Evidently my review of Carmela Baranowska's film Taliban Country, posted on Indymedia, was noticed by other than the usual Lefty suspects. I received this email from one David Tate:
I have read your comments... especially this one:
"An audience member (at the U. of MD screening), who said she and her husband worked for an aid organization in Kandahar, tried to convince the predominantly student audience that the film was an unfair treatment of the U.S. military, and that a tiny minority of U.S. troops engaged in this sort of behavior. I wondered, "Do you think your aid would be needed over there, if the U.S. hadn't gone in and destroyed that country in the first instance?" I politely remarked to her that wartime atrocities by occupying troops are statistically underreported, not over reported, and that the numbers were probably much higher. The bar on war crimes was set early on in the Afghan War, with the U.S. refusal to prosecute members of the Dostum militia who massacred prisoners in Mazar-e-Sharif; and the U.S. troops who murdered Taliban by suffocation in metal boxes. I commended Baranowska for her courage and integrity in reporting the reality of the situation in Afghanistan. U.S. presence in
Afghanistan violates the sovereignty of that country, and U.S. troops there, as in Iraq, are occupiers. Hence their behavior is not surprising."
You should have listened to these people. Not only was Carmela NOT the only journo in S. Oruzgan, but she wasn't even first. I, myself, got Carmela her embed... long after me. I left long after her and can tell you that her report is VERY one-sided. If you want to learn more, maybe I could come and present my film that shows a MUCH more complete picture regarding this issue.
Regards,
David Tate
http://battlefieldtourist.com
I checked with Baranowski, who was in E. Timor on a subsequent assignment, and she confirmed that Tate was U.S. military--a fact he'd conveniently omitted in his mail. So much for his "complete picture"....
Showing posts with label Afghanistan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Afghanistan. Show all posts
Thursday, June 15, 2006
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
“Taliban Country”—Film Review
In this age of CNN and O'Reilly, "Taliban Country" is a documentary that restores dignity to the word "journalist." Carmela Baranowska, an Australian filmmaker, was originally embedded with U.S. marines in Afghanistan's remote Uruzgan Province. The mission of the marines is to "hunt for Taliban and Al-Qaida." They are under the command of Asad Khan--the only "Muslim" to have attained the rank of lieutenant colonel in the U.S. military. Together with Jan Muhammad, a Pushtun warlord, who cooperates with U.S. troops, they regularly patrol Uruzgan villages.
Baranowska's camera effectively captures the tranquility of the Afghan village. Birds are singing, children are playing, and one can almost feel the breeze circulating through the sunny courtyards of the traditional Afghan clay houses. The viewer gets a sense of what (state) terrorism means, when the marines descend upon this quietly serene village, with submachine guns and RPGs drawn, breaking down doors, and violating the sanctity of households. I was struck by the similarity in the behavior of the U.S. military with that of the Red Army--with their infamous house-to-house searches during the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, also aimed at striking terror in the hearts of the Afghan population.
Still, in this scene, perhaps due to Baranowska's presence, the troops are relatively restrained. They find no Taliban, instead arresting a young local, named Janan, and confiscating only nine guns. Janan is turned over to Warlord Jan Muhammad for questioning. His interrogation of the young man is little more than a steady stream of explicit Pashto epithets, capable of making the most seasoned hoodlum in the American inner city blush. Jan Muhammad, master of homosexual innuendo, is the quintessential U.S. approved/appointed Afghan "leader," in the Karzai/Dostum tradition: ego ridden, power hungry, and willing to sell out his people for a small price. The contrast between the arrogant and scurrilous speech of this Tom, and the humility of the soft-spoken Taliban leadership so demonized in the U.S. controlled media is inescapable.
The marines and Jan Muhammad, accompanied by Baranowska, visit a second village, called Passau. They sit down with the townspeople to discuss their concerns. Despite the threat posed by armed U.S. troops and by the ruthless warlord, a villager bravely tries to raise questions about abuses enacted by the U.S. military. He is quickly silenced, by the marines' translator, who condescendingly tells him his concerns are more appropriate as a post-evening prayer topic.
Baranowska, a seasoned journalist with years of experience investigating atrocities in E. Timor and elsewhere, is immediately suspicions. She decides to return..unembedded--to the area, to find out what is really underfoot. She returns first to Janan's village of Masazai. Janan tells her that U.S. troops can't capture any Taliban fighters, so they make a show of nabbing innocent and helpless villagers like him.
She learns that militias like Jan Muhammad's exploit the U.S. presence in the region to gain the upper hand over their traditional tribal allies. Tribe I turns Tom, and falsely accuses their rival, Tribe II, of harboring Taliban. U.S. marines attack Tribe II based on false information provided by Tribe I. Atrocities are committed against Tribe II, which then vows revenge against Tribe I. Thus the exogenous U.S. presence fuels civil war, exacerbating conflicts which otherwise would be minimal and fought on equal footing. Imperialist instigated civil war is an old theme, common to many countries suffering from U.S. "democratization."
Baranowska returns to Passau, where the villagers had raised questions about U.S. troops' atrocities. The reason why this issue was censored during her previous visit immediately becomes apparent. In a raid conducted June 23, 2004, U.S. helicopters landed in the village fields and destroyed the crops, setting the stage for what was to come. According to the villagers, the troops broke china, pottery, and anything else they could find. They hacked through the mosque door, threw Qur'ans on the ground, and defecated in residents' living rooms. Thirty-five villagers were arrested, and taken away by helicopter to be interrogated by U.S. troops. Some were threatened that they would be taken to Guantanomo. The prisoners were tagged like animals before they were finally released.
The filmmaker finds that the villagers have been physically and sexually abused by the troops. Noor Muhammad Lala, a village elder wearing turban and traditional Afghan baggy pants and shirt sorrowfully tells his story. "They tied my hands and put me in a container," he says. He was then forced to take off all his clothes, and spread-eagled against the wall. Marines pulled at his testicles and jabbed at his anus. The elder had a bladder problem and became incontinent in front of his captors who stood laughing at his predicament. I could not help thinking of the resemblance to my own dear, elderly Afghan (ex-)father-in-law, his long white beard, gaunt face with hollow cheeks, and gentle manner. How would I feel if this were done to him?
Wali Muhammad, Noor Muhammad's son, was also held for questioning. The marines beat him, fingered his anus, and took pictures of him naked. There were twenty marines according to Wali Muhammad, and they stood around laughing and taking pictures of the nude captives. He and the others were held for three days, he says; they become hungry and repeatedly asked for food, but were denied it. An elderly woman, whose veil was removed and who was subjected to a body search, tells of the village women being pushed around by the troops. " We'd prefer death to this humiliation," the villagers tell Baranowska.
Back in Masazai, she learns that Major Cook, of the Civil Affairs Unit, has just visited. One of the village leaders tell her that Cook tried to give him medicines, corn seed, and a radio. Cook asked him if he needed anything. He told Cook, in a message that might have been the cry of the Afghan nation:
"We don't need anything. Don't humiliate us. Don't rob our country. Don't commit crimes. We don't need anything."
Before leaving Uruzgan, Baranowska returns to Passau a final time. The villagers tell her that "due to abuse and maltreatment by the marines," almost all of the families are gone. Of a village of two hundred, only fifteen or twenty people remain. How history repeats itself, I think to myself: During the Soviet occupation, too, millions of Afghans left their homes and possessions to escape life under occupation. Afghans are a dignified people for whom honor and respect are everything. Time and time again, they have chosen exile or death to life under occupation.
The film ends with a footnote that with the initial release of "Taliban Country," the army launched an inquiry into the abuses. They confirmed the detention of thirty-five villagers on June 23, 2004. Answering questions after the screening of her work at the University of Maryland Baltimore Country (UMBC), Baranowska told students that the inquiry had found the charges against the marines to be unsubstantiated; Lt. Colonel Asad Khan had been removed from his position; no others had been prosecuted. Baranowska has called for an independent inquiry.
An audience member at the UMBC screening, who said she and her husband worked for an aid organization in Kandahar, tried to convince the predominantly student audience that the film was an unfair treatment of the U.S. military, and that a tiny minority of U.S. troops engaged in this sort of behavior. I wondered, "Do you think your aid would be needed over there, if the U.S. hadn't gone in and destroyed that country in the first instance?" I politely remarked to her that wartime atrocities by occupying troops are statistically underreported, not over reported, and that the numbers were probably much higher. The bar on war crimes was set early on in the Afghan War, with the U.S. refusal to prosecute members of the Dostum militia who massacred prisoners in Mazar-e-Sharif; and the U.S. troops who murdered Taliban by suffocation in metal boxes. I commended Baranowska for her courage and integrity in reporting the reality of the situation in Afghanistan. U.S. presence in Afghanistan violates the sovereignty of that country, and U.S. troops there, as in Iraq, are occupiers. Hence their behavior is not surprising.
Baranowska's findings cry out for a war crimes investigation.
Baranowska's camera effectively captures the tranquility of the Afghan village. Birds are singing, children are playing, and one can almost feel the breeze circulating through the sunny courtyards of the traditional Afghan clay houses. The viewer gets a sense of what (state) terrorism means, when the marines descend upon this quietly serene village, with submachine guns and RPGs drawn, breaking down doors, and violating the sanctity of households. I was struck by the similarity in the behavior of the U.S. military with that of the Red Army--with their infamous house-to-house searches during the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, also aimed at striking terror in the hearts of the Afghan population.
Still, in this scene, perhaps due to Baranowska's presence, the troops are relatively restrained. They find no Taliban, instead arresting a young local, named Janan, and confiscating only nine guns. Janan is turned over to Warlord Jan Muhammad for questioning. His interrogation of the young man is little more than a steady stream of explicit Pashto epithets, capable of making the most seasoned hoodlum in the American inner city blush. Jan Muhammad, master of homosexual innuendo, is the quintessential U.S. approved/appointed Afghan "leader," in the Karzai/Dostum tradition: ego ridden, power hungry, and willing to sell out his people for a small price. The contrast between the arrogant and scurrilous speech of this Tom, and the humility of the soft-spoken Taliban leadership so demonized in the U.S. controlled media is inescapable.
The marines and Jan Muhammad, accompanied by Baranowska, visit a second village, called Passau. They sit down with the townspeople to discuss their concerns. Despite the threat posed by armed U.S. troops and by the ruthless warlord, a villager bravely tries to raise questions about abuses enacted by the U.S. military. He is quickly silenced, by the marines' translator, who condescendingly tells him his concerns are more appropriate as a post-evening prayer topic.
Baranowska, a seasoned journalist with years of experience investigating atrocities in E. Timor and elsewhere, is immediately suspicions. She decides to return..unembedded--to the area, to find out what is really underfoot. She returns first to Janan's village of Masazai. Janan tells her that U.S. troops can't capture any Taliban fighters, so they make a show of nabbing innocent and helpless villagers like him.
She learns that militias like Jan Muhammad's exploit the U.S. presence in the region to gain the upper hand over their traditional tribal allies. Tribe I turns Tom, and falsely accuses their rival, Tribe II, of harboring Taliban. U.S. marines attack Tribe II based on false information provided by Tribe I. Atrocities are committed against Tribe II, which then vows revenge against Tribe I. Thus the exogenous U.S. presence fuels civil war, exacerbating conflicts which otherwise would be minimal and fought on equal footing. Imperialist instigated civil war is an old theme, common to many countries suffering from U.S. "democratization."
Baranowska returns to Passau, where the villagers had raised questions about U.S. troops' atrocities. The reason why this issue was censored during her previous visit immediately becomes apparent. In a raid conducted June 23, 2004, U.S. helicopters landed in the village fields and destroyed the crops, setting the stage for what was to come. According to the villagers, the troops broke china, pottery, and anything else they could find. They hacked through the mosque door, threw Qur'ans on the ground, and defecated in residents' living rooms. Thirty-five villagers were arrested, and taken away by helicopter to be interrogated by U.S. troops. Some were threatened that they would be taken to Guantanomo. The prisoners were tagged like animals before they were finally released.
The filmmaker finds that the villagers have been physically and sexually abused by the troops. Noor Muhammad Lala, a village elder wearing turban and traditional Afghan baggy pants and shirt sorrowfully tells his story. "They tied my hands and put me in a container," he says. He was then forced to take off all his clothes, and spread-eagled against the wall. Marines pulled at his testicles and jabbed at his anus. The elder had a bladder problem and became incontinent in front of his captors who stood laughing at his predicament. I could not help thinking of the resemblance to my own dear, elderly Afghan (ex-)father-in-law, his long white beard, gaunt face with hollow cheeks, and gentle manner. How would I feel if this were done to him?
Wali Muhammad, Noor Muhammad's son, was also held for questioning. The marines beat him, fingered his anus, and took pictures of him naked. There were twenty marines according to Wali Muhammad, and they stood around laughing and taking pictures of the nude captives. He and the others were held for three days, he says; they become hungry and repeatedly asked for food, but were denied it. An elderly woman, whose veil was removed and who was subjected to a body search, tells of the village women being pushed around by the troops. " We'd prefer death to this humiliation," the villagers tell Baranowska.
Back in Masazai, she learns that Major Cook, of the Civil Affairs Unit, has just visited. One of the village leaders tell her that Cook tried to give him medicines, corn seed, and a radio. Cook asked him if he needed anything. He told Cook, in a message that might have been the cry of the Afghan nation:
"We don't need anything. Don't humiliate us. Don't rob our country. Don't commit crimes. We don't need anything."
Before leaving Uruzgan, Baranowska returns to Passau a final time. The villagers tell her that "due to abuse and maltreatment by the marines," almost all of the families are gone. Of a village of two hundred, only fifteen or twenty people remain. How history repeats itself, I think to myself: During the Soviet occupation, too, millions of Afghans left their homes and possessions to escape life under occupation. Afghans are a dignified people for whom honor and respect are everything. Time and time again, they have chosen exile or death to life under occupation.
The film ends with a footnote that with the initial release of "Taliban Country," the army launched an inquiry into the abuses. They confirmed the detention of thirty-five villagers on June 23, 2004. Answering questions after the screening of her work at the University of Maryland Baltimore Country (UMBC), Baranowska told students that the inquiry had found the charges against the marines to be unsubstantiated; Lt. Colonel Asad Khan had been removed from his position; no others had been prosecuted. Baranowska has called for an independent inquiry.
An audience member at the UMBC screening, who said she and her husband worked for an aid organization in Kandahar, tried to convince the predominantly student audience that the film was an unfair treatment of the U.S. military, and that a tiny minority of U.S. troops engaged in this sort of behavior. I wondered, "Do you think your aid would be needed over there, if the U.S. hadn't gone in and destroyed that country in the first instance?" I politely remarked to her that wartime atrocities by occupying troops are statistically underreported, not over reported, and that the numbers were probably much higher. The bar on war crimes was set early on in the Afghan War, with the U.S. refusal to prosecute members of the Dostum militia who massacred prisoners in Mazar-e-Sharif; and the U.S. troops who murdered Taliban by suffocation in metal boxes. I commended Baranowska for her courage and integrity in reporting the reality of the situation in Afghanistan. U.S. presence in Afghanistan violates the sovereignty of that country, and U.S. troops there, as in Iraq, are occupiers. Hence their behavior is not surprising.
Baranowska's findings cry out for a war crimes investigation.
Wednesday, June 5, 2002
And the Mullah's Voice Droned On:
The Story of an Afghan Holocaust
In 1987-1989, I visited the Afghan refugee camps of Munda Pul, Jalozai, Akora Khattak, and Pabi, near Peshawar, as well as others near Chitral. Conditions were bad in the camps, and almost every refugee to whom I spoke expressed the common sentiment of wanting to return home to their beloved Afghanistan, where everything was better. At that time, most of these refugees were at least somewhat confident that they would indeed one day return home. Today, there remain 2 – 3 million Afghans in refugee camps. What remains of the beautiful homeland to which they dreamt of returning, is unrecognizable after three months of U.S. bombing, far beyond the war-ravaged product of ten years of Russian imperialist war, which yet exhibited some signs of infrastructure. Today’s Afghanistan is reminescent of Cambodia in the horrors which have been visited upon it by both the U.S. and U.S.S.R., completely devoid of infrastructure and incapable of supporting its population. Indeed its landscape has been so disfigured by war that returning to it is a dangerous if not unlikely proposition. Both the U.S. and Russia are guilty of war crimes against Afghanistan. The country is in dire need of rebuilding. One obvious way to rebuild the country, without reducing it to the status of perpetual slavery to the World Bank and other cut throats, is for the parties responsible for its destruction to pay reparations. In an epoch purportedly governed by International Laws, Geneva Conventions, War Crimes Tribunals, and United Nations mediation, why then are reparations not in the offing?
One of my most vivid recollections of the camp is of one Friday (in the summer of 1988), when I tried to attend juma’a prayers at the little mud mosque in the camp. I was peeved because I was excluded from attending. Women didn’t go to the mosque for prayer, my hosts apologetically told me. To dispute this was to invite accusations that one was communist (recall that this was during a period of forced Soviet-style “emancipation”). Only communists advocated such outlandish things as women in the mosque. Finally the Friday prayer was over, and the men should have been on their way home. But, for some reason, the mullah’s voice droned on. I was getting impatient. And he was reciting names. Children’s names. The list was long. I counted fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen....twenty-three children were named. How nice, I thought, he must be reciting the names of all the children who finished the Qur’an, or who had won some Islamic contest, as they did at the posh mosque I attended in White Oak, Maryland.
Suddenly there came a sound of sobbing from the neighboring compound. Then further away, in the distance, a wailing became apparent. Sensing my confusion, the elder of the household, who had stayed home from the Friday prayer due to illness, came to my rescue: “The imam is reading the names of the children who have died in our camp this week,” he told me solemnly. “Zamana karab ast,”—it is a bad time—he said, echoing the words of dozens of refugees whom I met. It was a particularly difficult time for the children, he continued, growing up in the refugee camp. Beautiful Afghan children, dead from malaria, T.B., hepatitis, diarrhea, rickets, or generalized malnutrition. The refugee camp was no longer a refuge, but a mass grave for the children of the mujahideen and the mohajireen.
The children were trying to memorize their lessons for the day, as I sat trying to learn my Dari lesson. It was very hot and humid as we sat in the courtyard outside the “bedroom,” a single room mud structure which functioned variously as sleeping quarters, living room, and storage area. We sat underneath the shade created by some overhanging branches thrown over the mud house as a makeshift roof, the sweat dripping from our backs and from our brows, our backs tingling with heat rash. Large, buzzing, biting flies kept settling on the children, as they tried diligently to recite their lessons. I kept swatting at them, only to have them return a few moments later. But the children kept at their lessons with admirable persistence. A few yards away, a baby slept on a small mat on the ground in the courtyard where we were studying. Her mother worked hard kneeding dough for the afternoon meal a few feet away in the makeshift kitchen. When I looked again, the baby’s body was covered with flies. Horrified, I jumped up and shooed them away. The baby, Malalai, became to me a metaphor for Afghanistan. Sweet, naive, innocent, with no animosity for anyone, she is preyed upon by the American and Russian parasites who wish to drink her life blood, in the form of oil, natural gas, and mineral resources.
Afghans love their children. In a country full of widows and orphans, it was next to impossible (at the time of my visit, although this may have changed due to the desperate conditions arising after the U.S. bombing) to locate an Afghan child for adoption, as even those who had lost parents were immediately taken in by their extended family. Truly it is a society in which the aphorism “It takes a village to raise child,” comes to life. In 2001, when the Taliban were approached by the United Nations representatives who wanted to refurbish the Buddhist statues in Bamiyan province, they asked the U.N. reps if they might take a fraction of the money to feed hungry Afghan children. The U.N. response was a point blank "NO." No money to feed the children who cannot sleep at night because they are so hungry; whose viscera risk permanent damage from malnutrition; whose entrails are running out of them in fatal diarrhea; but plenty of money to repair statues. Just as in the U.S., the dogs and cats of the rich have more access to everything from toothpaste to surgery than do the children of the poor in most Third World countries.
In response to this categoric denial of their humanity, and anguished at the impending death of tens of thousands of Afghan children, the Taliban, angry and frustrated, decided to destroy the Buddhist statues. The mentality which cavalierly dismisses the impending death of Afghan and Iraqi children is the same mentality which cuts school lunches for impoverished children in America’s inner cities, and evicts welfare mothers for the misdemenors of their family members, while funding ventures like, in the words of Gil Scott-Heron, “Whitey on the moon.”
Recently, an expatriate Afghan sculptor was given much kudos in the U.S. press when he announced his intentions of returning to “liberated” Afghanistan to refurbish the largest of the Buddha statues destroyed by the Taliban. He melodramatically told the tale of his escape from Afghanistan as the Taliban came to power, and how he had tearfully smashed his own sculptures himself before fleeing the country, so that the Taliban might not get their hands on them. He declared that he would not restore the smaller statues, so that the nation might never forget the barbaric nature of the Taliban. Immediately, numerous pro-zionist organizations jumped to his assistance with promises of funding.
Let’s think about this: the original statues have already been destroyed by the Taliban. Much of the country is starving, due to the combined effects of severe weather, war, and apathy on part of the world community. But hundreds of thousands of dollars are going to be spent on making a copy of a Buddha statue, whose very value was in its antiquity, never mind the five million Afghan people who face starvation. Clear as mud.
Recently, the U.S. press lauded the first celebration of Nowruz (New Year) in “Free” Afghanistan. For the first time since the Taliban’s rise to power, the people could finally dance, prance, and yes—drink in the streets with complete abandon. The media seemed to overlook the minor detail that Afghanistan is a predominantly Muslim country, and Nowruz, haram under Islamic law, is a Zorastrian holiday not celebrated by most Afghans. Ramadan, on the other hand, is recognized and celebrated by the vast majority of Afghans. Indeed the importance of this holy month, central to Afghan tradition, was recognized by the U.S. government—with some of the heaviest bomb tonnage dropped on a country in modern history. Sort of like bombing New York or Washington on Christmas Day. As for the liberating celebrations of Nowruz, I’d venture that most of the folks celebrating that holiday might be Karzai’s homies, part of the democratic government that George Dubya “put in.”
It has been ten years since the Russian withdrawal from Afghanistan, and not a word about reparations for the incredible war crimes committed by the Red Army in that country. What exempts the Russians from paying reparations to a people against whom they perpetuated every possible atrocity, from the near universal distribution of landmines, to killing, jailing, and torture of the civilian population, and widespread use of chemical and biological agents?
What off U.S. violations of international law in Afghanistan: bombing and decimation of whole villages and cities; destruction of hospitals, relief centers, and food supply lines; cold-blooded murder of 4,000 Afghan civilians by U.S. estimates (with independent local media estimates placing the civilian death toll as high as 60,000); and more landmines to add to the existing Soviet ones. For that matter, the U.S. has to date presented no evidence to the World Court at the Hague, against Osama (r.a.), the putative puppeteer behind 9-11. Who, in truth, is the war criminal?
Does none of this warrant reparations? Or perhaps reparations, like holocausts, Nobel Peace prizes, and suffering, are the domain of one and only one privileged group?
In the camps, and in Afghanistan herself, the mullah is reading a longer and longer list of children’s names each Friday—dead not just from malnutrition and diarrhea, but from daisycutters, cruise missiles, and American landmines to augment with the Soviet ones.
One of my most vivid recollections of the camp is of one Friday (in the summer of 1988), when I tried to attend juma’a prayers at the little mud mosque in the camp. I was peeved because I was excluded from attending. Women didn’t go to the mosque for prayer, my hosts apologetically told me. To dispute this was to invite accusations that one was communist (recall that this was during a period of forced Soviet-style “emancipation”). Only communists advocated such outlandish things as women in the mosque. Finally the Friday prayer was over, and the men should have been on their way home. But, for some reason, the mullah’s voice droned on. I was getting impatient. And he was reciting names. Children’s names. The list was long. I counted fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen....twenty-three children were named. How nice, I thought, he must be reciting the names of all the children who finished the Qur’an, or who had won some Islamic contest, as they did at the posh mosque I attended in White Oak, Maryland.
Suddenly there came a sound of sobbing from the neighboring compound. Then further away, in the distance, a wailing became apparent. Sensing my confusion, the elder of the household, who had stayed home from the Friday prayer due to illness, came to my rescue: “The imam is reading the names of the children who have died in our camp this week,” he told me solemnly. “Zamana karab ast,”—it is a bad time—he said, echoing the words of dozens of refugees whom I met. It was a particularly difficult time for the children, he continued, growing up in the refugee camp. Beautiful Afghan children, dead from malaria, T.B., hepatitis, diarrhea, rickets, or generalized malnutrition. The refugee camp was no longer a refuge, but a mass grave for the children of the mujahideen and the mohajireen.
The children were trying to memorize their lessons for the day, as I sat trying to learn my Dari lesson. It was very hot and humid as we sat in the courtyard outside the “bedroom,” a single room mud structure which functioned variously as sleeping quarters, living room, and storage area. We sat underneath the shade created by some overhanging branches thrown over the mud house as a makeshift roof, the sweat dripping from our backs and from our brows, our backs tingling with heat rash. Large, buzzing, biting flies kept settling on the children, as they tried diligently to recite their lessons. I kept swatting at them, only to have them return a few moments later. But the children kept at their lessons with admirable persistence. A few yards away, a baby slept on a small mat on the ground in the courtyard where we were studying. Her mother worked hard kneeding dough for the afternoon meal a few feet away in the makeshift kitchen. When I looked again, the baby’s body was covered with flies. Horrified, I jumped up and shooed them away. The baby, Malalai, became to me a metaphor for Afghanistan. Sweet, naive, innocent, with no animosity for anyone, she is preyed upon by the American and Russian parasites who wish to drink her life blood, in the form of oil, natural gas, and mineral resources.
Afghans love their children. In a country full of widows and orphans, it was next to impossible (at the time of my visit, although this may have changed due to the desperate conditions arising after the U.S. bombing) to locate an Afghan child for adoption, as even those who had lost parents were immediately taken in by their extended family. Truly it is a society in which the aphorism “It takes a village to raise child,” comes to life. In 2001, when the Taliban were approached by the United Nations representatives who wanted to refurbish the Buddhist statues in Bamiyan province, they asked the U.N. reps if they might take a fraction of the money to feed hungry Afghan children. The U.N. response was a point blank "NO." No money to feed the children who cannot sleep at night because they are so hungry; whose viscera risk permanent damage from malnutrition; whose entrails are running out of them in fatal diarrhea; but plenty of money to repair statues. Just as in the U.S., the dogs and cats of the rich have more access to everything from toothpaste to surgery than do the children of the poor in most Third World countries.
In response to this categoric denial of their humanity, and anguished at the impending death of tens of thousands of Afghan children, the Taliban, angry and frustrated, decided to destroy the Buddhist statues. The mentality which cavalierly dismisses the impending death of Afghan and Iraqi children is the same mentality which cuts school lunches for impoverished children in America’s inner cities, and evicts welfare mothers for the misdemenors of their family members, while funding ventures like, in the words of Gil Scott-Heron, “Whitey on the moon.”
Recently, an expatriate Afghan sculptor was given much kudos in the U.S. press when he announced his intentions of returning to “liberated” Afghanistan to refurbish the largest of the Buddha statues destroyed by the Taliban. He melodramatically told the tale of his escape from Afghanistan as the Taliban came to power, and how he had tearfully smashed his own sculptures himself before fleeing the country, so that the Taliban might not get their hands on them. He declared that he would not restore the smaller statues, so that the nation might never forget the barbaric nature of the Taliban. Immediately, numerous pro-zionist organizations jumped to his assistance with promises of funding.
Let’s think about this: the original statues have already been destroyed by the Taliban. Much of the country is starving, due to the combined effects of severe weather, war, and apathy on part of the world community. But hundreds of thousands of dollars are going to be spent on making a copy of a Buddha statue, whose very value was in its antiquity, never mind the five million Afghan people who face starvation. Clear as mud.
Recently, the U.S. press lauded the first celebration of Nowruz (New Year) in “Free” Afghanistan. For the first time since the Taliban’s rise to power, the people could finally dance, prance, and yes—drink in the streets with complete abandon. The media seemed to overlook the minor detail that Afghanistan is a predominantly Muslim country, and Nowruz, haram under Islamic law, is a Zorastrian holiday not celebrated by most Afghans. Ramadan, on the other hand, is recognized and celebrated by the vast majority of Afghans. Indeed the importance of this holy month, central to Afghan tradition, was recognized by the U.S. government—with some of the heaviest bomb tonnage dropped on a country in modern history. Sort of like bombing New York or Washington on Christmas Day. As for the liberating celebrations of Nowruz, I’d venture that most of the folks celebrating that holiday might be Karzai’s homies, part of the democratic government that George Dubya “put in.”
It has been ten years since the Russian withdrawal from Afghanistan, and not a word about reparations for the incredible war crimes committed by the Red Army in that country. What exempts the Russians from paying reparations to a people against whom they perpetuated every possible atrocity, from the near universal distribution of landmines, to killing, jailing, and torture of the civilian population, and widespread use of chemical and biological agents?
What off U.S. violations of international law in Afghanistan: bombing and decimation of whole villages and cities; destruction of hospitals, relief centers, and food supply lines; cold-blooded murder of 4,000 Afghan civilians by U.S. estimates (with independent local media estimates placing the civilian death toll as high as 60,000); and more landmines to add to the existing Soviet ones. For that matter, the U.S. has to date presented no evidence to the World Court at the Hague, against Osama (r.a.), the putative puppeteer behind 9-11. Who, in truth, is the war criminal?
Does none of this warrant reparations? Or perhaps reparations, like holocausts, Nobel Peace prizes, and suffering, are the domain of one and only one privileged group?
In the camps, and in Afghanistan herself, the mullah is reading a longer and longer list of children’s names each Friday—dead not just from malnutrition and diarrhea, but from daisycutters, cruise missiles, and American landmines to augment with the Soviet ones.
Thursday, December 9, 1999
Ramadan at Camp Munda
Ramadan greetings, and may the strength of this holy month bring us close to the Creator, and close to those who struggle against oppression the world over. In particular, this Ramadan, please join me in praying for the people of Iraq, against whom the U.S. government has instigated a criminal policy of submit or starve. The courage of the people of Iraq brings to mind my experiences in Afghanistan and in the Afghan refugee camps on the Pakistan border....
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I remember one Ramadan spent in the Afghan refugee camp of Munda Pul. Afghan mujahideen moved in and out of the camps, where their families lived, with regularity, their movements dictated by the timing and direction of the various guerrilla offensives. It was the night before Ramadan, and I, filled with an immense energy and excitement, which I could only attribute to the power of the Holy Month, could scarcely sleep as I lay on my matt outside the single-room mud dwelling which my hosts called home. I awoke to the sounds of people talking in muted tones, and others crouching a distance away, washing arms, legs, feet, etc. with water from ancient-looking ceramic urns, in preparation for prayer. To my surprise, it was still dark; in fact, it seemed, it was still the dead of night, and not the pre-dawn hour when I would expect to awake in my suburban Maryland house back in the States, to rapidly microwave and consume food cooked and refrigerated for a week (with my busy student schedule). What are they doing up this early, I wondered. As I washed up, I noticed the children already moving about. One little boy chased a chicken around the compound. The women waited to pull water from the well in aluminum buckets just outside the single mud wall of the compound. Soon tea was boiling merrily in a heavy black cauldron over an open (cow pie) fire. As we sat cross-legged on a sheet which had been spread across the floor, and ate delicious, fresh, Afghan bread with a bit of jam which my muj hosts had somehow managed to acquire in my honor (peanut butter, jam, and other spreads are extremely expensive and difficult to obtain in the refugee camps) and cups of green tea, I reflected on how little the people had in terms of material wealth, and yet how much at peace they seemed with themselves, particularly surrounded by constant reminders of the war as they were.
A beautiful young Afghan woman sat a short distance away from me, breast-feeding her wide-eyed infant. Even the infant seemed aware that this was a special morning, the first morning of the most powerful month, in which forces of good are at their strongest, and the forces of evil can and must be challenged. Through the doorway of the single enclosed room, a gangly boy of six or seven, named Bilal, sat reading his Qur’an, in preparation for his morning lesson; his mother, Qanita, sweetly kept offering me more bread and jam. We finished our suhoor with a simple du’ah, common to most of the poor Dari-speaking Afghan mujahideen and their families, in whose homes I was a visitor—a prayer which seemed to reflect their attitude toward the incredible sacrifices they had made in leaving their homes and their beloved land:
Alhamdulillah-e-lazii
ataman-nah
wa sakanah
wa ja ulna minul muslimeen
(We give thanks, o Allah, for giving us food, for giving us shelter, and for placing us on the Path of Islam.)
A short while later, the relative silence of the camp was broken by the powerful and awe-inspiring azaan. Quickly and quietly, the mujahideen filed out of the compound in the direction of the mosque. As if heading to battle.
----
I remember one Ramadan spent in the Afghan refugee camp of Munda Pul. Afghan mujahideen moved in and out of the camps, where their families lived, with regularity, their movements dictated by the timing and direction of the various guerrilla offensives. It was the night before Ramadan, and I, filled with an immense energy and excitement, which I could only attribute to the power of the Holy Month, could scarcely sleep as I lay on my matt outside the single-room mud dwelling which my hosts called home. I awoke to the sounds of people talking in muted tones, and others crouching a distance away, washing arms, legs, feet, etc. with water from ancient-looking ceramic urns, in preparation for prayer. To my surprise, it was still dark; in fact, it seemed, it was still the dead of night, and not the pre-dawn hour when I would expect to awake in my suburban Maryland house back in the States, to rapidly microwave and consume food cooked and refrigerated for a week (with my busy student schedule). What are they doing up this early, I wondered. As I washed up, I noticed the children already moving about. One little boy chased a chicken around the compound. The women waited to pull water from the well in aluminum buckets just outside the single mud wall of the compound. Soon tea was boiling merrily in a heavy black cauldron over an open (cow pie) fire. As we sat cross-legged on a sheet which had been spread across the floor, and ate delicious, fresh, Afghan bread with a bit of jam which my muj hosts had somehow managed to acquire in my honor (peanut butter, jam, and other spreads are extremely expensive and difficult to obtain in the refugee camps) and cups of green tea, I reflected on how little the people had in terms of material wealth, and yet how much at peace they seemed with themselves, particularly surrounded by constant reminders of the war as they were.
A beautiful young Afghan woman sat a short distance away from me, breast-feeding her wide-eyed infant. Even the infant seemed aware that this was a special morning, the first morning of the most powerful month, in which forces of good are at their strongest, and the forces of evil can and must be challenged. Through the doorway of the single enclosed room, a gangly boy of six or seven, named Bilal, sat reading his Qur’an, in preparation for his morning lesson; his mother, Qanita, sweetly kept offering me more bread and jam. We finished our suhoor with a simple du’ah, common to most of the poor Dari-speaking Afghan mujahideen and their families, in whose homes I was a visitor—a prayer which seemed to reflect their attitude toward the incredible sacrifices they had made in leaving their homes and their beloved land:
Alhamdulillah-e-lazii
ataman-nah
wa sakanah
wa ja ulna minul muslimeen
(We give thanks, o Allah, for giving us food, for giving us shelter, and for placing us on the Path of Islam.)
A short while later, the relative silence of the camp was broken by the powerful and awe-inspiring azaan. Quickly and quietly, the mujahideen filed out of the compound in the direction of the mosque. As if heading to battle.
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