Abubakar Siddique: Five years after the October 7, 2001 US-led military coalition attack on the Taliban and the al-Qaida army they hosted in the parts of Afghanistan they ruled, Afghans are the fodder of endless wars in this Central Asian highland. On Thursday, wire services were splash with the reports of some 50 Afghan civilians killed in NATO bombing in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar where some of the fiercest fighting between NATO and the Taliban is concentrated. As usual, NATO said sorry and President Karzai appointed yet another commission to investigate the incident.

But such violence is the major, if not the only, story that keeps Afghanistan in western papers, magazines, radio and TV talk shows and news cycles. Five years ago, around the same time a small contingent of international (western) press was camped in Panjshir valley, the stronghold of anti-Taliban militias was north of the capital, Kabul. The Arab language al-Jazeera was the only international TV network to work in Taliban ruled parts of the country. Its reporter Taysir Alony who covered that war is now serving a seven-year term in a Spanish prison for terror links. A network cameraman Sami al-Haj, who covered the same conflict, has been in Guantanamo Bay prison for five years without trial.

The story then had two major narratives. For the western press; Taliban and their Arab guests (or patrons) were the bad guys who can only be defeated militarily. As majority of the Taliban rank and file were Pashtuns (the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan and the second largest in Pakistan), all Pashtuns by default were Taliban and thus enemies. This was further supplemented by the “facts” that they fought and defeated invaders — British in the nineteenth century and Russians in the 20th, and were therefore a highly xenophobic people. A relatively small number of Afghans can read foreign languages and only a handful was ever translated. As a result, there was little or no feedback on this narrative. Western media’s major obsession was the arrest or killing of senior al-Qaida leaders and Afghan suffering was secondary to that big story eagerly awaited in living rooms across the West.

The al-Jazeera type counter narrative was that the West, led by the United States, is an imperialist power, hell-bent on destroying Muslim empowerment. Afghanistan remains one such battle. Because Taliban, al-Qaida and other Islamist militants were primarily fighting for the defense of oppressed Muslims, they highlighted the deaths of American soldiers and Afghan civilians dying from errant US bombing. Such sentiments were widely shared by Pakistani media, which has vital interests in the outcome of the conflict in the neighborhood. They emphasized that the reason for Afghan suffering was not regional geopolitics, but rather the global ambitions of non-Muslim superpowers who wanted to occupy one of the world’s poorest countries to control Central Asian and Caspian energy reserves, contain China’s rising power in Asia, and so forth.

Both narratives were shaped by the eyes and interests of foreigners and Afghans were mere collateral in a game played on their historic homeland.

A third narrative of what the Afghans thought of the war and what their fears, hopes and aspirations were, was somewhat muted. A majority of Afghans longed for security of survival, dignity, honor, better material lives with good jobs and healthcare, freedom from oppression and corruption, and a permanent end to violence. Only the Pashto and Dari (Afghan language) services of the British Broadcasting Corporation, Voice of America and Voice of Germany told that narrative but very few, if any, foreigners spoke those languages and thus the Afghan narrative remained untold to a global audience.

Five years of global media contact with the Afghans has somewhat changed such rigid interpretations but the two narratives still dominate. Elizabeth Rubin’s “In the Land of the Taliban” and “Taking the Fight to the Taliban,” two major pieces published in the New York Times Magazine over the past two weekends, were a welcome break.

Rubin, a 40-something New York City resident, went on a dangerous journey and spent this spring and summer researching the stories in Afghanistan-Pakistan borderlands. She met the Taliban both in the southern Afghan provinces of Helmand and Kandahar and across the border in southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta and went on a counterinsurgency expedition with the G.I’s in the mountains of southern Zabul province.

A major strength of her stories is a vivid description of the dilemmas confronting the varied characters of this complex saga. Take for instance Mullah Ibrahim, a Taliban intelligence official in Kandahar. He wants to reconcile with the Kabul government but the threat of being assassinated by the Taliban is keeping him away from such an undertaking.

But others fail to dig that deep. Early in October Christian Parenti wrote for The Nation on the same theme. He quotes Ajmal, an Afghan fixer and translator as imploring for Taliban return while fuming over the rampant corruption of the current Afghan judges. But most Afghans will tell you that such oratory is just a way of showing resentment and might not necessarily translate to a longing for harsh Taliban rule.

Yet another story in The Nation hinted at a wide open gap in the Afghan narrative, which is the chronology, description and analysis of the US policy towards Afghanistan. “Who is Running Afghan Policy” is a sad tale of ignorance and arrogance in official Washington where Afghanistan is a corollary to larger designs in the Greater Middle East, Near East, South and Central Asia or South Central Asia –- depends on which agency is talking about, the most often repeated cliché, that war ravaged country. This is the story that prevents the third narrative from being realized.

Five years after the October 2001 bombing, media in Afghanistan did have a rebirth with half a dozen TV channels, three dozen FM radios and hundreds of newspapers, magazines and websites –- thanks in large part to Western funding and training. There is no longer a Taliban ban on depicting human figures who now rely on internet, CDs and DVDs for spreading their message to attract fresh recruits to their cause. But this nascent media still have to tell the world Afghanistan’s true narrative.

* This title is borrowed from Fauod Ajami’s book, The Foreigner’s Gift.

Abubakar Siddique is a graduate student at New York University.