Jonathan Steele: Afghan Ghosts ... American Myths
[Jonathan Steele, an international affairs columnist, has been Moscow bureau chief and chief foreign correspondent for the Guardian.]
“Explosion? What explosion?” Afghanistan’s foreign minister, Shah Mohammed Dost, inquired with an elegant raising of his eyebrows when I interrupted our interview to ask about the sudden noise I had just heard.
“Ah yes, the dynamiting,” Dost said with relief as another boom sounded in the distance and he realized what had misled me. “They do it almost every day, sometimes twice a day, for producing stones for construction, you know.” A tall, slim man with a neatly clipped moustache, Dost, who had started his diplomatic career under King Mohammad Zahir Shah and was now the most prominent face of Afghanistan’s Moscow-installed regime, wanted me to understand that the war was virtually over: “We’ve destroyed the main hideouts of the bandits and mercenaries. Now they can’t act in a group form. It’s only a few individuals who indulge in terrorist activities and sabotage, which is common all over the world. We hope to eliminate that also.”
It was November 1981, almost two years since Soviet troops had invaded, and the official line from Moscow, as well as its allies in Kabul, was that everything was under control. In the first weeks after the December 1979 invasion, Soviet officials had been so confident of quick victory that they gave Western reporters astonishing access, even allowing them to ride on tanks or drive rented cars and taxis alongside Soviet convoys. By the spring of 1980, the mood had changed, as the Kremlin saw it was in for a long war of attrition. There were no U.S.-style embeds, even for trusted Soviet journalists. The war became a taboo in the Soviet media, while Western reporters who asked for visas for Afghanistan were routinely refused.
The only way to cover the conflict was to endure days and nights of walking along precarious mountain paths with guerrilla fighters from mujahedin safe havens in Pakistan. A few stories that appeared in Western papers via this route were careful and low-key, but most were romantic, self-promoting accounts of heroic exploits, often written by untrained freelancers who saw a chance to make a name for themselves by donning a shalwar kameez and witnessing, or claiming to have witnessed, the latest Soviet atrocity.
By 1981, the Soviets were realizing their no-visa policy was counterproductive. A handful of Western journalists were let in, one by one, and only for short periods. In my case, the concession was granted thanks to my previous experience of covering the Soviet Union. That first trip to Afghanistan was followed by others in 1986 and 1988, culminating, if that is the right word, with my arrival there on a flight from Moscow on February 15, 1989, the day the last Soviet soldier was crossing the River Oxus out of Afghanistan on the great retreat home.
When I look back now at the reports and analyses I wrote at the time, it’s impossible not to be struck by the similarity of Soviet policy to what the Bush and Obama administrations have been trying to achieve with their more recent interventions.
The struggle in Afghanistan was then, and still is, a civil war. In the 1980s, its backdrop was the Cold War between the West and the Soviet Union. In 2010, the backdrop is the “war on terror” and the hunt for al-Qaeda. But the essence is still a battle among Afghans—between forces of modernization and those of tradition or, as the Soviets put it, of counterrevolution. Then, as now, foreigners tried to prop up a government in Kabul that faced the uphill task of creating a state that could command loyalty, exert control over its territory, collect taxes, and bring development to some of the world’s poorest and most conservative people...
Read entire article at World Affairs Journal
“Explosion? What explosion?” Afghanistan’s foreign minister, Shah Mohammed Dost, inquired with an elegant raising of his eyebrows when I interrupted our interview to ask about the sudden noise I had just heard.
“Ah yes, the dynamiting,” Dost said with relief as another boom sounded in the distance and he realized what had misled me. “They do it almost every day, sometimes twice a day, for producing stones for construction, you know.” A tall, slim man with a neatly clipped moustache, Dost, who had started his diplomatic career under King Mohammad Zahir Shah and was now the most prominent face of Afghanistan’s Moscow-installed regime, wanted me to understand that the war was virtually over: “We’ve destroyed the main hideouts of the bandits and mercenaries. Now they can’t act in a group form. It’s only a few individuals who indulge in terrorist activities and sabotage, which is common all over the world. We hope to eliminate that also.”
It was November 1981, almost two years since Soviet troops had invaded, and the official line from Moscow, as well as its allies in Kabul, was that everything was under control. In the first weeks after the December 1979 invasion, Soviet officials had been so confident of quick victory that they gave Western reporters astonishing access, even allowing them to ride on tanks or drive rented cars and taxis alongside Soviet convoys. By the spring of 1980, the mood had changed, as the Kremlin saw it was in for a long war of attrition. There were no U.S.-style embeds, even for trusted Soviet journalists. The war became a taboo in the Soviet media, while Western reporters who asked for visas for Afghanistan were routinely refused.
The only way to cover the conflict was to endure days and nights of walking along precarious mountain paths with guerrilla fighters from mujahedin safe havens in Pakistan. A few stories that appeared in Western papers via this route were careful and low-key, but most were romantic, self-promoting accounts of heroic exploits, often written by untrained freelancers who saw a chance to make a name for themselves by donning a shalwar kameez and witnessing, or claiming to have witnessed, the latest Soviet atrocity.
By 1981, the Soviets were realizing their no-visa policy was counterproductive. A handful of Western journalists were let in, one by one, and only for short periods. In my case, the concession was granted thanks to my previous experience of covering the Soviet Union. That first trip to Afghanistan was followed by others in 1986 and 1988, culminating, if that is the right word, with my arrival there on a flight from Moscow on February 15, 1989, the day the last Soviet soldier was crossing the River Oxus out of Afghanistan on the great retreat home.
When I look back now at the reports and analyses I wrote at the time, it’s impossible not to be struck by the similarity of Soviet policy to what the Bush and Obama administrations have been trying to achieve with their more recent interventions.
The struggle in Afghanistan was then, and still is, a civil war. In the 1980s, its backdrop was the Cold War between the West and the Soviet Union. In 2010, the backdrop is the “war on terror” and the hunt for al-Qaeda. But the essence is still a battle among Afghans—between forces of modernization and those of tradition or, as the Soviets put it, of counterrevolution. Then, as now, foreigners tried to prop up a government in Kabul that faced the uphill task of creating a state that could command loyalty, exert control over its territory, collect taxes, and bring development to some of the world’s poorest and most conservative people...