The Eleven Year War (Afghanistan and Back by Ted Rall)

I woke up today to another story about a suicide attack in Afghanistan. It seemed that for at least a few precious weeks we had had little news from that region, a cutoff in the steady stream of news about political reverses and Shia pilgrims under attack and suicide bombers. Coverage was dominated by a bombshell of another nature, the Petraeus mistress scandal, as well as speculation about the possible compromising of sensitive information and the peddling of influence on the part of a wealthy Florida socialite. It was news that was predicated on scandal-mongering, with the whole East Coast news media set to twittering.

But then we were reminded of how volatile this region is, and of how the whole crisis mentality fits conveniently into the scheme of international coverage of the area. The whole Hamas-Israel confrontation captured the headlines, and we were treated to reports of bombing campaigns in Gaza and terrorist attacks in Israeli cities. I have to admit that I have long grown weary of this situation, and the prospect of protracted conflicts with both sides dug in deeper than ever, and with our country having to take a mediating role. In a sense, we must also signal out our news coverage for falling into an eternal crisis mode in which the same images of bombs and bloodshed is eternally circulated, but in which little though is given to trying to explain the complex circumstances behind these conflicts. There are reasons, after all, and they don’t evolve into the traditional “East is East and West is West” mentality that seemed to somehow justify 19^th century western colonialism.

A few weeks ago I read Ted Rall’s “To Afghanistan and Back”. It is a chronicle of his journey to the country in 2001, told in the form of short prose narratives that are interspersed with graphical narratives that at times illustrate these episodes. The style is editorial, with people and places rendered in a simplistic style that seems a little crude at times. The figures are wooden and seem strangely static, conveying an old-fashioned sense that seems very unadorned, as if it were somehow more direct. It is at odds at times with the emotional intensity and the anxiety it wishes to portray, as bomb blasts echo in panels and as the journalist is forced to deal with a people who seem to obfuscate and hide their true selves.

In the opening moment of America’s intervention in Afghanistan, which was undertaken with the aim of toppling the Taliban regime and responding to the Sept. 11^th events, we see an editorial journalist and part-time radio host who has joined a cadre of other journalists who swarmed into the country to capture the fall of the regime. First of all, one wonders at the foolhardiness of these journalists. They seem to absurdly believe that they will be somehow shielded from any harm by their profession, as if this aura (and their camera and reporting gear) could somehow stop bullets and protect them from exploding land mines and shrapnel from aerial bombing campaigns. They seem to be disconnected from their reality, and it echoes the criticism that had been lodged against CNN and their enterprising journalists way back in the early 90s, when they embedded their journalist in Baghdad and reported breathlessly on the explosions in their midst, a mindset that fetished explosions and rattling effects, as if feeding a video-game mentality.

Ted Rall is an editorial cartoonist whose work has frequently struck me for its smirking tone.  (He himself utilizes the adjective “snarky” in this book.) I had first heard about him when he was a radio host on local AM powerhouse station KFI, the most popular outlet in Southern California for extremist right-wing radio. He himself, however, was no right-winger, and seemed if anything to offer a contrarian opinion that was grounded in comedy, similar to John Stewart, and it was refreshing. It made his program at least somewhat palatable as Saturday night fare, for those of us who no longer venture out on dates nor wish to recapitulate the other frenetic rituals of our earlier adolescence.

One of the features of his program was a segment that he called the “’Stan Report”. No, it wasn’t a report on people named Stanley, but instead his reflections on the countries in the region of East Asian that end with the suffix “stan”. It is, as I understand it, a linguistic term that derives from Persian, and it refers, of course, to “land”. We know of many of these countries: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazahkstan, etc. In the popular imagination, they all seem to merge together to give us the impression of unstable regions that are gripped by religious fundamentalism and a pervading medieval mentality.

That was certainly the impression that Ted Rall conveyed in his report, and one of the reasons why I grew tired of this segment. He may very well have journeyed to the area, but I questioned how much he could have gleaned from these journeys to be able to simplify and paint with such as broad stroke as he did. Was he not perhaps parodying the mindset of the right-wingers who held forth during the daylight hours on that station, the very same ones that he seemed to snipe at constantly at other moments? He seemed a little too earnest and dismissive in this segment, portraying a region that was somehow inoculated against change and modernity.

Well, after reading this narrative (which he terms a “graphic travelogue”), I think that he does carry a touch of what one could term an “Orientalist” perspective, to make reference to Edward Said’s classic volume on the ways in which western countries have elaborated an ideological scheme that served to demonize and distort our perception of the East. It does no credit to his journey that was supposedly motivated to offer a critique of the Bush doctrine of intervention and conquest. Was that the only motivation, or was it not more self-serving?

I return, over and over, to consider this question and to what might have motivated this group of journalists to insert themselves in this region without recognizing the very real dangers to which they were exposing themselves. They arrived in caravans traveling through difficult terrain, with heavy equipment and enterprising mentalities, hoping to catch crucial footage of historical events but also, one suspects, wishing to burnish their reputations and feed a seemingly infinite western appetite for gore and drama on a public that had been feeling anxiety about this region. They were looking for drama and heroism and other saleable commodities as they narrated the pitched battles between the Northern Alliance and the Taliban remnants, but it wasn’t that easy. They were, of course, woefully unprepared for what they encountered, and what is more shameful, oblivious to their surroundings.

They arrived with little knowledge of the country and even less of the language. How did they expect to carry through with their mission? I am struck over and over by how this collection of international journalists stuck to themselves, dependent upon each other for rumors and tips and forced to rely on translators they seemed to distrust and resent because of their predatory instincts. How accurate were these translators, and how could they be sure about the stories they were being fed? They were certainly greedy, demanding $150 per day in fees when, as Rall repeats over and over, the average month wage was $1.40. There was some serious price-gouging goingn on, but I can’t blame them.

Try to look at it from their point of view. Who are these western journalists who so callously descend on the region, accompanying the vanguard of an invasion force that indiscriminately bombs their towns and villages from above, supporting an opposition movement (the Northern Alliance) that presents itself as a viable and modern alternative to the Taliban regime but that reveals itself to be a paragon of corruption, venality and sheer stupidity? These western journalists are the vanguard of western soldiers and western policymakers who seem to be similarly clueless, and they must be viewed as similarly suspect by the Afghan population. If they were taken advantage of and if they were given boiled sewer water instead of clean water from a well, or charged $800 for a twenty mile taxi ride, was this not a way of merely reflecting the greed and the self-interest they themselves revealed? Does this make the Afghans more “medieval”, a term used by Rall when describing the scenes he encountered in the country, knowing full well that the very use of the term brings up associations in our minds that are unfailingly negative because they are based on a construct that wishes to impose western historical experience on a wholly different region?

I hate to say it, but I felt little sympathy for the hardship that was suffered by Rall and his fellow collection of motley journalists while carrying out this supposed mission. (Yes, there is a strong sense of suspicion as to their real intentions, at least as presented by Rall.) We are treated to descriptions of flea-infested rugs and rickety buildings, of venal Alliance commanders, of hypocritical and two-faced Taliban soldiers who shave off their beards and buy Tajik hats in order to switch sides when it seems as if they are about to be overwhelmed, and then take up arms again against the Northern Alliance solidiers they have joined, as has happened over and over ten years later, in the spate of attacks by Afghan soldiers against their NATO colleagues. Yes, there would seem to be a deep cultural disconnect taking place, but the dismissive attitude and the failure of Rall to attempt to address and explain it would seem to underscore the continued influence of a colonial mentality. Things don’t change, despite eleven years of war in this country.

Yes, the mission was ill-conceived, and yes, I agree with Rall, the region harbors potentially vast reserves of petrochemical and mineral resources that western countries would love to exploit if they could only install convenient and complaint puppet regimes. Yes, I understand that Afghanistan is a crucial piece in this scheme, and that if it could be somehow pacified, a pipeline could be constructed through the country and into Pakistan, providing a new source of oil as well as hopefully providing a way to stabilize unstable regimes and destabilize stable regimes, by which I am referring respectively to Pakistan and Iran. Of course, oil resources have a tendency of serving only limited sectors, mainly, local economic elites as well as transnational corporations, and rarely have they led to sustained national development. Witness the case with countries such as Azerbaijan, Equatorial Guinea and Nigeria.  

So we have a mission in which Rall and his fellow journalist try to follow a shifting front, besieged as they are by predatory Afghanis who take to murdering them as related in the episode of the Swedish cameraman Ulf Stromberg, the only unfortunate westerner to open the door when soldiers knocked late at night at their compound. Yes, it is dangerous, but in the same way the situation is logical. To criticize bands of Afghanis for organizing these campaigns and for expressing their distrust of the westerners in their midst who descend and evaporate regularly like the winter snows is to fail to see that they have their own interests to address.

In the end, the portrayal of the Afghanis and of the difficulties encountered by Rall as he was engaged in this journalistic “stunt” (and we can’t label it as anything other than a “stunt”, for it was predicated on his own ignorance of the region and his failure to overcome his own prejudices and to question his own roll as he and his companions sought to score the latest “scoop”) tends to overshadow the critique of western interventionism. To boil it down, he is guilty of the same, part of the apparatus of western imperial dominance that is predicated on a certain predatory scheme that he excoriates when he sees it in operation among ordinary Afghans.  It lends itself to a corrosive discourse that discredits these people in a wholesale fashion, and the tedium he expresses sounds like the juvenile rant of a journalist who was unfamiliar with the ideals of his profession.

What is the purpose of allowing these journalists to descend en masse in these areas, as part of the vanguard of an invading western army?  Are they there only to lend a thin veneer of fairness and supposed transparency, to say that at least the West as an open society is prepared to accommodate a cadre of potential critics, even when these critics differ in no real way in their mindset from the elites who control the course of this foreign policy? Yes, I agree with Rall that the Northern Alliance is another fabricated opposition force, one that was a convenient front to carry forth this mission, making it seem as if opposition was internal, but are they as journalist in any way different?

I can’t see myself visiting any of the ‘Stans in the future, but if I do, I will have to be honest about my own preconceptions. At least Rall was honest about his, although I’m not sure if he understands the implications of this, and his snide criticisms of the region and its people seem to have ended up assuming a harder edge at the end of this travelogue.

The war in Afghanistan will undoubtedly continue for the foreseeable future, even though the United States is committed to withdrawing its forces in 2014. Perhaps it will be left for the surrounding countries to intervene and impose their own arrangement, as they had done before with Pakistan having imposed the Taliban after the period of Soviet intervention. This has been the longest war in American history, and also, the most pointless.



Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013