A recent newspaper article highlighted "narrative bias" which leads to a distorted or outdated view of an issue or country. It highlighted for instance that one of the biggest users per capita of Youtube is Saudi Arabia - and largest number of "hits" was by women in the category of education. An Iraq  telecoms company has just raised ober 1 billion dollars to invest in a countryt whose main appearance in the news is suicide bombings. Rwanda, scene of a million person ethnic cleansing with weapons like machetes has one of the fastest growing IT sectors in Africa. In Kenya, approaching 20% of GDP passes through mobile-phone based payment systems.

The U K Defence Forum contribution to offsetting "narrative bias!" about Afghanistan is its Afghan News Roundup. The second installment of December 2013 edition, compiled by Elayne Jude for Great North News Service, covers on the next page more positive stories hidden away in the world's media on topics like National lampoon, Salang facelift, Parliament fails to impress, funding female security, and refugee camp at Mons.

The latest Afghan news round-up compiled by Elayne Jude for Great North News Service includes Pashtunwali's rules, Afghanistan's Sikhs, the Taliban's drug wars and the memoirs of a carpet weaver

Air Support: Essential Lifeline

Gary Anderson is a retired Marine Corps officer and a civilian adviser in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is an adjunct professor at George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs. He argues from firsthand experience that without 'some combination of easy-to-maintain transport helicopters and relatively inexpensive fixed-wing or helicopter armed-escort aircraft...the U.S. will have wasted 12 years of blood and treasure'. Put simply, abandoning Afghan ground forces without proper air support would be both militarily unsound and morally unconscionable' (WSJ, 2 June 2013)