Afghanistan isn’t in the news (so it’s not a problem anymore…)

Afghanistan isn’t in the news (so it’s not a problem anymore…)

Kerry Jones

Monday 18th October 2021

The 24 hour news cycle has had a negative effect on the perceptions of great members of the British public. News moves quickly, and so does public attention. An earthquake in Pakistan will be leading stories in the papers and on the TV, then a few hours later it could be Extinction Rebellion protesters.

That doesn’t mean the earthquake has suddenly gone away, it just means that we, the public, are being treated like Goldfish with an attention span of two seconds, and anything prior to that is forgotten. In other words, we are encouraged to be what psychologists refer to as Instant Gratificationists: a state of learned behaviour those in government are encouraging.

We are slowly being conditioned, over years of watching TV, to have shorter attention spans. The shortening of programme times between ad breaks means channels can get more advertising slots per average 45 minute programme.

To reach the younger generations, attention spans are shorter and the Instant Gratificationist/shorter attention span is enforced not only by TV, but also by TikTok and YouTube.

At the moment on TikTok a video of one minute is the longest you can produce, but three minutes is a future proposal to bring it closer to YouTube; whereas YouTube is planning to bring timings down to be closer to TikTok.

Governments like to encourage these behaviours because they benefit from the shorter attention spans of the population. People lose interest in a mistake or an abuse perpetrated against them, including the erosion of civil liberties, or foreign disputes or conflicts we are involved in. We will soon move on to the next subject.

A good example is George Orwell’s “Newspeak” or “Doublethink”. There are no more perfect examples than Afghanistan and the Taliban, and the Irish Republican Army/Sinn Fein in Northern and Southern Ireland. Both are groups that our soldiers and the public have been told are our enemies, who have sworn to kill us to forward their quasi political aims. But then the politicians change and these enemies become our friends and respected partners in trade and other areas, including international security.

Pragmatism at this level is acceptable to politicians and governments looking for good headlines, especially trade deals including weapons, but they forget that the citizens of these countries may personally hold different and possibly hostile views towards us, and we to them, especially after long term conflicts where blood has been shed on both sides.

The public need to acknowledge that politicians from the main parties have been manipulating us for many years in the most Machivellian of manners. They rig the system for the benefit of themselves, and we the public have been lulled into a passive relationship with these same politicians; we are constantly told that they know best, or they are the experts, or even “our betters”.

They have us secured in a dependent relationship: the British public are suffering from classic Stockholm Syndrome. It is up to us to change things. We must question the media on foreign relations and international affairs. We must educate ourselves, not sit back and passively accept everything the government tells us.

I will be using the US drawdown of troops, the UK’s evacuation of civilians, and future possible ramifications, as an example of how the government hopes people have the memory span of a Goldfish.

The evacuation of Afghan civilians from Kabul Airport, and the sight of people hanging onto airplanes readying for take off (as if they were on the top of a coach or train in the region) created footage that was both horrendous and amazing; that people would take such a risk to leave Kabul due to fear of the Taliban.

I do not believe even a Hollywood disaster director would have put that in a film – it would have been just too unbelievable. Those images were helpful, because when people ask “Was it worth it?” “Why were we in Afghanistan so long?” “Why did we put so much money into the country?”, politicians have their answer. They liked the footage of Kabul Airport as it showed voters that the losses of British troops lives, and the lives of NGO staff, was for a moral cause because it demonstrated that people were so afraid of the Taliban they would grab on to an airplane in flight.

Those images also helped with another problem, immigration. The media is showing pictures of small craft filled with illegal immigrants arriving on our coast. Sections of the public are not happy about these images, so the government needed to soften the blow of promising to give refuge to any Afghan who felt at risk from the Taliban.

Given that we had been in Afghanistan for twenty years, this would mean a lot of people. Embassy staff, teachers who taught the children of British workers, anyone who worked for a British funded NGO…. basically anyone with even third degree contact to the British involvement in Afghanistan and their large families, including elderly relatives. That is a lot of Afghan citizens who the government promised to protect by giving them safe haven in the UK.

To put it bluntly, the British government was in a hole of its own making. Its mouth was making promises that the body (the British public) would not necessarily want to keep, so the heart strings were pulled by showing wall to wall media coverage of Kabul Airport.

The British government hoped that people had a short memory and did not critically analyse the situation. If we did, we might realise that we do not have a debt to the Afghans who worked for the British in Afghanistan. There are historical precedents for this situation.

During the Second World War, the French government was a Vichy government installed by – and under the control of – the Germans. No matter how unpalatable the comparison, the same situation occurred in Afghanistan – a Vichy government. The Northern Alliance controlled by the US/UK was installed in Afghanistan and was controlled by US/UK with the support of their troops on the ground.

During the Second World War, French citizens worked either directly or indirectly for the Vichy government and were classed as “collaborators”; exactly what the Taliban have called the Afghans who worked for the British or Americans.

Afghans took these jobs because they were well paid and because they believed the British/Americans would stay in Afghanistan, propping up the government of their choice and giving aid ad infinitum. The party was never going to end, but it did. The US/UK left and the Taliban are back in charge. The “collaborators” who worked for Western forces, even in a remote capacity, are now fair game for retribution Taliban style. Exactly the same happened with the French collaborators who worked for the Vichy government, but they were never given the option of safe passage or refuge in East Germany.

Do we have a responsibility to these Afghans, or did they know the risks of working for the British but thought short term?

This question does have future ramifications. Unless Britain avoids being drawn into regime change wars, or US-led frolics, especially in the South China Sea region, we and our children will see our small island promised to refugees from yet more escapades.

Kerry Jones

International Affairs Spokesperson

For Britain