[Peace-discuss] Lies & illusions in Obama's war

[C. G. Estabrook]

["...everything that happens in Afghanistan is based on (1) a lie, (2) an 
illusion, or (3) both."  It should be clear that the Obama administration is not 
the victim of these lies and illusions but their source.  They're quite clear on 
what the US policy is (and has been), and they're in a good position to know the 
facts on the ground... --CGE]


	Published on Thursday, July 16, 2009 by TomDispatch.com
	Everything That Happens in Afghanistan Is Based on Lies or Illusions
	A Film That Captures Some Edgy, Fearful Truths
	by Ann Jones

KABUL, Afghanistan, July 2009 -- I've come back to the Afghan capital again, 
after an absence of two years, to find it ruined in a new way. Not by bombs this 
time, but by security.

The heart of the city is now hidden behind piles of Hescos -- giant, grey 
sandbags produced somewhere in Great Britain. They're stacked against the walls 
of government buildings, U.N. agencies, embassies, NGO offices, and army camps 
(of which there are a lot) -- and they only seem to grow and multiply. A friend 
called just the other day from a U.N. building, distressed that the view from 
her office window was vanishing behind yet another row of Hescos. Urban life as 
Kabulis knew it in this once graceful city has been lost to the security needs 
of strangers.

The creation of Hescostan in the middle of Kabul is both an effect of, and a 
cause of, war: an effect because it seems to arise in response to devious enemy 
tactics that are still relatively new to Afghanistan, such as the use of 
roadside bombs (IEDs) and suicide bombers (though there has actually been no 
attack in Kabul for six months now); a cause because it is so clearly a 
projection, an externalization of the fears of men out of their depth. It is a 
paradox of such "force protection" that the more you have, the more you feel you 
need. What's called security generates fear. Now comes a documentary that 
projects that fear onto the screen.

It is 2006, late in the year. A reporter stands on a rocky hillside near the 
city of Kandahar in southern Afghanistan and points a wobbly camera at dark-clad 
gunmen ranged at a distance before him. They've wrapped the tails of their 
turbans to mask their faces. They carry their Kalashnikovs at the ready. The 
reporter shouts a question: "Does the Taliban receive support from Pakistan?"

As the camera jumps about to find the Talib who is speaking, a translator voices 
his answer: "Yes, Pakistan stands with us. On the other side of the border, we 
have our offices there. Some people in Pakistan is supporting us and the 
government of Pakistan does not say anything to us. They provide us with 
everything."

The reporter -- Christian Parenti of the Nation magazine -- has his story. For 
years, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has charged Pakistan with backing the 
Taliban, while Pakistan's then-President Musharraf denied it, and officials of 
the Bush administration looked the other way. Now, Parenti has the word of armed 
Taliban. This is the kind of story a foreign correspondent can't get without a 
fixer; that is, a local guy who knows the language, the local politics, the 
protocols of custom -- and how to arrange a meeting like this in the middle of 
nowhere with men who might kill you.

A Talib warns of an approaching reconnaissance plane. "We should go," the scared 
reporter says. The camera spins wildly across a vast empty expanse of rock and 
pale sky. "We should go." Moments later, safely back in a car speeding away, 
Parenti turns the camera on his own grinning face: "This is the most relieved 
American reporter in Afghanistan," he says, and describes the man sitting beside 
him -- Ajmal Nashqbandi, a 24-year-old Pashtun from Kabul -- as "the best fixer 
in Afghanistan." But we already know what Parenti doesn't (because filmmaker Ian 
Olds has told us up front before the titles even hit the screen): soon the fixer 
will be dead, murdered by the Taliban. We will be witnesses.

If this sounds harrowing, it is. Fixer is the best documentary I've seen on 
Afghanistan -- so good it's hard to imagine a better one. It's all jagged edges, 
blurs, and disconnects, catching as it does both the forbidding emptiness of the 
land and the edginess of war-weary Afghans. One long segment, apparently showing 
the inside of Parenti's shawl as he conceals a camera from potentially hostile 
villagers, seems the visual correlative of the feeling that unsettles all 
outsiders from time to time in this country: the sense of being completely in 
the dark. In 2006-2007, as the Taliban surged back with kidnappings, murders, 
bombs, and jihadi suicide attacks, this is how Afghanistan felt. It's the 
feeling that still drives Hesco sales in the capital.

Full disclosure: both Parenti and I have written about Afghanistan for the 
Nation for several years. I write mostly about women, Parenti mostly about the 
war, and I admire his work. We met for the first time only a couple of months 
ago, after both of us were invited to take part in a conference on Afghanistan. 
He told me about Fixer, then playing at the Tribeca Film Festival. I went to see 
it, and when it ended I could hardly get out of my seat. Watching it again on 
DVD in Kabul made me weep.

By refusing to exploit Ajmal's murder for the sake of suspense -- by revealing 
it at the start -- Olds has chosen to make a film full of the kind of fear that 
seems to inhabit international centers of power in Afghanistan today. The film's 
nervous visual style is strikingly different from the clean-cut look of 
Occupation: Dreamland, his earlier documentary about American soldiers in Iraq. 
Critics will surely have much more to say about Fixer's importance as a film. It 
has already won a raft of prizes, including firsts at Documenta Madrid and the 
Pesaro (Italy) Film Festival, and Olds took home a Tribeca award this year as 
the best new documentary filmmaker.

How Lies Begat Illusions Begat Lies

What I want to focus on, though, is the way the film resonates with conditions 
in Afghanistan today. Olds has the good sense to insert a quick history lesson 
in this film, on the grounds that you can't understand the Taliban without 
knowing about America's covert operations in the region in the 1980s. Back then, 
President Ronald Reagan's administration, mainly through the CIA, used the 
Pakistani Intelligence services to fund, arm, and train Afghan and foreign 
Islamist jihadis to defeat the Soviet army in Afghanistan. Pakistan subsequently 
used "channels built with U.S. money" to install in Afghanistan a friendly 
government -- the Taliban.

Later, after the George W. Bush administration invaded the country and the U.S. 
ousted the Taliban, it installed Hamid Karzai as president and returned many of 
the old Islamist jihadis to power in his government. Thus, this peculiar, 
well-established fact underlies the current war in Afghanistan: the United 
States sponsored both sides.

Some analysts say the U.S. "invented" all the "enemies" involved; others, that 
the U.S. (and Saudi Arabia) merely paid the bills, while Pakistan directed the 
action to its own advantage. Either way, this history -- much of it still secret 
or repeatedly re-spun -- leaves all parties to the current conflict in an 
intellectual sweat. They must plan for the future on the basis of a past they 
can't acknowledge. With national elections set for August 20th, the United 
States is planning for an Afghan future that still includes the jihadi buddies 
its officials know they should long ago have left behind.

Only the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission has called, year after 
year, for a moral accounting. Its surveys of Afghan citizens consistently find 
that the people want lasting peace, and to attain it, they would prefer some 
sort of truth and reconciliation procedure, like the one that took place in 
South Africa, to cleanse the country and set it on an honest intellectual and 
moral footing.

For obvious reasons, the United States wants no part of the truth that would 
emerge from such a process. Just this week, the Obama administration first 
claimed it had no grounds to investigate General Abdul Rashid Dostum's infamous 
2001 massacre of Taliban prisoners, even though Dostum seems to have been on the 
CIA payroll at the time, and his troops were backed by U.S. military operatives. 
Later, the president reversed course, ordering national security officials to 
"look into" the matter. In the end, President Obama may prefer to "move on." As 
does Dostum, who recently rejoined the Karzai administration.

I've elaborated here on Olds's quick history lesson to more fully explain why 
you may be finding it hard these days to understand how we got into what's 
already being called "Obama's War" -- and how to get out. Think of it this way: 
everything that happens in Afghanistan is based on (1) a lie, (2) an illusion, 
or (3) both. Then throw in mass illusion as well, carefully constructed so that 
each person tells others only what they want to hear.

Which brings us back to Fixer, a film steeped in stories of duplicity and 
self-delusion that are the personal and political currency of Afghanistan today. 
In one telling incident, Parenti pushes to observe the famously corrupt Afghan 
judiciary in action. He's rewarded with a front row seat at a murder trial, only 
to learn that it has been staged for his edification.

In fact, a court official admits, the production Parenti witnessed didn't depict 
the way the court really works, but the way "it should work" according to 
international standards. The judiciary knows those international standards very 
well, since NGOs and private contractors supported by the U.S. Agency for 
International Development and other aid agencies have offered them training, and 
what's called "capacity building," for years. The trainers report success, which 
of course is what the aid agencies want to hear; and the trainees may be 
encouraged (as in this case) to perform for the public. If Parenti had played 
the part assigned to him in this exercise in mass illusion, he'd have reported a 
glowing story about the success of Afghanistan's new rule of law. (He didn't.)

Afghans have an expression -- "pesh pa been" -- referring to people who move 
relentlessly ahead by watching their own feet. Parenti, at least, could see when 
he was being tripped up. But the incident leaves you wondering: if officials of 
the Karzai government go this far for a single American reporter, what 
extravagant performances have they mounted all along for junketing Senators and 
cabinet members, and the likes of Donald Rumsfeld and Laura Bush, not to mention 
the recent rounds of Obama era visitors?

Even Ajmal the fixer repeatedly misjudges situations and his own people; and in 
the end, he proves to have been more of an innocent than Parenti. In an eerie 
moment captured on screen, Parenti predicts that one day the Taliban will kidnap 
a Western journalist. No way, says Ajmal, assuming that he and his clients are 
protected by Pashtunwali, his (and the Taliban's) tribal code of honor. Later, 
working for the Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo, Ajmal fixes a fatal 
appointment with Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah. Taken hostage, Ajmal 
reassures his family in a Taliban video: "These are Muslims. We are in the hands 
of Islam."

Behind the Hescos Where History Is Being Re-Spun

Illusion and duplicity entrap the fixer, too, and spin his personal story into a 
political event. The Italians, who notoriously negotiate with hostage takers, 
persuade Karzai to exchange five Taliban prisoners for Mastrogiacomo and Ajmal. 
In the excitement of being freed, however, Mastrogiacomo fails to keep track of 
his fixer. The Taliban see an opportunity to recapture Ajmal and demand the 
release of two more prisoners. Karzai and his foreign minister, having freed the 
foreigner, then scramble to the moral high ground, refusing to negotiate with 
terrorists. Orders come down from Pakistan to kill Ajmal -- on April 8, 2007 -- 
to make Karzai look bad in the eyes of his own people. Mullah Dadullah sends a 
video of the beheading.

Ajmal's stricken father asks, "What kind of government doesn't protect its own 
citizens?" The answer is: a government that's bought, paid for, and answerable 
to outsiders, a government that has neither the need nor the inclination to care 
for its citizens. As Karzai explains the matter, "The Italians built us a road."

That's the government the international community is now spending more than $500 
million to reelect. (Most of that money comes from the U.S.) International 
election officials, of course, are neutral -- so neutral that they look the 
other way as Karzai makes deals with rival warlords to ensure his reelection. 
One by one they come over to his side, and word leaks out about which ministries 
they've been promised.

International agencies responsible for mounting the election have already 
abandoned the goal of a "free and fair" vote. They're aiming for "credible," 
which is to say, an election that looks pretty good, even if it's not. In the 
context of accumulated illusions, this goal is called "realistic," and perhaps 
it is. As the fixer's grieving father says, "Our government is a puppet of 
foreigners. That is why we expect nothing from it."

As I write, 4,000 newly arrived U.S. Marines are trudging through the blistering 
heat of Helmand Province to push back the Taliban so local Pashtuns can turn out 
to vote next month for Karzai, their fellow Pashtun. What's wrong with this new 
Obama strategy? For one thing, in some areas the local Pashtun population has 
instead turned out to fight against the foreign invaders, side by side with the 
Taliban (who, it should be remembered, are mostly local Pashtuns). They're as 
fed up as anybody with the puppet Karzai. Like millions of other Afghans, they 
say Karzai has done nothing for the people. But saddled with history, Karzai 
remains the horse the U.S. rode in on.

Let me make it clear that Olds and Parenti don't draw these comparisons to 
current affairs in Afghanistan. Fixer is simply and appropriately subtitled The 
Taking of Ajmal Nashqbandi. It's a tribute to a trusted colleague. But watch the 
film yourself and you'll be immersed in duplicity: officials manipulate the 
truth, citizens fear to tell it, Americans can't bear to look it in the face. 
Watch the film and maybe you'll understand how hard it has become, here behind 
the Hescos where history is being re-spun, to size anything up, pin anything 
down, recognize an enemy, or help a friend.

[Note: Fixer will first be shown on HBO on Monday night, August 17th. It will be 
re-aired on August 20th, 23rd, 25th, 29th, and 31st. Check your local listings 
for the exact times.]

© 2009 Ann Jones
Ann Jones wrote at length about the failure of American aid in Kabul in Winter 
(Metropolitan Books), a book about American meddling in Afghanistan as well as 
her experience as a humanitarian aid worker there from 2002 to 2006. For more 
information, visit her website. For a concise report on many of the defects in 
international aid mentioned here, check out Real Aid (pdf file), a report issued 
in 2005 by the South African NGO Action Aid.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/07/16-5