IT'S ALL A MATTER OF CHOICE
Here's the headline of the New York Times' front page, above the fold article about Afghanistan (a rare enough occurence in and of itself):
"Afghans' Gains Face Big Threat in Drug Traffic"
nytimes.com
And, indeed, here's the first paragraph:
Poppy cultivation and opium production will continue to increase in Afghanistan, expanding the dangerous influence of drug lords at all levels of the government of President Hamid Karzai, a new confidential American military assessment warns.
Well, that doesn't sound great.
Except, here are the next several paragraphs:
In an otherwise upbeat assessment of progress in Afghanistan, the review says Taliban fighters and other militants will cement their ties to drug traffickers, and use intimidation and play on ethnic and tribal allegiances to try to undermine a government plan to offer amnesty to those who agree to lay down their arms.
The assessment, by Lt. Gen. David W. Barno, the top American commander in Afghanistan, was presented this week to Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld during their visit to Afghanistan.
At the same time, American commanders have expressed pleasant surprise at the prowess of the newly trained Afghan security forces, and are seeking to accelerate training of the Afghan Army.
The number of trained Afghan soldiers is projected to rise to 33,500 within a year, while the national police ranks are expected to grow to 62,000 officers, from 30,500, according to General Barno's assessment.
Over all, the report was largely upbeat on military, economic and political fronts. Since July 2003, it said, attacks on allied forces have declined, the power of regional warlords has diminished, militias are being disarmed, a moderate Islamic Constitution is in place, and the elections on Oct. 9 were conducted with relatively little violence and few irregularities. (My emph.)
In other words, the paper took a largely upbeat report, a report that shows good progress -- better than expected progress -- being made in every area but one, and made that one area the frame for the article and the topic of the headline.
I'm certainly not suggesting, by the way, that the drug element of the story isn't important. I'm asking why it's more important than the part of the story that suggests things are going well. Because the argument that everything could be threatend by the drug trade is not, it seems to me, supported by the rest of the article, which only supports that beating the drug trade is key -- with the exception of one quote, from a speech, by the American ambassador. Political rhetoric, in other words.
Look what's completely buried in the story:
More than 70,000 Pakistani forces are deployed along the rugged 1,500-mile border with Afghanistan, where many Taliban and Qaeda fighters are thought to be hiding, and, contrary to some reports last month, American officials say there will be no slackening of Pakistan's commitment along the frontier. (My emph.)
Why, I do believe that may be what Mr. Okrent refers to as a "rowback."
Update: As I say, my quarrel is with the ordering of the information in the article, its presentation, not with the information in the article. (Although I'd also say that I have a quarrel with what it takes to get Afghanistan into the news.)
Given the importance of reducing the reliance on the opium crop for Afghanistan's future, though, check out this Afghan solution nytimes.com for that problem from another page on the Times. The downside? No surprise: it's expensive. The question, then, is whether all those allies or ours who keep saying that unlike Iraq they've always supported the mission in Afghanistan will belly up to the bar in a serious way.
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