting in their own country about sexual assault has served as a positive force in helping remove damaging stereotypes and promote justice.

As a synergistic result of that reporting and of women’s bravery in standing up for themselves, sexual assault is on the decline, say the officials.

That’s the way press freedom and responsibility are supposed to operate.

The Afghan delegation also asked that Americans continue to support them in healing their country through education and other forms of humanitarian aid. Education — as Thomas Jefferson knew — is the surest and safest route to a strong democracy. An educated populace is necessary to self-governance, as well as to any individual ability to make one’s life better.

The Afghan visitors believe in the importance of education as strongly as we do.

While America continues to reduce its military presence in Afghanistan, we dare not abandon our efforts toward helping that country with humanitarian aid. In fact, we should step up those efforts. In the long run, our support in helping Afghanistan strengthen its education system and develop its democracy will not only serve that country well, it also will help improve the relations between our two countries as we achieve mutual goals.

Continued turmoil in much of the countryside of Afghanistan — the “bad news” that is so often reported — cannot be ignored.

But that news gives a one-sided picture. There are also those in Afghanistan who are working hard to solidify their country’s gains of freedom and improve life for their fellow citizens.

Although they are here to learn about such things from us — we can also learn much from them.