AfghanistanicaAfghanistanicaAn exploration of Afghanistan-related issues. Articles
Tintin in Afghanistan
2007-09-22 19:33:00 September 22, 2007. If you do not know who Tintin is then you are probably an American. What you need to know is that over 200 million Tintin books have been sold. And for good reason. I don’t have the time to go into it. You should already know who Tintin is. Unfortunately, the Belgian author Georges Remi died in the early 1980s and The Adventures of Tintin were no more. But the original graphic novels inspired countless parodies and pastiches. One of the better known pastiches (a true to the original imitation) was La Menace Des Steppes by Sakharine. In this adventure, Tintin and Captain Haddock travel to Afghanistan and give the Soviets a well-deserved thrashing. It is of course quite fitting since the first Tintin book, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets (1929), finds Tintin giving the Bolsheviks a beat down. Many criticized the book for portraying the Soviet Union as a violent paranoid authoritarian st...
Who’s Watching Afghanistan?
2007-09-21 02:21:00 September 20, 2007. I know Canadians regularly watch news items that focus on the Canadian effort in southern Afghanistan . And the Brits still have time for Afghanistan even with a British presence in Iraq. I can’t speak to the amount of attention that Afghanistan gets on the other side of the English Channel, but I do know what I see in America. It does not amount to much. So who is really interested? Aside from Americans of Afghan heritage and the occasional weirdo who studies Afghanistan, it seems that the family of troops deployed to Afghanistan are also concerned. As the girl said: “It makes me mad because there are people in Afghanistan and no one ever talks about them.” So that’s indicative of the amount of attention lavished on Afghanistan by the media; a news station in OKC interviewing a confused 18-year old who wonders why no one in the media seems concerned about the war her husband is deployed to. More About: Watching
Afghan Villagers Love Men With Guns and Karzai Needs a Few Good Sycophants
2007-09-19 03:02:00 September 19, 2007. So Al-Jazeera embeds a reporter with the 50 Talibs who roam around Kapisa (yup, Kapisa), buy guns from the National Police, and feel the love from the locals. The results: So the locals warmly greet 50 armed men? To be honest, if 50 well-armed soldiers walked up to my house I would greet them warmly as well, whatever their affiliation. NATO troops now understand this very well. I have heard numerous soldiers remark about the smiling villagers who are probably cooperating with the Taliban. And then there are the times where villagers “warmly greet” the Taliban and then gladly tell Captain America all about where the Talibs are hiding. These village folks have both the hospitality and deception down to a fine art. It’s a survival tactic that has surely served them well for the last few hundred years or so. Pic: “Dear villagers of Kapisa! PsyOps loves you!” But back to the Taliban’s presence in Kapisa. The Taliban claims that i... More About: Love , Guns , Good , Villa , Ager
Afghan Villagers Love Men With Guns
2007-09-19 03:02:00 Click here to read article in new location. More About: Love , Guns
Joy, Peace and Happiness in Northern Afghanistan
2007-09-18 02:48:00 September 18, 2007. It’s a good thing that all the conflict in southern Afghanistan is balanced by the idyllic harmony in northern Afghanistan. For an example of how nice northern Afghanistan is, let’s look at Takhar Province , which borders Tajikistan. Pic by Tearfund: Taloqan is the capital of Takhar. The Institute for War and Peace Reporting just published an article on the “peace” in a recent article subtitled “For residents of the northern province of Takhar, there are worse things than the Taliban.” Apparently, the things that are worse than the Taliban are their local armed commanders and their elected representative. Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi reports: Habib Rassoul, a resident of Takhar, cannot talk about his wife without tears of grief and rage. For the past three months, he has had no word of her. Commander Piram Qul kidnapped my wife while I was away in Kabul helping my sick brother,” he said. “I have no idea what has happened to her. I... More About: Happiness , Northern , Hern
Afghanistan’s Online Ethnic War
2007-09-17 00:48:00 September 17, 2007. Online ethnic warfare reached new heights early last year when South Korean online gamers carried out an online massacre of Chinese farmers (crazy but true). And then a few weeks ago internet ethnic clashes reached an absurd new level when Chinese kung-fu monks threatened to sue an internet troll (possibly Japanese) who announced that a Japanese ninja showed up at a Shaolin temple and thrashed the Chinese martial arts monks in unarmed combat. Reuters reports: “The so-called defeat is purely fabricated, and we demand the Internet user to apologise to the whole nation for the wrongs he or she did,” the Beijing News said, citing a notice announced by a lawyer for the Shaolin monks. “It is not only extremely irresponsible behaviour with respect to the Shaolin temple and its monks, but also to the whole martial art and Chinese nation,” it quoted the monks as saying. So how about Afghanistan ? How are online relations between the angry kids? I&r... More About: Ethnic
Totally out of context quote #17
2007-09-16 02:32:00 September 16, 2007. Counterinsurgency is a strange game. I’ve had chai, nan (flat bread,) and cheese with Taliban members; everyone acting like we actually are civil to each other. I’ve had chai with minor officials who were trying to talk me out of sending a guy who had senior Taliban leaders in his house within an hour of our raid to detention so he could be questioned. [….] I’ve sat in Shuras as the village elders pled their case, insisting that they hadn’t seen any Taliban in months, only to have a citizen on the outer reaches of the circle stand up and throw the “bullshit flag,” recounting a recent event. That changed the song… it became, “What are we to do? They will kill us if we tell you anything about them.” Context : An American police mentor, who is alone with an Afghan National Police team in Eastern Afghanistan, writes in his blog about what you do when you are the only American for miles around in Taliban cou... More About: Quote , Ally
Random Photo Commentary #1
2007-09-15 02:42:00 September 15, 2007. New Feature! Minimum effort! Probably irrelevant! Since I am still a little sick I will restart with a new feature where I find some obscure or interesting photo and provide some hopefully accurate commentary for it. First up, from Afgan.ru, is this photo: Who is this brave mujahid? His name is Vasily Vasilevich and he’s not a jihadi, he’s a Soviet officer incognito. Photo circa 1980-something. Vasily is apparently still alive and well (in Russia of course). More About: Commentary , Random
Blog Break for Flu
2007-09-10 03:18:00 September whatever day it is, 2007. I’m deathly sick with the flu (bird flu? west nile? ebola? SARS? black plague?). No posts until I make some sort of recovery. Maybe I’ll be back blogging by Wednesday Saturday if I don’t die of over-exaggeration by then. More About: Break , Blog , Brea
Malalai Joya and Enemies of Happiness
2007-09-07 02:20:00 September 7, 2007. The American broadcast premier of Enemies of Happiness , a documentary that follows Mala lai Joya’s successful parliamentary electoral bid, will be this coming Tuesday (September 11) at 9pm on PBS. Coincidentally, PBS is the only TV station that I receive (I have the rabbit ears antenna). So I will definitely be watching this film. As you can see from the website that is promoting this film, Enemies of Happiness has received many rave reviews. I am, of course, expecting a very sympathetic portrayal from the film makers. I have been critical of some of Joya’s tactics and rhetoric in the past, but I will try to be as open minded as possible. A review of the film will be forthcoming next week.
“Balls of Blasphemy,” And Other Assorted Hyperbole
2007-09-06 05:40:00 September 6, 2007. About a month ago, the bloggers over at postpolitical embedded a rather entertaining video that shows soccer balls being dropped from a Blackhawk helicopter. And then the Los Angeles Daily News ran a story about some anti-war hippie who was rounding up soccer balls in California and sending them to Afghan kids via the above delivery method. And all seemed well, insofar as soccer balls were falling from the sky into the hands of Afghan kids. One serviceman even remarked: Wouldn’t it be wonderful if in 15 years, Afghanistan wins the World Cup and the star player says, “I owe it all to a soccer ball that fell from a Black Hawk?” Pic: “Yay! Free footballs!” And then something bad happened. According to the BBC, about 100 people demonstrated in Khost out of anger that the Saudi flag was on some of the footballs. The Saudi flag has the Shuhada (declaration of faith) written on it. So some people have made the case that kicking a ball with... More About: Balls , Blasphemy , Hyper
Totally out of context quote #16
2007-09-05 03:38:00 September 5, 2007. “I have paid the price. Even George Bush has a record. He was arrested, same shit as me. There’s no difference between him and me.” Context : Izzatullah Wasifi, the top Afghan anti-corruption official, commits the mistake of making a very strict quantitative comparison between his criminal conviction and President Bush’s conviction. Unfortunately for Wasifi, a qualitative comparison reveals that his conviction was for attempting to sell $2 million worth of heroin in Las Vegas while Bush’s was for drunk driving. This is actually old news (5 months old). But Declan Walsh digs it up again since it’s so fun (or sad, or shameful, etc..). But selling on the streets of America? Wasifi sure took the concept of vertical integration seriously back in the ’80s. Pic: Director General Wasifi says “‘Sup? You chase the dragon? This ain’t no Nixon here and I don’t tap no bags. This schmack is AIP, straight up. Fire... More About: Quote , Ally
Writing about Afghanistan before it was cool to write about Afghanistan
2007-09-04 04:39:00 September 4, 2007. A couple of my Afghan friends who are here at my university learning English (at a high level) and taking courses asked me to recommend articles. Of course, I underestimated them and started to find them some articles from the New York Times, The Economist, etc… The said, very politely, that they had already read articles like these and they wanted to “read what I read.” So of course I played the ethnic card and downloaded this article from our library system for them: Canfield, Robert L. (2004). New Trends among Hazaras: From “The Amity of Wolves” to “The Practice of Brotherhood.” Iranian Studies, Volume 37, Number 2: pages 241-262. They were quite surprised: “Someone who is not Hazara is writing about Hazaras? Who is he? Has he written anything else?” Above all, they seemed quite pleased about the whole thing. My one friend had an ear-to-ear grin. I had to assure them that, no, Robert Canfield did not just s... More About: Writing , Afghanistan , Cool , Write , Fore
Whatever happened to that photographer blogger in Nuristan?
2007-09-03 03:29:00 September 3, 2007. I while back I found an excellent blog by a photographer who was embedded with American troops in Nuristan. The blog, by photographer John D McHugh, gave some insight into a place few people have even heard of. And his images showed a side of the war, geographically speaking, that has been little seen, such as in this photo below. His early blog entries were about the cold and the challenges of warfare and humanitarian work in a wooded mountain environment. And they were quite well-written. But in mid-May his blog entries suddenly stopped. I was quite disappointed. What was his excuse? Does he think he has the right to deprive us of information on Nuristan? Could he not find an internet connection at an American Forward Operating Base? Did he get lazy? Did he not care anymore? What was his excuse? Well, he updated his blog this weekend and provided an excuse and an apology. Pic: That exit wound on McHugh’s side is his “excuse.” According to McH... More About: Blogger , Photographer , Graph , Pene
Afghanistan and the CNN YouTube Presidential Debate: What You Can Do
2007-09-01 22:41:00 September 1, 2007. On November 28 the Republican candidates for president will meet in Florida for the CNN-YouTube debate. The questions they will be asked will come from YouTube, where people may submit their own 30 second long questions. I watched the Democratic CNN-YouTube Debate , recapped here, and Afghanistan was not featured as part of any of the questions. Pic: The Democratic CNN YouTube debate. But can CNN be blamed? I have looked through the 1400 entries for the upcoming Republican debate so far and only two of them are about Afghanistan (both of them really bad in their own way). If CNN is to choose a question about Afghanistan they will need a decent one to be submitted on YouTube. I talked to somebody with a considerable amount of professional media savvy who asked for my help in getting some questions on Afghanistan submitted to YouTube. That’s where “you” come in to the picture. If you are concerned about how things are going in Afghanistan, you ca... More About: Youtube , Presidential , Ghan
Civilian Casualties, Warlords, Professors and Tricky Dissimulating Jews
2007-08-31 05:22:00 August 31, 2007. “Dear RAWA: Yes, we HAVE KNOWN FOR A LONG TIME - and do not need Human Rights Watch to tell us - that terrible criminals are in the puppet Karzai regime. You at RAWA have, for years, been saying this! You have published accurate detailed evidence. I find it very revealing that only when mainstream organizations “report” - like Human Rights Watch which is completely funded by the capitalist financial speculator, George Soros - does the world begin to notice, no? When RAWA spoke about the criminals in government or when Marc Herold reported on civilian casualties, very few mainstream persons listened. In fact, Human Rights Watch launched into unsupported, personalized criticisms of my research and for now close to four years ignored the war criminals in the Karzai regime.” Context to the above passage: In his letter to RAWA, a (Swiss?) associate professor of economics and women’s studies at the University of New Hampshire, Marc Herold, e... More About: Jews , Tricky , Casual , Casualties , Ricky
Afghan Scholarship Rugs
2007-08-29 22:07:00 August 29, 2007. Safrang is posting on his blog again and promises to continue doing so. Today he posted about a unique scholarship program. Basically, you buy a rug from Afghanistan and the funds go into an academic scholarship fund that will enable students from Afghanistan to study at a small liberal arts college in Pennsylvania. At the other end, the funds will be helping economic development in Afghanistan. Check out the scholarship program here and feel free to link to this scholarship fund. Pic: One of many rugs available for purchase. And yes, this shall be the first of many instances where I just steal Safrang’s blog postings. More About: Scholarship , Rugs , Ghan , Scholar
Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan: Mongol Style
2007-08-29 02:51:00 August 29, 2007. In 1221, the people of Herat and Balkh rebelled against their new Mongo l rulers. In the process the Mongol governor was killed. The Mongol response to the 1221 uprisings was to massacre the entire populations of both cities. Thomas J. Barfield, an anthropologist and a legitimate expert on Afghanistan (as opposed to those illegitimate ones), briefly discussed historical rebellions in Afghanistan in an article titled “Problems in establishing legitimacy in Afghanistan” (Iranian Studies, Volume 37, Number 2, June 2004). Barfield notes that: “While conquered cities often rebelled after a conquest, this was less a challenge to the legitimacy of its government than a test of its staying power. Populations were rarely punished for such acts beyond the execution of the ringleaders and confiscation of property.” Barfield goes on to say that the Mongols clearly did not understand the “ritual nature of such challenges.” Yes, clearly not. Pic: The newer, kinder... More About: Style , Ghan , Erin
Totally out of context quote #15
2007-08-28 05:26:00 August 28, 2007. “Recent memoirs written by women from Afghanistan have also been critiqued for succumbing to the “neo-orientalist” paradigm of presenting yet another example of suffering, eastern women beaten down by their barbaric men and suffering at the hands of a medieval culture. To these critics, Hosseini’s heroines, Mariam and Laila, are not women emerging from a chasm of hopelessness but rather an indictment of a whole society that will be discarded and denigrated by the Western reader as inherently misogynistic. In Gayatri Spivak’s now oft-quoted words, Hosseini’s tale (especially in light of the Allied invasion of Afghanistan) can quite literally be construed as yet another instance of “white men saving brown women from brown men.” Yet allowing for such critiques leads us to an even more untenable thesis. Should the grim reality of abuse be abridged and disguised simply because it promotes negative stereotypes? Is the suffering of Afghan women not wort... More About: Context , Quote , Ally
Whoops! They Caught A Chechen.
2007-08-27 03:43:00 August 27, 2007. Aaaargh! I spent so much time trying to debunk the idea about Chechens being in Afghanistan and one is caught in Paktia. How would I know that they would catch a Chechen literally one day after I wrote about the “Chechen Myth?” According to the blog writings of “John,” an officer at FOB Gardez in Paktia, this happened: “On a completely different topic, Afghan police at a checkpoint near here captured a Chechen fighter fleeing from an operation in the K-G pass — dressed as a woman. We were at the governor’s compound yesterday when the police rolled in with him, still wearing a burqa, and proceeded to interrogate him in front of a tribal shura the governor had been mediating. Fun times for everyone. Except the Chechen. I’m currently trying to get authorization to release the photo I took of him publicly — hopefully should get it by this evening.” Painting by Keith Rocco: Something heroic happening in Paktia,... More About: Caught , Chen
Imaginary Chechens Attack!
2007-08-25 00:36:00 August 24, 2007. Way back in the day (2001-2o02), I saw several reports in the media about the hoards of Chechens that were battling US-NATO and their local allies in Afghanistan. I thought “WTF? Why have they left a perfectly good fight on home soil back in Chechnya?” Of course it turned out to be totally false, yet this myth persists to this day. Pic: “We ain’t in Afghanistan. We in Moscow” Who was saying this about the Chechens? Usually it was journalists, American officers or other US government spokespersons. It usually went something like this: “Yeah, we’re fighting the hardcore al Qaeda troops right now. You know, Arabs, Uzbeks, Malaysians, um….Uyghurs……and&hel lip;uh …..the reanimated zombie corpses of Confederate soldiers and Chechens.” OK, maybe they did not actually say Malaysians but you get the point. Who gave these people the idea that there were Chechens to be fought in Afghanistan? Well, to s... More About: Chen , Attack , Atta
Liveleak Afghanistan Video Channel
2007-08-22 23:31:00 August 22, 2007. Liveleak is quite similar to Youtube but it seems to be more popular with the troops. Also, it has an Afghanistan specific channel. You can see serious stuff like this soldier-produced report on a district meeting in Kapisa or reason #8792 why not to fly Ariana or this profanity laced mock snowball execution of American soldiers or this Jihadi video of an IED attack on an Afghan police vehicle in Kunar. Anyways, if you are not down with Youtube/Google then Liveleak Afghanistan may be useful to you. Although it is over 90% military stuff so not everybody will find it useful. Also, you may be able to guess the target audience by quickly glancing at the single ladies ads on the left-hand side. Unfortunately my blog software does not support Liveleak so I’ll continue to use Youtube and Google for imbedded video. More About: Video , Channel , Ghan , Chan
Do Area Studies Students Hate America?
2007-08-22 01:07:00 August 21, 2007. Why is the government of the United States of America so suspicious of area studies students? And why have 12 of 14 applicants from a certain area studies program failed the security clearance process? It’s not just any area studies program. It is one that includes Afghanistan. These students, either with a Master’s or with a PhD in the works, have been told that they are insufficiently loyal to work in any sort of job that requires a security clearance. Pic: Did someone drop this? I have been at or affiliated with this area studies program for a long time, since before 9-11 actually (when people would say directly to me that my planned studies were “stupid”). Soon after 9-11 I was pointed to a photo in a newspaper of an alumnus of my program trying to look inconspicuous in Afghanistan while wearing civilian clothes and dodging incoming fire. I thought at that moment that my program would surely serve as a great resource in the years to come... More About: Studies , Students , Hate , Area
Afghanistan Experts, Researchers, etc…
2007-08-21 00:39:00 August 20, 2007. Am I missing anybody from this list below? All people listed here are either scholars, researchers, experts, authors (in academic press), professors or students. I’m trying to maintain an accurate list of links to Afghanistan researchers/experts/students over at The Afghanistan Analyst. If you know of someone who should be on the list or if you should be on the list then email me a link to that person’s webpage from this Afghanistan Analyst page here. I am actually getting a decent amount of traffic on The Afghanistan Analyst so I should probably be as accurate and as comprehensive as possible. Anyways, try browsing this list of links. There is some interesting stuff in here. United States or Canada based: Ludwig Adamec Jon W Anderson Thomas Barfield Michael Barry Robert L Canfield #1 Robert L Canfield #2 Fotini Christia Robert Crews David B Edwards Vanda Felbab-Brown Reuel Marc Gerecht Thomas E Gouttierre Shah M Hanifi Marc He... More About: Experts , Ghan , Pert
PsyOps Disinformation or Emerging Divisions Within the Taliban?
2007-08-18 04:31:00 August 18, 2007. Have you ever read a threatening pamphlet that is supposedly from the Taliban and said to yourself “this is so totally manufactured by an U.S. Army 37F“? I am willing to bet that more than a few Afghans feel that way about a “Taliban night letter” that was distributed in Helmand in July of this year. The pamphlet, that was purportedly from pissed-off local Taliban fighters complaining about the Quetta Shura, went something like this (from RFE/RL): “We criticize the decision of Mullah Mohammad Omar. We don’t accept any other commander. If they continue on this path, we will leave the movement. We only want to carry out jihad against Americans and this is our wish. And we will fight until the end against foreign troops. But the decision of the leadership council in Quetta was a wrong decision. They want to appoint Uzbeks or Chechens instead of a Taliban commander. And Mullah Mohammad Omar, you should know that Pashtuns never want to... More About: Disinformation , Division , Visions
Totally out of context quote #14
2007-08-14 00:30:00 August 13, 2007. Via Afghanwire: When I visited Ghor province, a government official told me that a huge number of girls in the province were married by force. This means that they are sold. A while back, a girl was even sold in exchange for a horse. […] It is better than the incident that happened last year in Kunduz province: there, a girl was exchanged for a dog. This, however, is a horse. Context : A horse is a horse of course…..unless it’s being traded for a human being. Then it’s just part of some horrible equation. And noted somewhat sarcastically (I think) by the above journalist of the newspaper Eqtedar-e Milli, it is better than being traded for a dog. But the dog was an expenive prize fighting dog and who knows the quality of the horse involved in the trade. Anyways, there is a list of NGOs that focus on women and children at the bottom of this page. And you may find numerous books and articles focusing on the problems faced by women and children... More About: Quote , Ally
Safrang Is Back
2007-08-10 16:32:00 August 10, 2007. The Afghanistan blog Safran g, written by an Afghan-American, is back in action after not-so-mysteriously disappearing for strategic reasons. If you’ve been reading Afghanistan blogs regularly then you already know of Safrang. If not, go read it. It is essential online reading. And no, this is not part 2 of a 537 part series of recommending Afghanistan blogs. More About: Back
Afghanistan and State Failure from a Majaristani Perspective
2007-08-08 21:18:00 August 8, 2007. I know, I know. Lately my attempts at serious analyses have been restricted to explaining Afghanistan through the lense of diet coke and post-modern art. Summer is bad for me. So why don’t you move along double-quick until you get to My State Failure Blog? It’s not mine, actually. It belongs to Péter Marton, a PhD student from Majaristan who specializes in state failure. The analysis on Afghanistan is excellent (a rare thing) and the blog is updated quite regularly with some great insights into counter-insurgency, opium cultivation, development, state-failure, etcetera… So yeah, check out (not) My State Failure Blog. Seriously, a Hungarian scholar analyzing the Australian counter-insurgency approach in Uruzgan? That’s cool. More About: Ghan , Perspective
Afghanistan Is (Sort Of) Irrelevant
2007-08-06 01:59:00 August 5, 2007. For your consideration I will present two arguments: one arguing that the importance of Afghanistan is exaggerated and another arguing that Afghanistan is, and will remain, important. Pic: Nothing important to see here. So……Afghanistan is not important because: A) The “bases” for terrorism have shifted to Pakistan, Iraq, the Middle East Europe and even to the United States and Canada. That’s with the current understanding that a built-up AQ training camp full of guys in black pajamas jumping through fiery rings is so 1997. B) I’m no Bonnie Boyd, but it seems to me that as an energy transit route, Afghanistan is not a great candidate. The likelihood of oil and gas from Central Asia transiting through Afghanistan and Pakistan is extremely unlikely. Can you imagine any oil company seeing a proposal for the Turkmenistan-Taliban Country-Baluchistan Gas Pipelin... More About: Sort , Irrelevant , Ghan
Lida Abdul Is Too Post-Modern For Me
More articles from this author:2007-07-29 21:49:00 July 29, 2007. Being an uncouth troglodyte, I am sometimes confused by art. I’m especially confused by the artwork of Afghan artist Lida Abdul . However, I like this lady’s video art nonetheless. I found a few stills of her video installations or whatever they call them. In the still below, Lida paints a ruined house white. Lida now does the same for a wrecked car. Now, I’m confused by this video art of Afghan men trying to pull in vain against a half-ruined structure. But I’m sure the men she hired are even more confused. Now this Afghan dude must be confused beyond all bounds of comprehension. Lida pulls a mini-house on wheels around some wharehouse district in Los Angeles. Got it? Anyways, teasing aside, I like her artwork. I don’t find it necessary to understand art in order to like it. Give her bio and her statement a read. She is quite interesting to say t... More About: Post , Modern , Post-Modern 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 |
 |
|
 |
