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ABSTRACT
The study aims at investigating as how Afghanistan is being represented and portrayed in two leading US magazines - Newsweek and Time. Prefatory pages of the paper shed some light on the growth of economy and media in Afghanistan followed by a brief overview of relations between the US and Afghanistan during the last decade. The contents of twenty leading articles of Newsweek and Time were analyzed which clearly depicts that the proportion of negative coverage (57.08%) was greater than the positive coverage (6.08%). Newsweek and Time mainly represented Afghanistan as an abode of Taliban and extremism, penitentiary for women, a narcotics den, a centre for Islamization, and a safe haven for Al-Qaida and Usama Bin Laden, to include a few.
KEYWORDS: Afghanistan, Taliban, Al-Qaida, Mullah Umar and Usama Bin Ladan.
Introduction
Afghanistan is predominantly an Islamic country, constituting 84% of the inhabitants as Sunni Muslim. They are the adherent of Hanafi1 school of Jurisprudence; rest of the populations is Shia, mainly Hazara (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghanistan, 20 June, 2009).
Despite efforts of the former Soviet Union to change Afghan's society into a secular one, as well as the US efforts, nothing could drastically change the life style of Afghans. Religion and cultural traditions, and hardly anything else, shade the codes of life in Afghanistan and provide the fundamental basis of controlling people's personal conduct and resolving disputes of all kind.
Apart from a little urban population, majority of Afghan dwell in remote/rural areas and are divided in tribal and other kinship based groups. They hardly seem to be governed under the modern legal system(s), but are found to be settling their affairs in the light of their traditional customs and religious practices (J.N, 2000: 142).
'Pashtunes'2 are the dominant ethnic groups; other ethnic groups include Tajik (25%), Hazara (9%), Uzbek (6%), Aimaq, Turkmens, and Baloch.
Dari (Afghan Persian) and Pashto are the official languages. Dari is used as the first language by more than one third of the population and it also serves as a lingua franca for the most Afghans. Pushto is the mother language of most of Talibans in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan is an agriculture country with the majority of its population employed in this sector. Although only about 20% of the total land...