The Afghans who used to live here, more than 10,000, had been gone for several years, their abandoned mud-brick homes slowly melting into the dusty valley. Insurgents were using the place for R&R. At night, all you heard were the jackals, ululating like veiled, grieving women. The fact that Now Zad had no civilian residents, much less any police, had somehow escaped the notice of the coalition planners who had given the Marines their mission.
—Kristin Henderson, in what seems to be an otherwise servicable account of the Marines operating in Now Zad, Helmand province. When I was in Afghanistan, I must have not noticed how all those grieving burqas sound like jackals. Silly me.
But note the language here. Of course, Henderson is adopting the breezy, vaguely 2nd person account so-called creative non-fiction has adopted in an attempt to feel compelling (and which I deeply dislike). It’s misleading while trying to be interesting, but avoids too much fact while not quite straying into memoir or biography territory—sort of like a disappointing bastard child type of journalism, firmly convinced it is relevant. Then again, that’s just a style complaint, and I can’t change the fact that it is a style ascendant in the journalism industry.
On a broader note, I think we’re starting to reach the point at which you can only tell the same story so many times: U.S. military comes to town, finds out things are worse than they realized, learns their training sucks, and must adapt. Cue gunfire, the agonizing death of comrades, and the realization that you finally get it, and the guys who come to replace you in a few months will be better off as a result. Rinse, repeat.
There are a lot of compelling stories to tell about Afghanistan—even within the military, as they try new things, or must face things no reasonable person could possibly have expected. But, and I hope I can say this without disrespecting anyone deployed there, the standard narrative about Afghanistan is really tired now. We know this story, it no longer warrants 4,000-word Sunday features. There are, however, other, equally compelling things going on that are outside the standard American-soldier-in-Afghanistan framework. We’ve tried to highlight some of them here—they do happen. Why aren’t those being written in the Sunday papers?
Update: This AP story about Now Zad is quite excellent.
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1771 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust
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Well, you know, there’s this muffled quality to the howl of Helmand jackals that makes the listener think specifically of *veiled* women.
Nawzad was a bustling little backwater the one time I visited in 2005. The district governor at the time was a competent, sharp guy with big plans for the area. I think that’s why it always makes me a little sadder to read about Nawzad these days than those other jackal-haunts of upper Helmand, Musa Qala and Kajaki bazaar.
I’ve just finished reading James Fergusson’s book A Million Bullets, about the British fighting in Now Zad from 2006 onwards. So interesting to read the same story but with the Gurkhas replaced by the Marines, without much recognition of the repitition.
Amen to this! Seriously, for someone who tracks news on Afghanistan as part of her job, it gets a bit tiring to read the same lengthy stories over and over, because I know there must be other stories out there to tell. I’m curious though, and I’m not sure if you’ll be able to answer this, but how do all these journalists get “embedded” out there in the first place?
For the most part, they just ask. Some, like Max Boot, are invited because the Pentagon knows the story they’ll write before they do.
Part of why these stories are all the same is the MOC — Media Operations Center — really only wants one story told, about how the soldiers are finally “getting it.” When reporters get approval to come into the country, they contact whichever Division is running things, or NATO if they’re going down south, and they’re then placed into contact with the local PAO, or Public Affairs Office. They then handle figuring out which unit to embed the reporters in, and depending on how good the reporter is they either get a good story (Greg Jaffe’s recent story about the company commander in Kunar is an excellent example), or they get a template, which is what seems to have happened here.
Either way, unfortunately, it is all VERY scripted right up until the moment the bullets start firing.
Really good, independent journalists are rare in Afghanistan. Badasses like Dexter Filkins, who can navigate the military but also tell stories outside their planned arc, are precious and uncommon. Most just zip in for a week, dutifully report the stories they’re told to report, and zip back to New York or DC.