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Weird weekend in Afghanistan
December 26th, 2008 at 02:52
Recently a lot of things that we got bored with years ago have made big come backs. For instance, bewildering Take That exist and are popular again, and Wispa bars were brought back thanks to a grass-roots campaign and the astroturf planted by some advertising agencies on Facebook. Similarly, as a consequence of the Iraq war getting a bit boring, the war in Afghanistan is getting a lot of face time with the general public once again.
I’m not complaining about this though – for my money, Afghanistan is a much more interesting war. Not only is it an even murkier mess of international law grey areas, but the task is much more challenging: imposing a 20th century construct (democracy and the state) on a lawless 12th century system in a 21st century globalised world.
The baddies are much more complex and interesting too. Whereas in Iraq, the insurgents have been essentially just wankers with bombs, in Afghanistan the resurgent Taliban have managed to seize control of vast areas and have arguably constructed a rudimentary alternative system of government. Ordinary people there are paying tax to the Taliban and going to them to settle land disputes and so on, because they’re providing stability that the approximately 4 NATO troops in the country can’t.
So it’s no surprise that the good guys are having such a hard time sorting things out over there – after all, they can’t even find the Taliban’s leadership. What I think is interesting though is who can find the Taliban leadership.
Not a day goes by without a newspaper, news programme or whatever having a “special report” from Afghanistan – just in the last week I’ve read special reports in the Guardian and saw one on Channel 4 news and I was surprised at just how much access journalists get to the bad guys. The Guardian had their guy interviewing a regional Taliban commander, even staying with them whilst they were fighting the Americans at one point, and Channel 4 news had an interview with some hostage takers whilst the hostage was there.
Meanwhile the army are standing miles away, scratching their heads wondering where Bin Laden and Mullah Omar have got to.
So isn’t it obvious what we need to do to beat the Taliban? Send in the journalists. We need our Louis Therouxs, our Jon Ronsons, our Morgan Spurlocks, hell, even our Michael Palins into Helmand province to find the Taliban. If we get desperate, even Judith Chalmers would do. If they just act all normal like, setup interviews as usual, the bad guys will trot out the usual patter about the Taliban providing security and having to fight Jihad because it’s what all of the cool kids do, the journos will get their gripping interview and then on the way out, all they’ll have to have a word with the local NATO base to tell them where to look, and boom (literally) – problem solved. Given the frequency in which special reports appear from Afghanistan appear, I would confidently estimate that the war in Afghanistan would be over by the end of 2009.
C’mon Louis, your country needs your faux-naivety.
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