August in Kabul, by Andrew Quilty.

 

Australian journalist Andrew Quilty describes Kabul in the last days of the American evacuation.

Australian photojournalist Andrew Quilty has been based in Kabul, Afghanistan, since 2013. He has won many awards for journalism. As the title suggests, August in Kabul chronicles the panicked, chaotic last days of the American backed Afghan government, led by President Ashraf Ghani.

Quilty concentrates on the stories of ex-government employees and regular Afghans hurriedly trying to figure out plans for survival. With the Taliban marching on Kabul, and much quicker than anyone predicted, many found themselves ill prepared. Even President Ghani had no real strategy, opting to flee the country at the very last minute.

August in Kabul gives a nuanced, layered picture of Afghan society in extraordinary times. Within Kabul, the fear is palpable as people linked to the American backed government fear reprisals from the Taliban. Families move from house to house in an attempt to remain anonymous, ceasing to visit family and friends. Men slip out of their western clothes and military uniforms, hoping to remain unnoticed in the traditional perahan tunban. Government employees desperately scrabble for a place on an evacuation plane. The airport scenes are like something out of Heironymous Bosch – crushing crowds, unsanitary conditions, chronic dehydration and hunger.

The situation for women is often dire, even in the supposed safety of the family. Quilty follows the story of one young woman, 19-year-old Nadia. She is feisty and has dreams of studying to advance herself. She'd like to one day own a business. But with the Taliban advancing, and her father and brothers fearful of reprisals against them, they try to marry Nadia off to a Talib. This after she has been repeatedly beaten and terrorised by her brothers. It's sad to write that Nadia actually feels some sympathy for her father and brothers, even after all they have done to her, knowing their predicament.

A brutal portrait of Afghanistan just before the fall of Kabul to the Taliban. It is a humbling experience to read this first hand reporting.

August in Kabul, by Andrew Quilty.

July 2022

Farewell Kabul: From Afghanistan to a More Dangerous World, by Christina Lamb

Staff review by Chris Saliba

In this impressive book, British journalist Christina Lamb surveys the last fifteen years of Middle Eastern politics, with a particular focus on Afghanistan. Her intimate experience of the countries she describes gives Farewell Kabul an added salience.

Christina Lamb is a British journalist who has been covering the Middle East since the late 1980s. Her journey began when she interviewed Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto. After that initial interview in 1987, Bhutto invited Lamb to her wedding. This invitation was the start of a long fascination with the Middle East, in particular Afghanistan. Her reporting from the region would lead to interviews with many key figures, including future Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The two would even develop a friendship.

Farewell Kabul: From Afghanistan to a More Dangerous World is a mixture of journalism, memoir and history. As Lamb herself candidly notes, journalists are meant to be impartial, but this is easier said than done, especially when reporting on such emotional circumstances as war, poverty, assassination and conflict. The book covers the period from 2001 to 2014, across key “war on terror” countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The point of departure for Lamb’s narrative is her own personal experiences of the war. Each chapter hops from place to place, with the author as key witness, giving the text a gritty feeling of actually being there. If you like lots of small details - smells, tastes, noises - that help build up a more tangible picture of Afghanistan and its people, then this is the go-to book. 

The transformation of Afghanistan from a place of relative safety to one far more dangerous is the book’s main story arc. This happened through a mix of Western technological supremacy and cultural ignorance. The Americans (including partner countries) could run peerless military operations and bureaucratic machines, with targeted bombs, drones and management experts. However, there was a deep ignorance about Middle Eastern politics, history and culture. No efforts were made to learn about the countries that were being invaded. This disconnect created a culture of what Lamb calls “cloud cuckoo land”.  Young American technocrats sat in well fortified bunkers in Afghanistan, drawing up reconstruction plans that had no grip on the reality unfolding outside. In one section Lamb describes these specialists as “inanely grinning” like "members of a cult".

Another alarming aspect of the book is how it proves beyond reasonable doubt that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) was always backing the Taliban. As billions of US dollars were poured into Pakistan, its own ISI was supporting the enemy. Ironically, if unwittingly, the US was funding both sides of the war. Osama bin Laden would eventually be found hiding out in Pakistan, a US ally.

Farewell Kabul is certainly an impressive achievement, written with much blood, sweat and tears. Its 600 pages never loses its momentum. Written by someone who was there, it answers a lot of questions about what was happening in Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan during the 2001 - 2014 period. It is also an agonisingly tragic book, as it shows how so much was wasted, so many opportunities to improve matters frittered away. After so many billions spent and thousands of lives lost, the situation has deteriorated. For those seeking to learn what went so horribly wrong, Farewell Kabul is indispensable.

Farewell Kabul: From Afghanistan to a More Dangerous World, by Christina Lamb. Published by HarperCollins. ISBN: 9780007256938 RRP: $34.99

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Ghost Wars, by Steve Coll

Ghost Wars must be the most comprehensive book I’ve read about America’s involvement in Afghanistan’s many wars, both civil and against foreign powers, between 1979 and the present. Its detail I found almost exhausting. I’d read twenty pages and have to put the book down and get a cup of tea or something. And it’s some 600 pages long. I don’t know how these authors (Steve Coll is a managing editor of The Washington Post) have the stamina to see these huge projects through. Thank God they do.

After wading through so much messy, messy politics and an ever shuffling deck of friends and foes, I thought, why get involved in Afghanistan in the first place? It’s like a constant battle to keep ahead of the game, and because its war, unforeseen and unexpected surprises keep popping up, bin Ladin being the most famous.

The story of these wars everyone pretty much knows in brief. Democrat President Jimmy Carter, a born again Christian, launched the CIA on harassment operations against the Soviets, who had invaded Afghanistan, trying to bring it into line. Then under Reagan this was escalated to a more aggressive approach, funding the mujahedin anti-Soviet jihad to the tune of billions of dollars.

(To get an idea of how much weaponry had been poured into the country, I quote from the book: ‘By 1992 there were more personal weapons in Afghanistan than in India and Pakistan combined. By some estimates more such weapons had been shipped into Afghanistan during the previous decade than to any other country in the world.’ No wonder civilians were getting such a rough trot, to say the least.)

This was done primarily through Pakistan’s security service, ISI (Inter- Services Intelligence.) The US sent money to them, who distributed it to the mujahedin fighters. Saudi Arabia was also helping to finance the jihad. Finally the Soviets withdrew, but it ended up that the US had been pouring in money to openly anti-American warlords.

Well, that battle was won. The US could be happy that they had won this proxy war. So far off the radar did Afghanistan fall that when the first President Bush was informed about the fighting going on in Afghanistan he asked, ‘Is that thing still going on?’

Not only was Bush senior ignorant of the matter, it appears that almost the entire Congress was uninterested in the secret war in Afghanistan, even at the time when bin Ladin was plotting and at work. The author describes anti-Taliban fighters trying to garner interest from American politicians:

‘Organizers of this nascent anti-Taliban alliance traveled to Washington in the summer of 2000 to ask for American political support and practical aid. Senator Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican who was one of the few members of Congress to take an interest in Afghanistan held hearings. Hardly anyone paid attention. Danielle Pletka, who ran the Afghan issue at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, cringed whenever she arranged meetings for Karzai and Massoud’s aides because she feared that not a single member would show up, and she would be left red-faced and alone at the conference table. ‘No one cared,’ she recalled. At typical meetings on Afghanistan ‘anywhere from none to two’ members of staff would attend.’

What a vibrant democracy!!! How could they be so asleep at the wheel, when we all now know what was fomenting in Afghanistan in 2000? You’d think the whole American public would be discussing the many twists and turns of the civil war in Afghanistan, and the plots (I know, these were secret CIA plans) to kill bin Ladin. That’s what I find so terrifying about states and their civilian populations. There is just so much ignorance of what governments are doing. And we believe whatever we’re told. It’s staggering that some 42% of the American public blame Saddam Hussein for September 11. It’s like something straight out of George Orwell.

Another paradox of American covert intervention in the region is that Pakistan was all along secretly funding the Taliban. Under pressure from her security service, Benazir Bhutto decided to help the Taliban along. All the while she kept lying to the Americans, saying that she was not doing this. How on earth does an ally fund the Taliban? The Taliban who hosted bin Laden and his training camps? What a strange world.

Ghost Wars reads as a straight line from Afghanistan in 1979 to September 11. America had a smart victory against the Soviets by funding the mujahedin, an army that featured anti-American soldiers and chiefs. Mission accomplished, they simply walked away from the country. Then they learnt terrorists were plotting in training camps in Afghanistan. Time to take out bin Laden. Hence a new focus. Ironically, America’s allies Saudi Arabia and Pakistan were both sponsors (not officially, but secretly, through sympathetic business men, charities and security services) of the Taliban and anti-American activities.

What does all of this mean? George Orwell wrote, the aim of power is power. I can’t think of any other good reason.

Afghanistan, a Military History

A book by Stephen Tanner. Traces the various Empires and conquerers that have staked a claim on what is now Afghanistan.

From Alexander the Great right up to the United States. While the author seems pretty much pro US, he does admit that the US created a bin Laden type monster by arming and financially backing the mujahideen.

Sideline piece of interest. Page 304 tells of how Dick Morris, policy guru for Clinton, urged war on Iraq by using proxy troops, 'Shi'ites in the south and Kurds in the north' to topple Saddam, therebye avoiding US casualties.

Siba Shakib's book on Afghanistan

I have just finished Iranian author and filmaker Siba Shakib's book Afghanistan, Where God Only Comes To Weep.

It is unrelenting in its grimness, and reminded me of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. One of the descriptions of mutilated Russian soldiers made me feel ill for days.

The book tells the story of Shirin-Gol (which means sweet flower)and her life in refugee camps, under the Taliban and civil war in general. Depressing reading, and an up close look at the reality of the lives of millions.