Reading more Afghanistan

The Photographer, a graphic memoir of a Frenchman traveling with Doctors Without Borders, presents a picture of surviving a trek through Afghanistan in 1986, by being sensitive to and accommodating to local customs and leaders.  The Horse Soldiers by Doug Stanton provides a similar lesson 15 years later.   The message here, however, is that the same sensitivity and accommodation can also be the key to winning a war.

This incredibly well-researched book tells the story behind the photo we all saw of American military men riding horses across a golden Afghan valley shortly after the World Trade Center was destroyed on September 11, 2001.    Around the world there was surprise and some laughter:  “What’s this?  The U.S. cavalry rides again?” 

Horse Soldiers follows the day by day actions of the Special Forces (aka Green Berets) and some CIA paramilitary following 9/11 as they leave their families and their U.S. base, fly to Uzbekistan, then proceed into Afghanistan to launch the war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda.   We see their skills, their adroitness in working with competing local warlords, their determination, the dangers and, ultimately, the success they experienced in those first weeks in Northern Afghanistan.

For those of us who remember the Green Berets from the Vietnam era as wild men running amok in the jungle, as depicted in Apocalypse Now, these Special Forces soldiers are depicted–and I think truthfully so– as intelligent, highly skilled, and self-disciplined.   They are what we would prefer all our military men and women to be.

Now, eight years later I hope that President Obama listens to General McChrystal, whose background includes Special Forces, to lead the U.S. military in Afghanistan today.  And that President Obama learns the right lesson from Iraq: that it was only when the U.S. began to work with the local Iraqi Sunni leaders that the deaths and bombings began to subside.    Horse Soldiers reinforces the wisdom of that course of action.

(This post is part of an experimental memoir.  I teach memoir writing and will edit your memoir to make it better.  Learn more at www.onedaymemoir.com)

Life happens

The late songwriter/musician/artist John Lennon once said:  “Life is what happens while you are making plans.”  In my variation:  “Life is what happens when you are trying to write a memoir that ties together daily events with past experiences.”   Daily events overtake the memoir writing.

Reading the Middle East

Over the last year I have tried to find books that provided me with insights into that part of the world which stretches from the eastern Mediterranean to the Himalayas.

The first I came across was “Bliss”, which has now been made into a movie.   The movie opens next week here in Los Angeles and will play for one week only.  The book is so remarkable that I may not go see it.

“Bliss” begins in a small isolated village in southeastern Turkey, not far from the Iraq border.   While the novel is set in the present, the village seems to be centuries older in some ways.  A young woman is disgraced and expected by her family to destroy herself.   Another fate awaits her as she and a male family member, who promises to kill her, travel from the village to the western part of the country.  It is a fascinating story that highlights the enormous differences between village life and urban life in contemporary Istanbul.  The author, Ömer Zülfü Livane, is one of Turkey’s best.  There were, however, two translators involved, which may explain a certain awkwardness in the early pages of the book.

“Kara Kush”, a ripping good novel by Idries Shah, about Afghanis during the Russian occupation, complements the documentary vision presented in The Photographer.  The Afghans are presented as bold, brave and enormously varied as this tale of resistance fighters–both men and women–ranges across the country from north to south.

After reading “Kara Kush”  I searched for a book about the Russian experience in Afghanistan and came up empty.  Then I stumbled across “One Soldier’s War”, a memoir of a Russian soldier, Arkady Babchenko, in the two Chechen wars.  He was drafted for the first one; voluntarily rejoined the army for the second one.  Is is a fascinating depiction of Russian military life, as seen from the bottom up.  Treatment of the soldiers seems not to have changed much from the time of the Czars.  After his second tour in the army, Babchenko became a journalist and the book is well written.

Last night about 10 p.m. I put down the “The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You A Happy Birthday” by New York Times reporter Neil MacFarquhar.  The subtitle is “Unexpected Encounters in the Changing Middle East”.   It is incredibly informative and utterly depressing.   I didn’t finish it and this book goes back to the Pasadena Public Library today. 

More hopeful than “The Media Department…” are the conversations I’ve had with the Afghani grocer in our local farmers’ market.  He told me he does not understand why there are wars.  “Everyone”, he said, “wants the same thing: a peaceful life with work and family.”    I would argue with his choice of the word “everyone”.  “Most people” would be more accurate.  There are always those who crave power and will seek it through war.

Photographing Afghanistan

Last Sunday was Eid, a day of celebration at the end of Ramadan.  The Afghani man who sells Greek foods was not at the Montrose Harvest Market.   No doubt,  he was home with his family.  

A couple of weeks earlier I had asked him if he was familiar with the graphic book, “The Photographer” .  He wasn’t.   The book, subtitled “Into War-Torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders”, is based on the photographs and recollections of DidierLefevre, the photographer of the title. 

It was 1986.  The war was Afghans v. Russians.  Parisian Lefevre joined a team of Doctors Without Borders as they made their journey, mostly by horse and foot, from Pakistan into mountainous Northern Afghanistan.  Normally, I pass up graphic books, but this one is brilliant.  Page after page of Lefevre’s photographs and illustrations drawn from the photos by Emmanuel Guibert tell of this dangerous two month long trip to establish hospitals in remote villages.   The book is as much about the photographer and his experiences as it is about Doctors Without Borders. 

I suspect that the tale he tells would not be much different now–20 years after his trek.   The difficulty of traveling in these rugged areas, hasn’t changed in eons.  In isolated valleys, warlords ruled then, and do so  now.  The villagers often suffered from war hideous injuries, and still do.   Only the name of the occupying foreign country has changed.  If you only read one book this year, read this one!

The Photographer is the latest in a series of books I’ve read in an attempt to learn more about that part of the planet which stretches from the Middle East to the Himalayas. 

More about the others tomorrow.