"Ghosts of Afghanistan: The Haunted Battleground" by Jonathan Steele
Jeff Glor talks to Jonathan Steele about, "Ghosts of Afghanistan," a powerful book about Afghanistan's tortured recent history, and what it might take to turn things around.
Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?
Jonathan Steele: An extraordinary exhibition on the Afghan war opened in central Moscow in 1991, two years after the Soviet Union withdrew its troops. The exhibition's disparate and rather clumsily assembled images made it obvious that it had put together by a committee rather than a single curator.
One section had been prepared by the Soviet Army High Command and consisted of tanks, guns and other hardware. Another was put together by dead soldiers' families, and showed dog-tags, photos of young men in uniform, the yellowing envelopes of letters sent back from the front-line, and a few vases of flowers.
I was living in Moscow at the time as the Guardian's Moscow Bureau Chief and I was particularly struck by the exhibition's third section. It consisted of paintings and sketches of Afghanistan by war artists who had been sent there by the Soviet authorities.
One picture stood out for me. Painted by an artist called Gennadi Zhivotov, it was like a split screen. The upper two-thirds of the picture showed four wounded Soviet soldiers in a landscape of khaki-colored hillsides with helicopters in the background. The lower third of the picture showed men in suits. They were the top Afghan and Soviet leaders sitting at a table in the Kremlin and signing documents on friendship and cooperation between their countries. The painting was called sarcastically Boys Playing at War.
You could not see the wounded soldiers' feet. The lower part of the picture cut them off so that the four sad-faced young men with blank expressions seemed to be hovering above the men who had sent them into battle like ghosts. I was deeply impressed and persuaded the artists to paint me a copy which now hangs in our home in London, as a permanent reminder of the folly of foreigners intervening in Afghanistan.
Since 1991 there have been more foreign ghosts. In addition to the 15,000 Soviet soldiers who died in the 1980s there have been over 1500 Americans and almost 400 British in the last ten years. And let's not forget the far larger number of Afghan soldiers and civilians who have lost their lives, anywhere between 600,000 and 1,500,000.
I've been reporting from Afghanistan off and on for thirty years and this book is my attempt to sum up what I've witnessed and to draw conclusions.
JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?
JS: I was surprised by the similarity of the US intervention to the Soviet one. Both were wars of choice, motivated by anger and a desire for revenge but with very little thought given to the consequences. In both cases the foreigners were aiming for regime change. They expected it would be quick and they could soon withdraw.
In both cases there was mission creep and Soviet as well as American commanders and their political masters started on nation-building. In both cases armed resistance developed and intensified. What I found especially startling was that the Americans fell into the same trap as the Russians, even though the Americans should have known better. After all, they had armed and supported the insurgency which caused the Russians so much trouble. How could Washington have failed to see that its own intervention would soon provoke jihad and armed resistance from rural Afghans too?
The one difference between the Russians and the Americans is that after a few years the Soviet military realized the war was unwinnable. When Soviet politicians, led by Mikhail Gorbachev, decided to withdraw, they accepted the decision with good grace and in some cases with enthusiasm. They did not succumb to the optimism that still characterizes US military thinking in Afghanistan, in the face of all the evidence that military victory is impossible.
JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer?
JS: I would be practicing yoga, playing tennis, enjoying strolls round our ancient cottage in the East Anglian countryside, and reading.
JG: What else are you reading right now?
JS: I've recently completed Sarah Bakewell's marvelous biography of the French philosopher, Montaigne, called "How to Live." As someone who's interested in war, I've also just re-read "Fortunes of War," Olivia Manning's brilliant evocation of the British in Egypt during World War Two. It seemed especially relevant while Britain and France were again fighting in Libya this summer, or at least over Libya with their warplanes.
JG: What's next for you?
JS: I'm pausing in book-writing for the moment. Not counting three books that I've co-authored with other people, I've written six books over the last forty years. With the exception of "Ghosts of Afghanistan," they were all written in my spare time while holding down a job as a reporter and newspaper columnist. It takes me about three years to get pregnant with a new idea, so at the moment I'm just looking after my latest offspring and hoping it gets noticed and admired.
MORE VIDEO:
Steele believes the war could go on and on, like a war of attrition.
For more on "Ghosts of Afghanistan," visit the Counterpoint website.