Dispatches from Afghanistan

As I entered the premier military hospital in Kabul, I noticed six men lying motionless on their backs in their beds. One was an older man, the other five appeared to be in their early twenties. They all appeared unconscious and were kept alive by elaborate and complicated life-support systems. My guide Shekiba Hillal lead me to Rahib Doast, the patient in the middle of the room. Ms. Hillal is a university instructor and she is also one of my students in the masters degree program I teach in. The man in a coma, Rahib, is her nephew. Rahib is a 23-year old, tall, handsome and healthy soccer player and worker. And he was about to be engaged. Everything changed at about 9 p.m. on May 5.

When Shekiba came to class on May 7, she looked extremely distraught, shaken and unfocused. This is what she reported to me after class as she fought back tears and choking.

Blackwater International (now renamed Xe) at Work:

Rahib was just walking home at about 9 p.m. on May 5. One of two SUVs got into some kind of accident with a taxi; it was not a suicide collision. Two American contractors jumped out from one of the SUVs and started firing their AK-47 assault rifles, killing an Afghan, injuring two, including Rahib, and sped away. The four Americans, all former military, worked as military trainers for Paravant LLC, an affiliate of Blackwater, whose parent company is now called Xe. Paravant is assisting Raytheon Co in a multibillion dollar Defense Department contract. There is no agreement between the Afghan and U.S. governments regulating legal accountability for contractors. Two of the four contractors have escaped to the U.S.; the other two are with the U.S. forces in Kabul; and we are told that “an investigation” has been carried out. The parties involved blame each other for the episode. According to DoD information, there are 68,197 contractors in Afghanistan doing all kinds of things such as training the Afghan army and police, providing security and flying cargo. There has been next to nothing on this episode in the Afghan press, and scant coverage in the mainstream American media.

Back at the hospital:

I examined Rahib’s injury. The AK-47 bullet apparently entered underneath his right ear and exited at the top of the right side of his skull, which suggests that he was hit as he was fleeing the scene of the carnage or lying on the floor face down. But that is as they say, an academic question. Rahib has been in a coma since the fatal shooting on May 5; his eyes remain closed but his mouth wide open. I touched his limbs but there was no response whatsoever. He was breathing, but otherwise, looked like a tree trunk sprawled on a bed. There were wires, tubes and plastic bags attached to his entire body. I spoke to his Tajek Kabuli parents. They looked grieved, stunned, devastated and almost speechless. Rahib’s father is missing a leg due to a car accident. My student Shekiba said that the parents look twice as old. The family keeps a vigil round the clock. The family has to pay for everything which is an additional shock for the struggling family. They told me the Americans had given them $35,000 and had them sign some papers.

Reflections:

The military hospital is huge. While there, I saw people brought in with various injuries due to war. I also ran into the Xe man and four U.S. military men. I felt unbearable sadness, sorrow, rage and outrage. I thought about screaming “murderers,” “assassins,” “mercenaries,” “scum,” “criminal,” “invaders,” “occupiers,” “animals,” “get out.” But I kept quiet, and composed. Thoughts and emotions kept rushing and changing. As I looked at Rahib, I thought about the crucifixion; about the TV programs MASH and ER. I thought about my own brother Tahir, who disappeared at the hands of the communists and former USSR in 1979, and about what my mother goes through; and about how tragedy and grief caused my father’s death. I thought about the utter futility, the human and financial costs of war; the savagery and dehumanization of war and occupation; the criminal distortion of language into phrases like “collateral damage;” imperial arrogance; the lies and propaganda Americans are fed and the complicity and gullibility of most fellow Americans; the shamefulness of being an American; the massacre by the US-NATO occupation forces of some 137 civilians—mostly children and women in Farah province about a month ago. I thought about the occupation forces admitting to using white phosphorous in Afghanistan. I thought about U.S. predators controlled from Nevada hitting villages with Hillfire missiles. I through about Bagram prison—Afghanistan’s Guantanamo. I thought about how Washington intends to appoint Zalmai Khalilzad an Afghan-American and a cosigner of Project for New American Century as Afghanistan’s CEO. I thought about puppet Karzai and his corrupt, inept and treasonous clique. I thought about how the racist, immoral and complicit mainstream U.S. media keeps talking about trivia, but never or rarely delves into this criminal war and occupation. I thought about how our “yes, we can” liberal Obama is escalating and expanding the war and appointing a psycho assassin General S. McChrystal as commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. I thought about what can be done with the 5 billion dollars the U.S. spends each month on its occupation in Afghanistan. I think about how the U.S. is “losing” Afghanistan.
I just ran into Shekiba, she told me Rahib is still in a deep coma; I look at his pictures I took, and see him as a metaphor for the country reduced into a coma.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 8th, 2009 at 10:39 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.