Come Back to Afghanistan Blog #10

I had a really insightful and enjoyable freshman year. It had been hammered into my brain that high school would be so much harder than I could possibly imagine and the teachers would be way stricter, that they were babying us in middle school. But, in reality, that is definitely not the case. The workload was big, sure, but it wasn’t nearly as difficult as everyone in middle school made it out to be. Plus, I always do my work, so the idea of not being granted “freebies” wasn’t so menacing. I have had the most fun I think I’ve ever had this year more than any year of my life, at least as far as I can remember. My favorite classes were NonWestern History, Geometry and Literature, even though they posed a challenge. I really enjoyed having the freedoms I am granted in high school instead of the oppressive rules that dominated everything in middle school. I think I learned quickly but at first painfully that I needed to really concentrate on studying and that I couldn’t just not study and still ace the test like I used to do in middle school. I hit the ground running but quickly fell flat on my face when I used the same tactics I did last year. I ended up getting a C on one of my first history tests because I didn’t know really how to study, but now that I’ve developed study habits I think the rest of my high school career won’t be nearly as difficult as it would have been if I hadn’t figured out how to study well.

Come Back to Afghanistan Blog #9

President Obama recently changed focus from Iraq to Afghanistan. He did this for a few reasons, one being to protect the Afghani people from an oppressive Taliban reign. The Taliban has been controlling villages in eastern Afghanistan and western Pakistan, and its strength is growing. Rather than “blindly staying the course,” as President Bush so eloquently put it, President Obama has decided to shift our attention to the extending Taliban and extremist groups near the Afghani-Pakistani border. He has mostly decided to do so because of the denial of necessary equipment for troops in Afghanistan, which was caused by the excess funding of the war in Iraq. “For three years, our commanders have been clear about the resources they need for training. And those resources have been denied because of the war in Iraq. Now, that will change,” he said in his speech in late March. There is controversy over whether or not pulling troops out of Iraq to send them to Afghanistan is a good idea. Some leftists, a group called Peace Action West, have sent emails in order to get news of what the new surge in military force may do to the situation in Afghanistan. They believe that if we send a large sum of troops there, it will only unite the many insurgent groups and ultimately cause more American casualties and will further strengthen insurgent powers. However, many believe that the new flow of soldiers will be a very good thing in order to help Afghanistan regain its strength and rebuild its government, which is at the moment suffering great losses of power over its eastern provinces. US forces will be able to repress the insurgent forces with more funds and 17,000-21,000 new troops from Iraq. This could ultimately mean a new and better turn of events for Afghanistan.

Come Back to Afghanistan Blog #8

In the recent weeks, there has been much controversy over whether or not pictures of American soldiers torturing Afghans and Iraqis should be released to the public. President Obama recently stated that he thought they should be shown, which angered the pro-army and mostly conservative bodies for fear that the release of said pictures would enrage Afghan and Iraqi nationalists. This could put our troops in greater threat of harm from the Middle Eastern and Western Asian nationalists who would, as most would, be angry about seeing pictures of their fellow clansmen being shamed and humiliated. However, in the past few days, President Obama has decided that rather than put our troops in harm’s way and publicize the pictures, they would not be shown. This, of course, angered the liberals who believe that the public has a right to know what has happened in Iraq and Afghanistan and that the pictures should not be kept hidden. It is obvious that such pictures would infuriate al-Qaeda members and Wahabi Muslims, along with non-extremist groups, but despite this, I am airing on the side of the liberals. I think that even though these pictures may profoundly anger those who would be able to see their neighbors, brothers, sisters, and fellow tribesmen being demeaned and degraded, the public does have a right to know. I doubt that the release of these pictures would cause things like the current strikes and attacks that happen daily to increase in number or frequency. I do think that our troops are in danger, but releasing the pictures to the public should not increase the danger so much that they would be in total peril. The soldiers are out fighting every day, but just because some gory and belittling photos leaked through to the Internet doesn’t necessarily mean that chauvinists will begin to attack more frequently and with greater passion.

Come Back to Afghanistan Blog #7

Dr. Vesper’s visit to our class today definitely cleared some things up. His crude map drawing on the board, though seemingly unhelpful, actually aided me in understanding the geography of the region, as well as the places Hyder visited throughout the novel. I never did completely understand the relative distance from each of the places Hyder went from another, and the way he drew the diagram helped me put these locations into perspective. His visit also helped me understand what exactly happened at the end of the book. Though Hyder wrote in his novel that his father resigned, Dr. Vesper stated to us that he in fact was relieved of his duties for not carrying out his obligations. I thought this was amusing because of the way Hyder, as most do, made his father out to be a great man. All of us like to perceive our parents as exceptional people, no matter how far from the truth it is. Hyder was no different, and rather than telling the real story, told a skewed version in which his father could do no wrong. Dr. Vesper basically said that Fazel Akbar was a weak leader and that he had no control over anything going on in his own province. I like the matter-of-factness he had in his presentation and I hope to hear more about Afghanistan from him in the future.

Come Back to Afghanistan Blog #6

On Wednesday, a US airstrike on the villages of Gerani and Ganjabad in Farah province killed approximately 140 people, 95 of them children in an attempt to once again oust the Taliban from Afghanistan. However, the US military denied that the death toll was accurate. The International Committee of the Red Cross said that its teams saw many dead women and children, but they could not get an accurate overall figure. The US refused to release a number of the people that died in the clash from May 4-5. US military spokesman Col. Greg Julian said that, “there is no physical proof that can substantiate,” the number of victims that the Afghan government released. He also said that it was, “very difficult to determine an exact number and there’s a climate that encourages exaggeration.” President Hamid Karzai said that the strikes were “not acceptable” and has demanded condolences for the families of those killed and injured, $1000 for the wounded and $2000 for the dead. Karzai estimated that between 120 and 130 civilians were killed in the conflict. I would have to agree with Karzai that the air strike was unacceptable. I think that the efforts to repress Taliban forces are necessary and noble, but 140 innocent lives lost is not a reasonable amount of collateral damage from faulty intelligence or whatever the reason may be. In my opinion, war in general is stupid. I don’t think that people should have to sacrifice young men and women of their country just to get a point across. It is an unnecessary cost for usually a small reward. But I know that world peace will probably never happen, at least in my lifetime. There will always be disputes and revengeful feelings. It’s just human nature.

Come Back to Afghanistan Blog #5

I was surprised to hear that many of my classmates did not enjoy the novel. In my opinion, it was one of the most educational and modern books that we could have read for this time period. Hyder put his ideas into a highly graspable context, using well thought out metaphors as if they were simple sentences. The plotline was definitely one of the ones that I was fond of from the selection of books that we read this year; I would even venture to say that maybe it was the novel that I most enjoyed this year. The way he retold his story of going and feeling like a foreigner was something that I have always wondered about myself, being of Arab descent and never having been to the Middle East. I feel like if I went to anywhere there, I would be completely lost without the help of translators or natives, even though it is where I am from. However, there are both sides of me; on my mom’s side, my family has been traced back to William Brewster on the Mayflower. So, I am umpteenth generation on my mom’s side and the first on my dad’s. I think that the story was also very relevant to what is happening right now in the world. It gave me a much better perspective of Afghanistan and how the country is governed, as well as the American influence. I am embarrassed to say that I really had no idea about anything to do with Afghanistan before. I basically grouped it together with all the other Arab countries in that part of the globe, but now I realize it is a completely separate world. They do not even speak Arabic, and when the Arabs controlled the military base in Kabul the Afghans talked about them badly and made fun of their customs. The book really helped me understand what Afghanistan is really about in terms of government, culture, and more.

Come Back to Afghanistan Blog #4

I thought that Lions for Lambs was an exceptionally well-done movie. I loved the way the filmmakers had three entirely separate plots with the same main ideas all cut up into segments and happening at the same time. It made the film much more suspenseful because just as a scene had a new idea introduced, it switched to a different story, and every time you really got your head planted in that story and were waiting for the ending, the other story you had been watching ten minutes ago would elaborate on the idea it had introduced that long ago. The thing I especially enjoyed was the way that the filmmakers portrayed the ending where the two soldiers and best friends were shot by the Taliban. When they were in the process of being machine-gunned to death, each flash of the gun showed a different scene of their lives as best friends and students. This really made me feel mournful for them because they had taken the risk of joining the army and had been sacrificed in the process of trying to liberate Afghanistan, all thanks to faulty information about a mountaintop the troops were supposed to land on top of. The thing that really bothered me was the way the senator had decided to sacrifice noble men and women who did not know that they would be treated as a scapegoat for the “real” troops to go in and help rebuild Afghanistan. I thought that although he had attended West Point and graduated in the tiptop of his class, he didn’t know how terrifying and horrible war could be. He decided in his nice, cozy office in Washington, D.C. that he would have to take the risk and kill off hundreds of officers that willingly enrolled in the army who hoped they would make a difference. In a sense, they did make a difference by dying for their country and for the mission the senator put into action, but they didn’t make the kind of difference they were expecting to make. It disgusted me how the senator could make that kind of decision in order to make a “necessary sacrifice.” But, overall, I loved the film and hope I get a chance to see it again and better analyze it.

Come Back to Afghanistan Blog #3

In the article I read, the only pig in Afghanistan, a country where pork products are illegal, has been quarantined for fear of swine flu. The pig, named Khanzir for the Pashtu word for pig, lives in Kabul Zoo, given to it by China in 2002, and has been moved into a large space with lots of windows and fresh air, according to the zoo’s director, Aziz Gul Saqib. They hope that the fears of swine flu will go down soon so that he can be put back into his pen, where he enjoyed grazing next to deer and goats. The only reason Khanzir had been moved into isolation was that in Afghanistan, the news has shown pigs with a disease that can infect humans, and some visitors at the zoo had already expressed views of fear that the pig could be carrying the H1N1 virus, or swine flu. They quarantined him so that other visitors to the zoo would not be nervous or panicked when they saw the pig. However, Khanzir is very lonely being the only pig in Afghanistan, says Mr. Saqib, and hopefully they will be able to find a female to keep him company. But, because of the swine flu outbreak, they want to wait until the disease clears up to make sure they don’t infect Khanzir with the virus and possibly people who come to the zoo. I thought the basis of this article was absolutely hilarious. The way they portrayed the pig as some sort of rare creature that people marvel over was probably the part that made it funny because of my own being from Indiana and knowing that pigs are one of the most common livestock in my experience. All in all, I sort of felt sorry for the pig, being the only one of its kind in a foreign land. Hopefully they will be able to find a mate for Khanzir soon.

Come Back to Afghanistan Blog #3

In the article I read, the only pig in Afghanistan, a country where pork products are illegal, has been quarantined for fear of swine flu. The pig, named Khanzir for the Pashtu word for pig, lives in Kabul Zoo, given to it by China in 2002, and has been moved into a large space with lots of windows and fresh air, according to the zoo’s director, Aziz Gul Saqib. They hope that the fears of swine flu will go down soon so that he can be put back into his pen, where he enjoyed grazing next to deer and goats. The only reason Khanzir had been moved into isolation was that in Afghanistan, the news has shown pigs with a disease that can infect humans, and some visitors at the zoo had already expressed views of fear that the pig could be carrying the H1N1 virus, or swine flu. They quarantined him so that other visitors to the zoo would not be nervous or panicked when they saw the pig. However, Khanzir is very lonely being the only pig in Afghanistan, says Mr. Saqib, and hopefully they will be able to find a female to keep him company. But, because of the swine flu outbreak, they want to wait until the disease clears up to make sure they don’t infect Khanzir with the virus and possibly people who come to the zoo. I thought the basis of this article was absolutely hilarious. The way they portrayed the pig as some sort of rare creature that people marvel over was probably the part that made it funny because of my own being from Indiana and knowing that pigs are one of the most common livestock in my experience. All in all, I sort of felt sorry for the pig, being the only one of its kind in a foreign land. Hopefully they will be able to find a mate for Khanzir soon.

Come Back to Afghanistan Blog #2

I would definitely say that This American Life has cleared up a great deal of things that I was unsure of before about the book. For example, the Khyber Pass travel was much clearer to me when I heard Hyder speaking about it rather than when I had read about it. I would guess this is partly because of Hyder’s writing style, in the sense that he will talk a great deal about the actual storyline in Afghanistan and then throw in here and there little anecdotes about something related, but that did not actually happen at the same time as the travels and occurrences while he was there. It also explained much more clearly what happened at the loya jirga. I had gotten a different impression from reading about it than I had from hearing Hyder talk from the loya jirga and actually listening to the sounds of the music and the people in the background. The ability to hear what happens definitely helps your sense of visualizing what happens, at least in my opinion. It lets you get a different perspective of the situation as well. I actually thought it was slightly funny when I heard the band play the national anthem of Iran because they were so bad and yet it was the best they could do. It sort of showed, like Hyder said, a sense of persistence, no matter what happened, as a sort of metaphor for the country’s struggle. The thing that I found most interesting was when Hyder said that the violence had become almost normal to him and that he had also found it weird. As I stated in my last blog, I think that the violence is one of the things that I could not adapt to, and yet after only a short time there he regarded the guns and the daily rocket strikes to be normal everyday occurrence. But, overall, being able to listen to Hyder’s radio entries did let you get a glimpse of what you could not see in the book. It clarified the unclear and allowed you to visualize the story much more easily. I am ecstatic that I was able to listen to it; it really did help with comprehending more of the novel.

Come Back to Afghanistan Blog #1

I have so far greatly enjoyed reading Come Back to Afghanistan. I, being half Middle Eastern, have always wondered how I would fit into the culture if I went there. This book talks about the challenges and struggles of a 17-year-old man living in America when he decides to go to his family’s homeland of Afghanistan. He calls himself Afghani, as I would define myself as Yemeni and Egyptian. However, I believe that if I went to either of my family’s home countries, I would not fit in at all. Hyder spoke Pashtu, while I speak no Arabic. I fear that if I ever went there I would be more like a tourist than a person returning home. If I were in Hyder’s shoes, I would at least have advantages such as speaking two languages that are probably the most useful in the area. I not only admire the actual plot of the book, but also the way that the story is written. Hyder throws in little anecdotes about, for instance, buying shoes in America before coming to Afghanistan and trying to pick out the right pair, while in the storyline he talks about hiking in them. It can be slightly confusing, though, because sometimes the events that happened long before he went on the trip can blend together in your mind as things that he did while he was there. Despite that, most of the time there is an obvious border between the past and present. The thing that I especially found interesting was the way that Hyder in a sense adapted to the environment. When he first came to Afghanistan, I would describe him as a jumpy American who had never really been exposed to real violence. After a few months, he had become completely accustomed to the explosions in the middle of the night and the guns that people had set on their mantles and bedside tables. I’m sure that after a few months of living anywhere you would get used to the new and foreign customs, but the violence is probably one thing that I could not live with or get accustomed to. As an American, being around guns is a dangerous and scary thought, but when you live in a place like Afghanistan, it is probably a very good idea to carry one with you because you don’t know when a random ambush will happen, much like the one that happened to Hyder when he was traveling with the American soldiers. Overall, my thoughts on this book lean heavily towards it being very worth reading.