A war through foreign lens

Afghanistan: A DISTANT WAR

Author: Robert Nickelsberg, Prestel,

Publisher: Price not mentioned

Without a historic connection with Afghanistan one wouldn’t understand the complexities of its society, which appears to be the main reason behind this never-ending conflict, writes ROHIT SRIVASTAVA and explains how

Journalism is considered as the recording of unfolding history. Thanks to advancements in mass communications, this is an era of well documented history. Future generations will have access to every possible detail of our times, from many different perspectives, to evaluate the epoch and its history makers. One of its most defining events is the Afghan war which began in 1979 and is still countinuing after destroying the military reputation of two world powers.

The inability of the superior forces to give a crushing defeat to an under-trained, under-armed disorganised but highly motivated militia is the lesson of the last three decades of the Afghan conflict. The Afghan war has undermined the last two revolutions in military affairs (RMAs) and has forced armies across the world to invent new methods and tactics in sub-conventional warfare.

Robert Nickelsberg, a veteran photographer with Time magazine where he spent 25 years of his professional life, has captured the war from 1988 onwards and in this book he showcases some of the most defining events from the last three decades of Afghanistan. If you visit a country as happening as Afghanistan for such a long time and if you are a photographer, then you will definitely be fortunate enough to click historic events. Robert Nickelsberg had a fair amount of luck to capture some of the most defining pictures of Afghanistan.

Jon Lee Anderson, in his foreword, sums up the whole geopolitical environment in which the Soviets entered Afghanistan to help their friends, “For the United States, one geostrategic setback seemed to follow another, and 1979 was a watershed year. In February, the Shah of Iran, a redoubtable American client, was forced into exile by an Islamist revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini, an irascible Muslim cleric who allowed scores of American diplomats in Teheran to be taken hostage and who cursed the United States as the ‘Great Satan’. In July, Marxist Sandinista rebels in Nicaragua overthrew another American ally, dictator Anastasio Somoza, and placed Central America, in the US backyard, at the forefront of superpower confrontation. In December, the Red Army’s invasion of Afghanistan signaled Moscow’s feeling that it was free to move aggressively on a global chessboard from which the US seemed to be in retreat. Soviets overstepped themselves by invading Afghanistan, sparking a widespread national rebellion that they could not contain. Soon, a hydra-headed mujahideen resistance army that was armed and financed by the United States, led by a new president, Ronald Reagan, with the help of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, fought without quarter until the Soviets gave up.”

The Russians entered with a plan to end the rebellion in a short span of time and had never imagined that they would be fighting one of the most gruesome battles of the twentieth century for as long as nine years.

For people of South Asia, the Afghan war is not a distant war and it is very evident that this book has been written from a western perspective. The West, by and large, has not been able to understand this war. It is very difficult for anyone who doesn’t have a historic connection with Afghanistan to understand the complexities of its society, which appears to be the main reason behind this never ending conflict. The US and its allies are offering the best they can, from physical infrastructure to financial support and education, yet they have not been able to end this cycle of violence.

The book through its pictures vividly captures the truth that the war is the only employment for a large number of Afghans. The child soldiers, warlords, shifting allegiances among major players, tribal affinities, ethnic discrimination and ruthlessness with which massacres have been committed against fellow Afghans comes out graphically through the pictures. The author takes us through the evolution of the Afghan conflict from the war against foreign military to civil war among ethnic groups to the present situation. One could see the evolution of the war and the evolution of society through the lens of Robert Nickelsberg.

But one also realises that the changes are superficial and society remains where it was. The more things change more they remain same. The image of Afghanistan, as a nation, has been created by the coverage of war. Most writers are not aware about what Afghanistan was before the onslaught of the West-funded mujahedeen. There is an image of a destroyed laboratory in the book and another picture of two teenagers filling water from a road side hand pump with the destroyed city in the background, and last batch of cadets performing march past with three roses in hand, one of its kind in the world, suggests many things about the military mind of the nation.

The most defining pictures are of a mother and child, with expressions of fear, insecurity, horror and pain whereas the men including teenagers appear free spirited and fearless even with dead bodies. For South Asians it would be interesting to think that if the Indian National Congress had stood by Khan Abdul Gaffer Khan (Bacha Khan, Frontier Gandhi) then Afghanistan could have had another fate, one that would not have ended in the emergence of Taliban from the FATA region; the political make-up of the Pashtuns of Afghanistan would also have been different.

There is a picture of an extremely busy western Kabul market with numerous cars and trucks; this is the chaos one would like to see all across Afghanistan, an efflorescence of human endeavour and business spirit, a dream which every Afghan must be dreaming. All will depend on how events will unfold after the departure of the last American soldier, if that truly happens. It would be nice if Robert Nickelsberg or someone like him is there to document the next phase of Afghan history for the rest of us.