Ramadan in Afghanistan

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has promised that the circumstances under which 125 people, many of them civilians (in fact 70), were killed in a NATO air strike last week near Kunduz in northern Afghanistan will be scrutinized carefully. The German Colonel Georg Klein  had ordered the air strike after two fuel tankers had been hijacked by the Taliban. The commander’s call has probably been in breach of NATO rules as it was based on just one intelligence source.

Chancellor Merkel and her Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier are amidst an election campaign where the highly unpopular issue of the 3720 or so German troops in Afghanistan under International Forces in Afghanistan (ISAF) command has consistently been played down, even ignored. The majority of the German population questions the presence of German soldiers in the Hindu Kush.

For some time, there are also incriminating questions being asked by the allied forces. It is not clear to German soldiers that they are fighting in a war in Afghanistan. According to Minister of Defense Franz Josef Jung, Germany isn’t at war in Afghanistan. “The goal of the German army is, alongside providing security, to help the country rebuild and with its development. We are not occupiers. Unfortunately there are situations where our soldiers have to fight. But we’re not looking for fights.”

“In a war, you don’t build schools, you don’t set up the water and power supply and you don’t build kindergartens and hospitals and you don’t train the military and the police.”

The official, prescribed, terminology of not being occupier does not fit with the known fact that German troops consume incredible amounts of alcoholic beverages. It has long been known that German soldiers are allowed two cans (1 l) of beer per day or an equivalent of wine. German Armed Forces are “importing” millions of liters of beer and wine each year to the Islamic country selling alcoholic beverages even to their NATO allies. As a matter of fact, local law is simply neglected in the country, not mentioning Ramadan, the holy month when Muslims observe strict rules for fasting.

When trying to figure out what had happened in the September 4 air strike, head of ISAF General Stanley McChrystal noted that too many of his underlings at the NATO base were either drunk or hungover, only a few hours after the deadly NATO attack. Furious, he immediatley banned any alcohol consumption.

When specifically asked the common response by German Armed Forces authorities is that alcohol is only consumed inside the camp and after hours. It violates Afghanistan law anyway. Lives are put at risk since radical Islamists usually know and will not forgive. It doesn’t make even a difference whether civilians are killed in a devastating air strike or soldiers behave like occupiers partying on weekends during the holy month.  

 

See also on this blog

Mobile Phone and Embedded about embedded journalism.

Better Off if the Europeans… about criticism of the German contribution in the war in Afghanistan.

Afghan Election Fraud

I have commented in the past weeks frequently on the alleged Iranian presidential election fraud and my growing anger about the ruthless response of the country’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who had maneuvered himself in a hopeless situation when prematurely and most probably unjustified supporting his hardliner populist ‘principlist’ president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad after the June 12 election.

Although I am still pretty convinced that rigged election results cannot be proved from outside the country by statistical means or by pointing at irrational results from certain ethnical groups; and that their correctness can definitely not be confirmed by telephone polls from a neighboring country three weeks before election day, the brutal crackdown and rounding up of the regime after the mass demonstrations with dozens if not hundreds of casualties, torture and show trials have severely undermined the willingness of most western commentators to let the Iranians settle their domestic disputes in their own rights.

The present power struggle seems now to take place without contribution of ‘the people’. Whether Rafsanjani, Khamenei (or his son Mojtaba), Karroubi or Mousavi finally prevails, who cares? There has probably never been such an analysis bywestern commentators of a third world’s country election than that in Iran 2 months ago.

Tomorrow’s Afghan election is already a charade, or political theater, as Eric Margolis put it in Information Clearing House. Who will win? The candidate chosen by the US and its NATO allies: corrupt and incompetent Hamid Karzai and his warlords, war criminals Mohammed Fahim and notorious Rashid Dostam.

“[All] parties are banned; only individuals are allowed to run. This is a favorite tactic of non-democratic regimes, particularly the US-backed dictatorships of the Arab world.”

As the BBC informs us, thousands of voting cards have been offered for sale and thousands of dollars have been offered in bribes to buy votes. There will be no free and fair election for the war-torn country. We will see whether Karzai will make it in the first round.

“But as international forces fight and die to allow this election to go ahead, serious questions are raised about the credibility of the process and the balance between sacrifice and reward.”

Afghan Hinterland

 

 

The country is 30 years at war, more or less continuously. Landlocked Afghanistan is not really Central Asia, and definitely not the Middle East. It has always been in-between. Its history may be described as a series of failed attempts of conquest. Maybe one early somewhat successful campaign had actually been that of Alexander the Great (after 330 BCE) who married Roxane, a Bactrian noble from Balkh.

In July 1960, a group of three diplomats who were working at embassies in Kabul, dared to set off to a passage to small and remote valleys in the southern parts of the Hindu Kush, Nuristan. The curious reader of their report: A Passage to Nuristan. Exploring the Mysterious Afghan Hinterland, only published 46 years after the arduous hike, has, honestly, never heard about the region and the people who had once been considered the last surviving native kafirs, or infidels, in the vast Islamic realm. Thus, the country had been called Kafiristan. When it was conquered by Emir Abdurrahman Khan in 1895, Islam was enforced. His armies brought the light (an-nur) to the polytheists. So, eventually the country became enlightened by Islam, Nuristan.

 

  

It is a story of the lost paradise, blooming meadows and woods, torrents, daring mountain hiking; of dwarfs and fairy-tales, beautiful girls and cheerful lads, honorable maleks, great hospitality of proud people and, of course, post-colonial attitudes of White Man’s supremacy, including mild Islam phobia.  

The three diplomats are Sir Nicholas Barrington who had served in the British Embassy in Kabul from 1959 to 1961; Joseph T. Kendrick, political officer in the American Embassy in Kabul in the late 1950s; and Reinhard Schlagintweit, who was working at West Germany’s Kabul Embassy between 1958 and 1961. These young men were adventurous enough to encounter the still almost unknown Afghan hinterland for which, at that time, even reliable maps were missing. They were not dependent on themselves. After having got approval for the passage from governor of Jalalabad and the Eastern Province they were even assigned a police escort to safeguard the whole trip. Anyway, what they describe in this very uncommon book is amazing.

While Barrington provides the narrative of the 10 days in Nuristan, written shortly after the adventure, Kendrick (JT) gives a more ethnologic account on the different tribes in partly isolated villages of two major valleys, the Pech and the Waigel, which are separated by a rugged mountain ridge. Several passes permit, at least in summer, communication of the people in the two valleys. While the Wamaites are generally tall with long and thin faces, and proud of descending from Arabs, Kendrick compares the short people of the Presuns (“below five feet”) with Nordic fishermen, while Barrington calls them simply dwarfs. “The Waigelis resembles southern Europeans, particularly Italians.” It is amazing to read about his comparisons with Mexican or American Indian clothing here.

Kendrick reports that Islam is not visibly being practiced among the Sefid Posh, and “[p]aganism in all its manifestations is not yet stamped out.” “[T]he stories of old gods and legends are still known among the older men and held in respect,” much to the mullah’s discontent. Dancing, songs, festivals, even wine making and consumption, seemed to be possible in this remote region of Afghanistan in the 1960s. It is unfortunately not very clear, what kind of polytheism had been (and in last century’s sixties, was?) practiced from Kendrick’s account.

 

  

The third part of the book provides reflections of the authors almost 45 years after their passage to Nuristan. While the notes were made shortly after the adventure, when the three authors were in their twenties or thirties, it is most interesting to read the memories of now worldly-wise and experienced men, all three having had gorgeous careers as diplomatic envoys. Their post-colonial attitude of White Man’s supremacy had vanished in the meantime. The country had been devastated with a terrible proxy of the Cold War when Barrington had been appointed British Ambassador in Islamabad. He concludes:

“Sadly, as this book was going to print, the situation in Afghanistan was becoming increasingly infected by the disastrous events in Iraq. The ill-planned and illegal (in UN terms) invasion of Iraq by US and coalition forces increased support for Al Qaeda-type extremists round the world, as some of us had warned. London and Madrid suffered. Karzai’s task in Kabul was made more difficult. Remote Nuristan was not immune. In a high-profile incident in July 2005 an American Special Forces helicopter trying to rescue servicemen on the ground was shot down by missile, killing all 16 men on board – America’s greatest casualty toll in Afghanistan so far. The press reported that this took place in the Waigel Valley, which had seemed so peaceful years before.”

And Kendrick concludes in 2002 (he had deceased in January 2003):

“In my view, relations between Islam and the Western world are also at a precarious stage, and now need sensitive handling. To add to the internal difficulties, the situation in Afghanistan has intensified Muslim hatred of the Western world. The West must make clear to the Muslim world that there is respect for Islam, although not acceptance of the actions of an extremist minority. The United States, for its part, cannot afford to take unilateral political actions that will inflame the Muslim world even further and lend credibility to the terrorists.”

Euphemisms

Only minutes after President Obama’s speech at the U.S. National Archives in Washington on closing down Guantánamo prison camp what he called a “misguided experiment”, former vice president Dick Cheney denounced the decision saying it came “without deliberation and no plan.” A large part of Cheney’s speech at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, a neocon think tank, deals with recent euphemisms used in the Global War on Terror, a term, the Obama administration has abandoned. The now prescribed terminology is “overseas contingency operations”.

“In the event of another attack on America, the Homeland Security Department assures us it will be ready for this, quote, ‘man-made disaster’ – never mind that the whole Department was created for the purpose of protecting Americans from terrorist attack.

“In the category of euphemisms, the prizewinning entry would be a recent editorial in a familiar newspaper that referred to terrorists we’ve captured as, quote, ‘abducted.’ Here we have ruthless enemies of this country, stopped in their tracks by brave operatives in the service of America, and a major editorial page makes them sound like they were kidnap victims at random on their way to the movies.

“Another term out there that slipped into the discussion is the notion that American interrogation practices were a ‘recruitment tool’ for the enemy. On this theory, by the questioning of killers, we supposedly fallen short of our own values. This recruitment theory has become something of a mantra lately, including from the President himself. And after a familiar fashion, it excuses the violent and blames America for the evil that others do. It’s another version of that same old refrain from the Left, ‘We brought it on ourselves.’”

It was, of course, the former Bush administration, where Cheney had been the vice president, which had introduced some of the most unjustified euphemisms and exaggerations after 9-11. Has there ever been a Global War on Terrorism? Or had it rather been a modern crusade? Enhanced interrogation techniques are torture, what else? Enemy combatants? A term coined to deprive prisoners of war of their Geneva Conventions rights. The use of these euphemisms has destroyed America’s reputation as a democracy, and that might be more devastating and longer lasting than the 9-11 attacks eight years ago.

Cheney mentions also alleged effectiveness of CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques.

“Maybe you’ve heard that when we captured KSM [Khalid Sheikh Muhammed, reportedly the principal architect of the 9-11 attacks], he said he would talk as soon as he got to New York City and saw his lawyer. But like many critics of interrogations, he clearly misunderstood the business at hand. American personnel were not there to commence an elaborate legal proceeding, but to extract information from him before al-Qaeda could strike again and kill more of our people.”

Khaled Sheikh Mohammed had been waterboarded 183 times. A list of his confessions can be found at Wikipedia:

• The February 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City

• A failed “shoe bomber” operation

• The October 2003 attack in Kuwait

• The nightclub bombing in Bali, Indonesia

• A plan for a “second wave” of attacks on major U.S. landmarks after the 9-11 attacks, including the Library Tower in Los Angeles, the Sears Tower in Chicago, the Plaza Bank Building in Seattle and the Empire State Building in New York

• Plots to attack oil tankers and U.S. naval ships in the Straits of Hormuz, the Straits of Gibraltar and Singapore

• A plan to blow up the Panama Canal

• Plans to assassinate Jimmy Carter

• A plot to blow up suspension bridges in New York City

• A plan to destroy the Sears Tower in Chicago with burning fuel trucks

• Plans to “destroy” Heathrow Airport, Canary Wharf and Big Ben in London

• A planned attack on “many” nightclubs in Thailand

• A plot targeting the New York Stock Exchange and other U.S. financial targets

• A plan to destroy buildings in Eilat, Israel

• Plans to destroy U.S. embassies in Indonesia, Australia and Japan in 2002

• Plots to destroy Israeli embassies in India, Azerbaijan, the Philippines and Australia

• Surveying and financing an attack on an Israeli El-Al flight from Bangkok

• Sending several “mujahideen” into Israel to survey “strategic targets” with the intention of attacking them

• The November 2002 suicide bombing of a hotel in Mombasa, Kenya

• The failed attempt to shoot down an Israeli passenger jet leaving Mombasa airport in Kenya

• Plans to attack U.S. targets in South Korea

• Providing financial support for a plan to attack U.S., British and Jewish targets in Turkey

• Surveillance of U.S. nuclear power plants in order to attack them

• A plot to attack NATO’s headquarters in Europe

• Planning and surveillance in a 1995 plan (the “Bojinka Operation”) to bomb 12 American passenger jets

• The planned assassination attempt against then-U.S. President Bill Clinton during a mid-1990s trip to the Philippines

• “Shared responsibility” for a plot to kill Pope John Paul II

• Plans to assassinate Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf

• An attempt to attack a U.S. oil company in Sumatra, Indonesia, “owned by the Jewish former [U.S.] Secretary of State Henry Kissinger”

• The beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl

As regards the final item on this very long list, Kahlid’s confession led lawyers of Daniel Pearl’s alleged killer, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh (the man who, according to Benazir Bhutto in her infamous interview with David Frost in November 2007 “had murdered Osama bin Laden”) appeal of their client’s death sentence.

Did Cheney ever read George Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty-Four? Did it inspire him? Does he remember the character Emmanuel Goldstein?

President Obama’s U-turn

One of the few Jewish survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto is Germany’s main literary critic, or “Pope of German letters”, Marcel Reich-Ranicki. In his remarkable biography “The Author of Himself: The Life of Marcel Reich-Ranicki” (Princeton University Press 2001), he described in his own unpretentious way the incredible situation of the people in the Ghetto and his and his young wife Tosia’s miraculous escape from hell (Umschlagplatz) only minutes before being deported to the gas chambers of Treblinka’s extermination camp. Reading this is both thrilling and mortifying. The industrial perfection of genocide, the Holocaust of Jews and others will forever, at least for the coming generations, be the inhumane stain on Germany and Germans. The crime of the century (the 20^th) is not comparable with anything else although I painfully remember anti-Semitic sentiments of former colleagues in the Middle East that it is; I respect their opinion but do not share: Gaza must not yet be compared with the Warsaw Ghetto, of course [1].

What is more amazing with Marcel Reich-Ranicki’s biography is his deep love for his and all the Jews’ German tormentors’ literature and composed music . Is it a sort of love-and-hate relationship? Does he want to prove that human bestiality and striving for the highest cultural achievements does not exclude each other? Has he forgiven “the” (or some) Germans or is he paying back when publicly delivering his often harsh judgments on hopefuls in the literature business [2]?

What does this have to do with hope and change and yes we can? President Obama has slipped up a second time yesterday, after pardoning CIA agents last month for having applied torture-like, so-called enhanced, interrogation techniques to detainees in the war on terror. In a 180-degree U-turn he now tries to prevent the release of dozens of photographs taken in prison and camps outside Abu Ghuraib which might show the world public the notorious abuse of detainees. His generals in Afghanistan and Iraq may have convinced him that further anti-American sentiments may cost U.S. citizens their lives. 

The last culprits of Nazi Germany, such as notorious John Demjanjuk, will vanish soon. It sometimes takes many decades, but it is hoped that truth will be unearthed sooner or later anyway. Even as regards the crimes or alleged crimes by the former U.S. administration.

 

Notes

[1] The reality of the Warsaw Ghetto, as described by Reich-Ranicki, is not even comparable with the description of a world falling apart in Paul Auster’s “In the Country of Last Things”, an author who had rightfully been praised by Reich-Ranicki.

[2] I have met Professor Reich-Ranicki once, so far. It must have been about at that time when he was correcting the page proofs of his biography. He was a patient in the hospital where I was working at that time, but I had not been his doctor. It was interesting that he mistook me as “his” doctor, and so I had the opportunity to chat a bit with him until he noticed his misconception. He won’t remember the short encounter but for me it was moment I won’t forget easily: his strong and unbroken personality, but a bit different from his sometimes, well, arguable televised appearances.

 

See also on this blog

Schicksalstag. How Germans try to deal with November 9.

What Next?

In response to a lawsuit and exactly five years after the Abu Ghuraib prison scandal the Pentagon is now going to release dozens if not hundred of photos which have been taken to document abuse or alleged abuse of terror suspects by U.S. military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan, as the Washington Post reports today. What do we have to expect and, honestly, why have they been taken if not for reasons of pure sadism? Did the abuse of detainees go on despite former President Bush’s claim of being “un-American”?

 

Amrit Singh, an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) staff attorney involved in the 2004 Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that led to the promise to release the photos, said:

 

“[The photos] show[s] that the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib was not aberrational but was systemic and widespread.

 

“This will underscore calls for accountability for that abuse.”

 

It is in fact not clear what will finally be shown. An anonymous Pentagon official disputes that the photographs would prove systematic abuse in prisons run by U.S. military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan. The images in questions have been investigated in 60(!) of the military’s own investigations of abuse allegations.  

                                                                             

“What it demonstrates is that when we find credible allegations of abuse, we investigate them.”

 

This claim is once more not very trustworthy. According to the Washington Post, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates has said yesterday:

 

“There is a certain inevitability, I believe, that much of this (!) will eventually come out. Much has already come out.”

 

Mr. Gates also expressed concern that the release of photos and interrogation memos may cause unrest and create further problems for U.S. troops serving in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

 

The former Bush administration has argued a section of the Geneva Convention might be violated when photos of prisoners are shown to the public. But a three-judge panel of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the 2^nd Circuit had rejected such arguments in September 2008. There is in fact a significant public interest in potential government misconduct.

Good Timing?

President Barack Obama’s video message to the Iranian people has surprised everybody in the West as well. It was launched on Nowruz, as New Year greetings. So far, reactions in Tehran were not really enthusiastic though, rather precautious instead. Was it the right time and tone? At least, it showed some of the President’s naivety or that of his close advisors. A country which is soaked by so-called ta’arouf [1], will consider kindlinesses on the occasion of the nation’s most important, albeit profoundly secular, holiday as such, not more than ta’arouf [2].

 

The Iranians are fully aware, for instance, that deeds do not necessarily follow the words at the moment. Obama has confirmed last week that trade sanctions will be imposed on Iran for another year. His motivation for extending the sanctions, which have been imposed by former President Clinton in 1995 and which would have expired later this year if not renewed, was a continued “unusual and extraordinary threat to the U.S. national security” despite lack of evidence that Iran has illicitly diverted its current nuclear program which is officially declared as solely peaceful [3].

 

While the Obama administration was preparing the video message, it was aired that in late February, an Iranian drone aircraft had been shot down about 10 km beyond the Iraqi border by an American fighter jet. According to Iraqi officials, its entrance was most probably “a mistake”. But what are ferrets for? Timely launching the news about the incident to the public is the interesting issue here. It is usually not mentioned, however, that the U.S. has been flying surveillance drones over Iran at least since 2004 to seek evidence for an illicit nuclear weapons program and “detect weaknesses in air defenses, according to U.S. officials” as the Washington Post (WP) wrote in February 2005 [4]. According to the WP, “[t]he surveillance has been conducted as the Bush administration sharpens its anti-Iran rhetoric and the U.S. intelligence community searches for information to support President Bush’s assertion that Tehran is trying to build nuclear weapons.” It is conceivable that the results of these surveillance flight have been incorporated in the December 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) which concluded that, “with high confidence”, Iran has halted its in fact existing nuclear weapons program in 2003.

 

Yesterday’s accident in the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s lifeline when it comes to oil supply, might illustrate the still acute threat the U.S. is imposing on Iran. The strait is only 54 km wide [5]. A nuclear-powered U.S. submarine collided with a Navy warship, a so-called amphibious assault ship.

 

Iran is considering Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s invitation to the upcoming international Afghanistan conference under UN auspices later this month in The Hague, but has not finally decided to participate. As to the U.S. State Department, Clinton has no plans to meet separately with an Iranian delegation there.

 

The new Obama Administration’s pace of change in attitude towards Iran with its rather mixed messages might in fact be highly demanding for Iran’s theocracy with its complicated structures within the administration. The country is preparing for presidential elections as well. The incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has so far not declared whether he will run another time. The previous ‘reform’ president Mohammad Khatami [6] has just withdrawn. The country is torn in an economical downturn for the entire duration of Ahmadinejad’s presidency, with exploding inflation rates, high rates of unemployment, and increasing depression and hopelessness especially among the youngsters, which make up the vast majority of the population.

 

It may in fact be that Obama’s timing might even prevent positive implications of the good news he tries to convey to the people of Iran.

                                        

                         

 

 

Notes

 

[1] A form of exaggerated politeness, almost self-humiliation, a sort of white lies in order to get things done in the way one wants them to proceed. As a brief example, when you are offered tea in a carpet shop in the bazaar, you better decline three times before you accept the offer. Everything else would be considered rather impolite.

 

[2] Another quite typical example for ta’arouf was, of course, the so far unanswered letter, the Iranian President has sent to Barack Obama immediately after he had won the November 4 election. Being fully aware of its ta’arouf, the letter had been heavily criticized by Iran’s majlis, or parliament. Writer Hooman Majd had tried, in his recent book The Ayatollah Begs to Differ, to explain some of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s more bizarre performances in the West as ta’arouf. You may read more about his book here.

 

[3] The current concern about Iran’s nuclear program is largely due to its refusal to ratify the Additional Protocol of the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. It is interesting and even surprising that former U.S. President George W. Bush had, in one of his last actions, signed an Additional Protocol on December 30, 2008. It was largely considered a symbolic gesture, though.

 

[4] The drones were even visible from the ground and considered by many people as UFOs.

 

[5] Five Iranian speedboats were said to have approached U.S. Navy warships in January 2008. What really happened is still unclear. Iran’s Pasdaran, or Revolutionary Guards, say a video aired by the U.S. Navy had been fabricated. President Bush described the incident as “provocative” and that it was a “dangerous situation” which should not have happened.

 

[6] One should not forget that, at least according to the NIE, Iran had a nuclear weapons program under President Khatami “with high confidence”. Khatami’s administration also further established Iran’s sponsorship of international terrorism. Consequently, former U.S. President Bush put Iran on the infamous ‘axis of evil’, together with North Korea and Iraq.

 

 

Better Off if the Europeans Had Never Got Involved

 

 

In a SPIEGEL ONLINE interview today, Jeremy Shapiro, Director of Research at the Center on the US and Europe at Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, mentions that the Unites States would have been better off if the European had never been involved in Afghanistan. “The European effort, including the German one, has been absolutely appalling in this area,” he sighed.

The Americans are at war in Afghanistan. They don’t need allies who don’t even know about that simple fact. When I recently asked a specific question to a respective officer of the German Armed Forces, he could only confirm that Germany is actually not at war in Afghanistan.

 

It is an embarrassing, in a way humiliating situation, the German Bundestag has sent its soldiers to the region. Some have been killed already in terroristic attacks, but the German Defense Minister is not ready, or doesn’t dare, to call a dead soldier a KIA. So, instead of freezing in fear and waiting for President Barrack Obama calling for new troops, rather admit that the concept of pacification and build-up democracy has fundamentally failed. And send these soldiers home. Let America win its war against terror alone.

 

 

 

Embedded

Embedded journalism is anti-democratic. News reporters and hand-picked journalists have been attached to military units before the third war in the Gulf region (2003-) but the term ‘embedded’ has been used then for the first time and ever since. Embedded journalism is daily practice also in Afghanistan. But information warfare should be labeled as such when pictures of the battles are published which are mere propaganda.

Having lived many years in the Middle East, even during the initial phases of that war in nearby Iraq, my colleagues and I desperately depended on a number of brave reporters in Baghdad, Kabul, and Tehran, who were credibly not embedded, who authentically reported about the people and what was going on. One of them is BBC’s Jon Leyne in Tehran. His sympathy for the common Iranian is beyond any doubt. He obviously likes his job, and his intercultural competence opens doors for getting the information he inquires. His always interesting reportages are critical but he explores his subjects from different angles. He does not fuel preconceptions but explains and enlightens.

 

Another correspondent I want to name in this regard is Ulrich Tilgner. I had admired his sober and emphatic reports from Baghdad during the first US bombardments and afterwards. In the meantime he had moved, after the initial phases of the war, to Tehran. But now he had quitted his contract with Germany’s ZDF TV channel. Too much consideration of allies’ interests were the reason for that, one can read. It is a shame that this rather low quality German channel, in fact governed by public law, wants to focus more on ‘embedded journalism’ at a time when failure of the military adventures in the Middle East and Afghanistan is becoming obvious. When the German Bundestag has to renew the ISAF/OEF mandates for the German Armed Forces, the public needs to be fully informed about all the consequences, worst case scenarios, and how to get out of this war finally. Embedded journalism does not help in that situation very much.   

 

 

Mobile Phone?

Dutch Army Sergeant Major Jan, 2nd Platoon, E-company, Battle Group-7, Task Force Uruzgan, talks to an Afghan village elder about the needs of his community. Jan also discussed the importance of Afghan people getting involved with local government to improve quality of life issues. The platoon was on a 3-day International Security Assistance Force mission conducting foot patrols through villages to meet the Afghan people. ISAF-photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class John Collins, U.S. Navy.

Source: NATO, ISAF.int

Most of this picture seems to be bogus. Propaganda. The stylish sunglasses of the sergeant, how he sits, his body language in general. The machine gun in the back, within reach. He emanates a kind of baseless supremacy. According to the legend of this picture, he is talking about “needs for the community”. But does he really talk about mobile phones? The sergeant was on a three-day mission conducting foot patrols through the villages to meet the people. The young man to the right should be a ‘village elder’? What do you think is he thinking? In contrast to his discussion mate, he seems to be completely at peace with himself. He listens carefully. Obviously, he is even a bit amused, but not too much to be impolite.

Aghanistan is now at war for almost 30 years. It has been a playground first for the late Soviet Union and the US American CIA, then the Taliban, then G. W. Bush’s war on terrorism. We know that before that, Britain completely failed in getting control over the proud people there in at least three wars, around 1840, 1880, and at the end of WWI.

The German novelist and poet Theodor Fontane wrote, in 1859, the following ballad (and I hope that some not familiar with the German language get at least a vague feeling of what is it about):

Das Trauerspiel von Afghanistan

Der Schnee leis stäubend vom Himmel fällt,
Ein Reiter vor Dschellalabad hält,
“Wer da!” – “Ein britischer Reitersmann,
Bringe Botschaft aus Afghanistan.”
Afghanistan! Er sprach es so matt;
Es umdrängt den Reiter die halbe Stadt,
Sir Robert Sale, der Kommandant,
Hebt ihn vom Rosse mit eigener Hand.
Sie führen ins steinerne Wachthaus ihn,
Sie setzen ihn nieder an den Kamin,
Wie wärmt ihn das Feuer, wie labt ihn das Licht,
Er atmet hoch auf und dankt und spricht:
“Wir waren dreizehntausend Mann,
Von Kabul unser Zug begann,
Soldaten, Führer, Weib und Kind,
Erstarrt, erschlagen, verraten sind.
Zersprengt ist unser ganzes Heer,
Was lebt, irrt draußen in Nacht umher,
Mir hat ein Gott die Rettung gegönnt,
Seht zu, ob den Rest ihr retten könnt.”
Sir Robert stieg auf den Festungswall,
Offiziere, Soldaten folgten ihm all’,
Sir Robert sprach: “Der Schnee fällt dicht,
Die uns suchen, sie können uns finden nicht.
Sie irren wie Blinde und sind uns so nah,
So lasst sie’s hören, dass wir da,
Stimmt an ein Lied von Heimat und Haus,
Trompeter blast in die Nacht hinaus!”
Da huben sie an und sie wurden’s nicht müd’,
Durch die Nacht hin klang es Lied um Lied,
Erst englische Lieder mit fröhlichem Klang,
Dann Hochlandslieder wie Klagegesang.
Sie bliesen die Nacht und über den Tag,
Laut, wie nur die Liebe rufen mag,
Sie bliesen – es kam die zweite Nacht,
Umsonst, dass ihr ruft, umsonst, dass ihr wacht.
“Die hören sollen, sie hören nicht mehr,
Vernichtet ist das ganze Heer,
Mit dreizehntausend der Zug begann,
Einer kam heim aus Afghanistan.”

Do people learn from history?