The experience we may call a mediated war – that of ongoing hostilities being observed via mass media – is nothing new. Beginning with the articles by Sir William Russell on the Crimean War of 1853 – 1856, it evolved over the next hundred years into the newsreels of the U.S. Office of War Information and Die Deutsche Wochenshau during WWII. The Vietnam War of 1955 – 1975 became the first military conflict to be televised, while a wider availability of video cameras in the ’90s threw amateur footage into the mix. Many of those videos, shot by combatants or civilians in a conflict zone, came from independence wars in former Yugoslavia and Chechnya.
Finally, since the mid-2000’s, the internet has become a major channel for war reporting from all kinds of sources: national, international, rebel, and civilian. Abundant GoPro footage of NATO troops in Africa and the Middle East, notorious prisoner execution videos by ISIS, and a combat vlog, such as Gniew Eufratu of a Polish volunteer fighting against them with Kurdish militias in Syria, are only a few examples of a vast genre. A far cry from Sir William’s Crimea reports, during the withdrawal of the US troops from Afghanistan, in August 2021, you could ask any question via an online chat to a Le Monde resident reporter in Kabul or watch live updates on daily life under the Taliban rule from YouTuber
Qawi Khan, who is based in Kandahar.