When Taliban fighters swept across Afghanistan in a little over a week and entered the capital city of Kabul on August 15, 2021, they surprised the US media, the Biden White House, and the military. Desperate to get out of the country, those who had worked with the US-backed Afghan government fled to the airport in Kabul, running across the tarmac and swamping the runways. US corporate media covered the chaos with images of hundreds of people jamming the runways and clinging onto aircraft or forcing their way into military transport planes. Focusing on the spectacle of the war’s end, in three days Afghanistan received more coverage than is had in years.
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