By Hal Myers
If you need insight into the regional environment we’re trying to support, take a look at Peter Tomsen’s book The Wars of Afghanistan, and a stirring documentary short, entitled “A Darkness Visible: Afghanistan,” by Seamus Murphy, one of the world’s best documentary photographers.
Let’s start with the book.
I did say “look,” since consuming this tome on the messianic terrorism, tribal conflicts and historical failures of great powers in Afghanistan may seem daunting. At 700+ pages, the book’s sheer size foretells the complexity of issues woven into the tattered fabric of a region at odds with itself, and seemingly everyone else, for millennia. Tomsen, who is a retired diplomat and educator and served as U.S. envoy to Afghanistan from 1989-92, has rare insight into the factions, influences and personalities that continue to percolate inside a caldron of instability provoked most recently by Taliban rule and the influences of Al-Quaida – but in fact, which reach back to the Soviet invasion in 1980, the British attempt at annexation in 1838 and, further still, to Alexander the Great.
Any serious attempt at understanding the current needs of the Afghan people could be well served by starting on page 1 of Tomsen’s book – and then, buckling up for a jarring ride over the historical terrain of a country in the grip of perpetual war, with a superb modern-day storyteller of high intellect at the wheel.
For those who contend that pictures paint a thousand words, the impressions conveyed through Seamus Murphy’s visual discourse on Afghanistan’s past 30 years are no less impactful – and in some ways even more immediate, as he loosely traces a family of men he met in Kabul, from Soviet invasion to the present. The video, which can be viewed for free at MediaStorm, is exceptional in the depth of its content accumulated over the years and the sensitivity that Murphy shows for his subjects, and the country at large.
For context, Murphy is an active member of VII Photo Agency, whose cadre of photojournalists are the rock stars of battlefield photography and have produced some of the world’s most iconic documentary images. Its stated mission is to produce an unflinching record of the injustices created and experienced by people caught up in the events of war, and the agency has lent Murphy, as well as legendary photographers like Ron Haviv, Antonin Kratochvil and James Nachtwey (see: World Trade Center 2001), a platform for depicting regional conflict from the inside-out – often at great peril and always with a keen eye on the impact of war on the local population… as well as the hope that seemingly abject destruction can spawn.
Witnessing the consequences of war in Afghanistan through Murphy’s eyes will take about 30 min., but could have a lasting impression on how you view that part of the world. You’ll also get a better feeling for why the work we’re doing at AAS is so critical – and that hope can also spring from construction, as demonstrated by our efforts to a build high-quality medical facility outside Herat.
Leave us a comment if you pick up the book or have a chance to watch the video.
