(Kabul, Afghanistan)
The polling stations have just closed across Afghanistan, on an election day inevitably marked by violence in a country once beautiful, but now a victim of Western rape.
The other night I was flicking and stopped on a Panorama report about women’s rights and the Taleban, surprised that an English television programme should suddenly be sympathetic to Afghans, let alone Afghan women. The journalist talked about today’s elections and Karzai’s militant social politics. Women who had attempted to burn themselves to death were interviewed, their hairless heads still wrapped in cloth. They had tried to reach freedom, but now bandages replaced the hijab.
Then the journalist muttered something like “British soldiers died in vain”.
Aha.
The programme wasn’t about Afghanistan or the atrocious situation that has arisen as a result of Western meddling and murdering, it was the usual nationalistic cry of “me, me, me”. It wasn’t about middle-aged Afghan women and their rights, it was about young lads from a rich country and how they had been “murdered”. It wasn’t about young girls and the possibility of a better life through education, rather it was about how badly the English have educated their own kids so that they think it is fine to go off round the world killing innocent people.
There was a photo on a sideboard of a young lad in military fatigues, striking a playground pose and brandishing a gun with the bayonet fixed. The bayonet, rather than the young lad’s face, was the focus of the photograph as if to say “Let’s go and disembowel some towelheads”.
Is it a shame that this boy died? Of course it is. Is it a shame that many other British soldiers have died? Indeed. But if one life is equal to any other life it is a far greater shame that between 11,000 and 31,000 Afghan civilians have died at the hands of fixed bayonets that should not have been there in the first place.
Yes, that lad died in vain, because in a rich Western country full of opportunities that places like Afghanistan do not have he went looking for trouble. And all soldiers die in vain because war is unnecessary. Panorama should be making programmes that could show the English that they have no right to put a gun to young Afghan girls’ heads. Then maybe their own little boys will stop dying.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
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