A Note on the Countryman Video…
Mar 03, 2009 04:03 PM
The sequences and photographs you see in the Countryman video span three decades of conflict in Afghanistan.
Soviet helicopter gunships of the 1980’s fly through the frame, as do Chinooks of today’s U.S. forces. An American A-10 takes to the sky, followed by an archive shot of a Russian SU-25 ground attack plane, soaring behind a forest of burial flags.
Try to spot the Afghan guerrillas of the Soviet war era – can you tell them apart from the Taliban and al Qaeda figures interspersed in the sequences?
Many Afghans no longer see the combatants as discernible friends or foes, not after 31 years of continual warfare. To them, the conflict and all its warriors add up to a single, terrible entity, a deadly threat that suffocates their families’ hopes of peace.
Yet the Afghans don’t give up, despite the failure of the world's great powers to secure stability. Will the "internationals" finally get their priorities straight this year, and begin making tangible progress towards success in Afghanistan? That's still unclear.
All we know for sure is that "freedom from war" is not just Countryman's refrain. It's the goal that must be achieved, and not only for the Afghans, but for any of us who claim to want to embrace peace, and make it our own.
Soviet helicopter gunships of the 1980’s fly through the frame, as do Chinooks of today’s U.S. forces. An American A-10 takes to the sky, followed by an archive shot of a Russian SU-25 ground attack plane, soaring behind a forest of burial flags.
Try to spot the Afghan guerrillas of the Soviet war era – can you tell them apart from the Taliban and al Qaeda figures interspersed in the sequences?
Many Afghans no longer see the combatants as discernible friends or foes, not after 31 years of continual warfare. To them, the conflict and all its warriors add up to a single, terrible entity, a deadly threat that suffocates their families’ hopes of peace.
Yet the Afghans don’t give up, despite the failure of the world's great powers to secure stability. Will the "internationals" finally get their priorities straight this year, and begin making tangible progress towards success in Afghanistan? That's still unclear.
All we know for sure is that "freedom from war" is not just Countryman's refrain. It's the goal that must be achieved, and not only for the Afghans, but for any of us who claim to want to embrace peace, and make it our own.