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Below is the essay from a recent publication, Locating
Afghanistan,
just
released by Subversive Press, a new art book
publisher. The publication
accompanies an exhibition by the same title, currently
showing at
Gallery
Subversive in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
A PDF of the book may be downloaded from Subversive
Press website.
However, we strongly encourage everybody to purchase a
copy ($10,
shipping
included). We particularly ask those of you with
institutional
affiliations to purchase institutional copies ($40,
shipping included).
As
a new and independent publisher, Subversive Press
needs your active
support
to continue its work.
For more info:
Subversive Press
http://subversivepress.org
<info@???>
Gallery Subversive
http://gallerysubversive.org
<info@???>
==================================
==================================
==================================
|_ LOCATING AFGHANISTAN _|
In the break between the U.S. and its former allies,
the Taliban; in
the
passage from post-Soviet civil wars to post-September
wars on
civilians; in
the breach between the politics of profit and the
well-being of people;
between the holes in the mountains where the Buddhas
stood and those on
the
grounds where the bombs fall-
Where is Afghanistan?
___________________
|_ Infinite Injustices _|
If it is true that art is the medium of imagination,
and if it is true
that
"only those who lack imagination cannot imagine what
is lacking," then,
in
times of infinite injustices, the moral responsibility
of artists is to
incite public imagination.
Call this propaganda, if you will. And, if you have
doubts as to why
this
must be, note the dominant tenor of our vernacular and
contour of our
imagination, of not just the people (living and dying)
amidst ongoing
wars
(in occupied Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere) but
ours: We who live in
the
West.
"Daisy cutters."
"Bunker busters."
"Smart bombs."
"Collateral damage."
Unscrupulous, deceitful words invade our language and
our consciousness
as
so many occupying armies: They bury the dead and our
awareness of their
deaths (mass graves twice deep); and cover the
de-humanizing truth of
bombs
and missiles-machinery, measured by range, speed,
tonnage, destructive
ability and dollar-cost, producing an immeasurable,
unimaginable,
hurtful
legacy of shredded corpses and shattered survivors. On
all sides.
All in "our" name.
Disguised as "our" security.
Masquerading as "our" freedom.
We who live in the West.
We who are forced to witness the callous disregard for
the lives of
civilian populations there and for the lives of those
amongst us
(mostly
Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, Asians, Pacific
Islanders and poor
Whites) who (for the most) join the Almighty Military
as a way of
getting a
college education and earning a decent living off the
streets, those
who
are deployed to bombed out territories to secure gas
and oil pipelines
and
highways. We who pay for the operations, the machinery
and the foot
patrols
that guarantee the freedom and security of
corporations to satisfy
their
lust for profit.
We who are subject to increasing and insidious
surveillance. We who
live
with the knowledge and threat of secret detentions,
disappearances,
Guantanamo Bay, federal prisons run by private
companies. This at the
beginning of the 21st century that, in spite of or
with all the
pomposity
of progress, is but a reincarnation of last-century's
fascism staged by
Disney and brought to us live by CNN: Hyper-real in
style, with real
impact
on their lives there and our lives here:
We who took to the streets in thousands upon thousands
intending to
stop
war and came away only with a more acute awareness of
the limits of our
"freedom:"
The "freedom" to be disenfranchised, to be excluded
and ignored by
(successive) political administration(s) that have
bought and/or
bullied
their way into office without a democratic and
legitimate mandate to
act on
our behalf.
The "freedom" to speak and see our voices sink under
the deafening
noise of
live broadcasts of prime-time patriotic charades
landing on the decks
of
warships.
The "freedom" to be lost in a total atmosphere: inside
a sphere with
reflective surfaces, from which, they say, there is no
escape.
The "freedom" of the tree to fall into a black hole.
The "freedom" to be cynics.
____________________
|_ Enduring Freedom _|
In a world that is colonized and saturated by image
transmitted faster
than
the speed of critical reflection to our virtual and
physical homes by
corporate media-the very media that embedded
themselves in the pockets
of
military-industrial complex and oil cartels more
quickly than anybody
could
say "independent journalism"-we must reject and
question any claim to
mastering reality by image. We must scrutinize the
image not only for
its
presences, but always and especially for its absences.
In the age of
representation as mass-manufactured commodity and
profit-making
spectacle,
to arrive at reality through image we must interrogate
the foundational
processes of representation:
We must carefully see all that appears in the frame,
question it and
imagine all that was excluded, occluded or could not
be included in the
frame. We must see the order of things in the frame
and ponder the
multitude of other orders in which things could, might
and perhaps must
appear, in, off and without the frame.
In other words, the task of seeing critically must be
conceived as a
revolutionary enterprise for it must question
authorities, reject
imposed
hierarchies and envision other possibilities. Such are
practices that
Locating Afghanistan aims to promote. In this age of
fascist rule and
empire-building packaged as "democracy," the
fundamental differences
between independent art-making and embedded journalism
stem from the
artists' will to dissent publicly as well as defend
and preserve the
space
of public dissent, and in art's infinite capacity to
elicit subversive
questions and disrupt the ease and comfort of
consuming pre-packaged
answers.
These photographs were taken in March and April 2002,
during Babak
Salari's
trip to Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan, where
large numbers of
Afghani refugees live. This selection from the
photographer's
archive-over
5,000 analogue and digital shots-makes no claim to
providing a complete
picture of post-10/7 conditions of life and death for
many Afghani
civilians. Such claims are inherently false. No series
of singular
seconds
snatched through the lens can capture the experiential
or political
dimensions of such human events: Real politics take
shape in-camera,
and
trauma is experienced internally. And both are
processes that in their
temporal and spatial continuity fundamentally exceed
photography's
fragmentary shutter speed and fragmented frame, its
limitations and
fixations. As a recording medium, photography
ultimately fails to
capture
and reveal "the real thing." As an art, it shouldn't
need to.
These photographs were selected with an eye for the
spaces they open
through the absences to which they point. They must be
read against the
backdrop of all that we know or think we know or must
get to know about
Afghanistan. At best, they offer us indeterminate and
inscrutable who,
what, where and when, but not any answers to our
inescapable why and
how.
This lack is characteristic of the medium before it is
an authorial or
curatorial decision. However, it is precisely in this
lack, in this
obvious
narrative and mimetic lapse, that we, as participants
rather than
consumers, must find spaces for critical reflection:
The art of
questioning
what poses as an answer.
Our questions will ultimately be determined as much by
our individual
imagination as by our recognition of a shared humanity
that must
transcend
the stereotypes we hold of "others" and must never
rest easy when
governments, in alliance with profit, manufacture war
against people.
Anywhere. The only guarantor of freedom, this most
cherished and least
realized promise of "democracy," is our endurance in
holding
governments
accountable for the quality of people's living and for
the conditions
of
their dying. Everywhere.
_________
|_ 10/7 _|
Barely more than two years have passed since the
United States of
America
attacked Afghanistan under the umbrella of "war on
terror;" this,
unlike
the war in Iraq, with the involvement of all NATO
governments and the
blessing of most other states.
Let us hold in check the cynicism and the despair we
may fall into as
we
contemplate Afghanistan since 10/7:
Let us suppress the sigh that may escape us as we
remember that in the
first two months of carpet bombing of Afghanistan
alone more civilian
lives
were claimed than on 9/11 in New York, and that the
razing of villages
and
killing of families attending weddings and children
playing in their
yards
continue to this day. (1)
Let us defy the frown that may detain us as we observe
post-10/7
"reconstruction efforts" in full swing in the
outskirts of Kabul: Where
the
new class of rich and influential-government ministers
and top-level
officials who are either Northern Alliance warlords
and their sons and
in-laws or Western-educated and Unocal-connected
technocrats and their
cronies-are raising their mansions on the ruins of
poor people's homes
confiscated and demolished with total impunity:(2)
This in "liberated" Afghanistan that recently, just in
feel-good time
for
our holidays, was formally re-divided among Hamid
Karzai-a "Gucci
guerrilla" with Jihadi, Taliban and American
credentials on the resume
that
won him Afghanistan's presidency in Bonn,
Germany(3)-the Northern
Alliance
warlords-the very same criminals that have been
responsible for
countless
atrocities against Afghani civilians for over a
decade-and loyalists of
a
king who hasn't been for over 25 years.(4)
Let us arrest the anger that may rule us as we
consider how little has
changed in the lives of the majority of Afghani women,
whose liberation
from the burqa was celebrated as war's alleged grace
by the White House
feminists, but whose demands for guaranteed rights to
equal
citizenship,
security of person and freedom of choice were drowned
amidst the
threats
and noisy bickering of senior and junior patriarchs
and bargained
away-with
the blessing of fundamentalist mullahs on the one hand
and
"international
mediators" on the other-between Northern Alliance
warlords and Karzai
technocrats during the shameful display that was the
Loya Jirga:
This farcical, disingenuous attempt at refashioning
the Islamic
Republic of
Afghanistan in the image of a "democratic state"
according to a
blueprint
that remains true to its present-day American model of
"democracy;" a
blueprint mapped out and approved in Bonn without the
participation of
any
independent grass-roots women's organizations, without
any involvement
by
ordinary civilian Afghanis, and without any meaningful
representation
of
masses of domestic and cross-border Afghani refugees:
In short, without
the
participation of civilians whose liberation from the
Taliban tyranny
was
opportunistically proclaimed as the highest objective
of the war once
the
entire American military intelligence and might, this
army of human and
high-tech drones, failed to produce Osama and Omar for
prime-time
television viewing.
As we suppress, flatten, arrest and hold in check the
conventional
responses we are likely to adopt when we hear or think
about
Afghanistan
post-10/7, let us open the space for the question
whose answer is
likely to
also be key to our own liberation:
How do we regard Afghanistan?
_____________________________
|_ Operation American Liberation _|
Beyond being an object of our fantasy or a topic of
inquiry, beyond
being a
photographer's subject becoming a writer's subject,
Afghanistan is a
real
land inhabited by real people.
It must now be the time for us to re-enact our agency
as so many
individuals and collectivities whose histories and
imaginations have
been
animated also by concepts of liberty, equality and
solidarity. However
contested the interpretations and practices under the
banner of these
words
might be, they have come to stand for how we idealize
ourselves, for
our
image of ourselves. And we know what we must not allow
these words to
signify for us: Liberty must not stand for giving up
our civil
freedoms;
Equality must not mean survival of the technologically
and materially
fittest; Solidarity must not equate corporate
reconstruction contracts:
Not
in the language of our global humanity.
Locating Afghanistan must become a collaborative
effort to keep
Afghanistan
in the consciousness of we who live in the West. We
who must not allow
10/7
to be absented from our liberatory conscience and
imagination.
We who must remember. We who must act.
We who leave a mark for future generations.
On the landscapes of our life and imagination, and on
theirs.
Gita Hashemi, Toronto
28/01/ 2004
_______________
|_ Endnotes _|
1- For a report on the period between 7 October 2001
and March 2002,
see
Marc Herold, "A Dossier on Civilian Victims of United
States' Aerial
Bombing of Afghanistan: A Comprehensive Accounting
[revised]," at
Cursor.Org (2002), accessed 30 January 2004
<
http://www.cursor.org/stories/civilian_deaths.htm>.
Also, a
documentary
film by Scottish journalist Jamie Doran and Afghan
journalist
Najibullah
Quraishi, "Afghan Massacre: The Convoy of Death,"
gives an account of
U.S.
military's involvement in the deaths of 3,000 alleged
Taliban
prisoners.
See
<
http://tv.oneworld.net/tapestry?story=584&window=full>
for
excerpts
and more information on this documentary, which has
been widely shown
in
Europe but to date has been broadcast in the U.S. only
once by
Democracy
Now! <
http://www.democracynow.org/afghanfilm.shtml>.
2- See "UN accuses top Afghan ministers of land
grab," originally in
PakTribune.Com (2003), accessed on Rawa.Org (2003), 30
January 2004
<
http://rawa.fancymarketing.net/land.htm>. For a
detailed list of
officials
involved, see RAWA's special report, "Crime and
barbarism in Shirpur by
Afghan ministers and high authorities," Rawa.Org
(2003), accessed 30
January 2004
<
http://rawa.fancymarketing.net/land2.htm>. And,
"Karzai
'to
stop officials' land grab'," BBC.Co.Uk (2003),
accessed 30 January 2004
<
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/3103648.stm>.
These
incidents
have not been reported in mainstream American media.
3- For more on Karzai's background experience, see
"Hamid Karzai,
Pashtun
Appointed President," CooperativeResearch.Org,
accessed 30 January 2004
<
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2001/lemonde121301.html>.
This
article is a translation of "The new strong man of
Afghanistan knows
the
Western world well," originally published in
LeMonde.Fr 13 December
2001
<
http://www.lemonde.fr/article/0,5987,3210-7019-254716,00.html>.
Also
see
Marc Erikson, "Mr. Karzai goes to Washington," in Asia
Times Atimes.Com
(2002), accessed 30 January 2004
<
http://www.atimes.com/c-asia/DA29Ag02.html>. Karzai
was recommended by
Zalmay Khalilzad, initially President Bush's "defense
strategy"
advisor,
subsequently "special envoy" and now U.S. Ambassador
to Afghanistan.
Khalilzad's connections to the U.S. oil conglomerate,
Unocal, are well
established although rarely mentioned in the U.S.
media. For more on
Khalilzad, see Patrick Martin, "Unocal Advisor Named
Representative to
Afghanistan" on Centre for Research on Globalization
GlobalResearch.Ca
(2002), accessed 30 January 2004
<
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/MAR201B.html>.
Also see Jennifer
Van
Bergen, "Zalmay Khalilzad and the Bush Agenda," on
TruthOut.Org (2001),
accessed 30 January 2004
<
http://www.truthout.org/docs_01/01.14A.Zalmay.Oil.htm>.
4- For a detailed account of current abuses,
especially by the
Northern
Alliance warlords, see Human Rights Watch, "'Killing
You is a Very Easy
Thing For Us': Human Rights Abuses in Southeast
Afghanistan," July
2003,
Vol. 15, No. 05 (C), accessed 30 January 2004
<
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/afghanistan0703/>.
____________________________________
|_ Locating Afghanistan is a collaboration. _|
Photography: Babak Salari
Concepts and text: Gita Hashemi
Publication Design: Daniel Ellis
Surfaces: Haleh Niazmand
Digital photo editing: Gita Hashemi, Haleh Niazmand
Story editing: Gita Hashemi and Haleh Niazmand
Text editing: Mansour Bonakdarian
Design studio: True Identity Design
Special gratitudes to: Paul Sieka, Armen Kazazian
Printing Cedar Graphics Inc.
First published 2004
by Subversive Press
320 11th Avenue S.E.
Siute B 23
Cedar Rapids, IA 52401
Copyright 2004 Subversive Press
Photography copyright Babak Salari
Text copyleft Gita Hashemi
For educational purposes, free to reprint, reproduce
or utilize in any
form
or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now
known or hearafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information
storage or retrieval system, without our permission,
with our
knowledge. We
encourage you to purchase a copy.
Subversive Press is a not-for-profit publisher that
aims to promote
critical thinking through creation, publication and
dissemination of
independent arts-driven projects with a political
twist. Subversive
Press
is governed by an international editorial collective.
We welcome
proposals
from artists, writers, activists and community groups.
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