{"id":2139,"date":"2021-08-19T11:02:50","date_gmt":"2021-08-19T16:02:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nabjmonitor.com\/2025\/?p=2139"},"modified":"2022-07-16T19:51:26","modified_gmt":"2022-07-17T00:51:26","slug":"coverage-on-afghanistan-20-years-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nabjmonitor.com\/2025\/coverage-on-afghanistan-20-years-later\/","title":{"rendered":"Coverage on Afghanistan 20 Years Later"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-text-color\" style=\"color:#074f8a\">By Daniella Johnson &amp; Sheila Hodges<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>NABJ Monitor<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap\">As the Taliban declares victory over Afghanistan, former 2007 NABJ President, Barbara Ciara reflects on her coverage of the start to America\u2019s decade-long war with the terrorist group.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>President Joe Biden announced that he will be following through with the agreement the Trump administration made with the Taliban to have all U.S. Troops leave Afghanistan by May 1, 2021. As tensions rise in Afghanistan, many wonder where that leaves American assistance and aid.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ciara remembers the night that the bombing campaign started vividly, stating that the patriotism and emotions amongst the military and reporters was at an all-time high.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"Barbara Ciara - Post 9\/11 reports overseas\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/szmEaWu30XM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cPeople were emotional. And typically, when you deal with men and women in the military, they are methodical and purposeful, but they don&#8217;t have that emotion on their sleeves,\u201d Ciara said. \u201c And this was different from the commander on down. People were very emotional about the mission.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thinking on the fall of the Twin Towers, Ciara recalls witnessing a unique sense of patriotism among those aboard the USS Roosevelt.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When the war first began, Ciara and many others were under the impression that the war between America and Afghanistan would be short as the only goal was to assassinate Osama Bin Laden and secure Afghanistan. According to Ciara, there was a mutual understanding in the air that getting to Afghanistan, completing the mission and getting back home was the expectation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cSo if you look at what\u2019s happening now and trying to manage that expectation, I think there would be some sense of disappointment,\u201d Ciara said. \u201cThe question might be for them, did we achieve our mission now, for many people, the mission should have ended with the assassination of Osama Bin Laden.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, as time passed and policies changed, Ciara notes that the mission in Afghanistan seemed to change as well. As a veteran reporter, Ciara has been privy to witness all four administrations, how they handled the Taliban controversy as well as how the timeline in this war matters.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The George W. Bush administration handled and minimized the active threat of the Taliban, allowing the Obama administration to seemingly eradicate it by assassinating Bin Laden. Then, the Trump administration made a deal with the terrorist group to vacate Afghanistan, leaving Biden the choice to either follow through with that agreement or continue the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cAnd now we are at a place where the United States is withdrawing, many of the folks in the military community that I cover feel like it\u2019s messy, and that\u2019s just what I\u2019m hearing from the military community,\u201d Ciara said. \u201cI take my own opinion out of it, because when people are very close to the conflict and they\u2019ve covered it and they\u2019ve had many tours of duty, I think it\u2019s our job to listen and have a takeaway.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This confliction leaves the question of what will happen to Afghan people and their society if the Taliban continues their terror. According to Ciara, going forward the world is going to witness the lives of many who will have to adjust to new territories, language and immigration policies in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThose are going to be the stories that we tell in the future of a recommitment to those people who risk their lives to help out people on the ground,\u201d Ciara said. \u201cSo it\u2019s going to be another layer of the immigration issue that we cover so much here in the United States, because if those planes leave, they have to land somewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\"><p>As the Taliban declares victory over Afghanistan, former 2007 NABJ President, Barbara Ciara reflects on her coverage of the start to America\u2019s decade-long war with the terrorist group.  <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/nabjmonitor.com\/2025\/coverage-on-afghanistan-20-years-later\/\" title=\"Coverage on Afghanistan 20 Years Later\">[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":2258,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,224],"tags":[271,267,273,268,269,270,272],"class_list":{"0":"post-2139","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-image","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-archives","8":"category-nabj-21","9":"tag-2007-nabj-president","10":"tag-barbara-ciara","11":"tag-bin-laden","12":"tag-daniella-johnson","13":"tag-sheila-hodges","14":"tag-u-s-troops","15":"tag-uss-roosevelt","16":"post_format-post-format-image"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabjmonitor.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabjmonitor.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabjmonitor.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabjmonitor.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabjmonitor.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2139"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/nabjmonitor.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2265,"href":"https:\/\/nabjmonitor.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2139\/revisions\/2265"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabjmonitor.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabjmonitor.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabjmonitor.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabjmonitor.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}