The term Afghanistanism coined by an American journalist in 1943 is the practice by a journalist of concentrating on distant parts of the world while ignoring controversial domestic issues. It was thought at the time that Afghanistan was so remote that it was possible to write about it with no one able to fact-check it.
Over the years and more often than not it was the essence of it that was captured in Journalism practice. So your work was dismissed by your Editor as “going to Afghanistan” if you simply wrote away from the main issues of a story or failed to bring the core of the story. Still, Afghanistanism reigned supreme if you pretended that the Nigerian defence Academy had not been attacked and wrote instead about the sufferings of Madagascar in the worst possible drought since 1981. You would have gone to Afghanistan. It was felt that as a Journalist, you left a serious case at home in Nigeria and pursued a story far away- a pure and undiluted case of “going to Afghanistan.”
Back home in my backyard my spouse had elevated the term to that inexplicable creative disease “procrastination”. So although I would have multiple deadlines for my column or a keynote paper or an assignment to mark students papers, I would simply escape into a bookshop or go window shopping to prepare my brain for the task ahead. It is difficult for my spouse who I consider a critic of the Ibadan school of theatre arts and a man of impeccable logic to understand my bursts of “escape” in the face of piling work. In the end, having visited sites that did not concern the work at hand, I would settle down and get the job done, often very close to the deadline. But we are not all the same and that is how my work style has evolved and how my brain is structured. Be honest. I do get the job done efficiently. My burst of escape is getting better.
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Abu, therefore decided to nickname my process “Going to Afghanistan”. Soon it became our insider joke. And when I return from the rush of window shopping time and begin my work, he will with a chuckle ask if I had just returned from Kabul. It was a joke we both enjoyed which befuddled guests and sometimes even our children.
There are too many human lessons to be learnt in Afghanistan; fear, cultural imperialism, national ethos and the failure of an American hegemony.
But going to Kabul is no longer funny. The scenes from Kabul in the last week have turned my husband sombre and my stomach mushy. Who would have thought that this would happen and I mean happen in the way it has?
Men and women desperate to leave Afghanistan, children on airport tarmacs, blood, tears and people falling off a moving plane and dying. A 20th century tragic tale of a nation at war, a foreign nation involved for 20 years in a seemingly intractable war and mountain fighters who overran their country and took power within weeks of a foreign withdrawal. It is a script from movie heaven. And Hollywood is waiting in the wings to make money from a nation’s tragedy, the type not seen in a while.
The Talibans have taken over and reminiscent of Vietnam, America unfortunately does not look so good.
The images from Kabul say a lot about the human being. From the American point of view, how did this all go wrong? But from an analyst’s point of view, it’s about people, cultures, domination and resilience. The Taliban know their country, the Americans do not, the Talibans understand resilience but the Americans have had enough. In the end the hurried withdrawal left the Talibans with a lot of ammunition, military aircrafts and military bases (provided by America) to keep them going for a long time.
What about the Afghan national soldiers? What happened? Trained and sharpened by Americans. The US President, Joe Biden expressed disappointment that the Afghan national security fell like a pack of cards within 48 hours of a threat from the Talibans. The question to ask is if they were ever really part of the American plan for Afghanistan and whether the fear of the Talibans who are their kinsmen trump everything American.
There are too many human lessons to be learnt in Afghanistan; fear, cultural imperialism, national ethos and the failure of an American hegemony. Other issues I am still dealing with are the Taliban’s high powered strategy in taking Kabul, the fleeing of the Afghan President and the future of girls education in Afghanistan. For the extremist Talibans, just like their Boko Haram cousins in Nigeria, Girls education is a western ideology not to be copied. I hold my breath for women in Afghanistan, and all Afghans with the hope that the Taliban’s new rhetoric of moderation and their plans to have policies that will be accepted domestically and internationally will cause us all to smile in the end.
Still the sights at Kabul Airport unnerved even the strongest of us. The wounded, the dying, the hungry, the afraid. And the Talibans have not even begun to rule. Our thoughts are with Afghanistan but our thoughts must also be about us. For those who wish anarchy on our land must think again, those who perpetuate evil and perfect it, visiting violence on our sacred spaces must look to Afghanistan in the last fortnight and pull back from their evil thoughts and their horrible machinations. For the flames of a fire is no respect for persons. Afghanistan is the world’s collective shame. Power, greed, domination and lack of empathy.
While men cook up policies and plan wars, the dire consequences can arrive at the warlord’s door. The law of karma is truly around us. Sadly like Olatunji Dare opined in his cerebral article in The Nation newspaper on the 24th of August 2021, in the face of the happenings in Afghanistan- “Afghanistanism reconsidered”. “Afghanistanism is dead. They will invent another term to replace it.”
Indeed, in my rigmarole creativity, where on earth will my spouse consider I have gone when I travel the city window-shopping and all to open my creative mind? Madagascar? Sudan?
Going to Afghanistan used to be so apt. Let’s wait and see.
