Perspectives of War: The Taliban in Afghanistan

SniperGuy

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/08/taliban-primp-sing-snipe-u-s-troops-in-rare-video/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHDCWldwRB4&feature=player_embedded#at=1075

Spend the next 21 minutes of your day watching this extremely rare footage of the war in Afghanistan’s Kunar Province — from the Taliban’s perspective. The video, released by an Australian TV news program, comes from Paul Refsdal, a Norwegian documentary journalist who embedded with a Taliban commander named Dawran earlier this year.

This interesting video, taken by a Norwegian reporter infiltrating the Taliban shows a more human side than we usually see. The commander tells a story about sparing a wounded American soldier, they high five as they manage to tag a video, they sing, pray, eat, fight. It feel like an important piece of media to me. Being able to see things from both sides is important.

Then my coworker said that it was treasonous for the Norwegian to have not shared the information he got with the US government, and that assuming there's an extradition treaty, the US would be able to get that guy arrested. To which I replied, bullshit.

So, videos and media of this nature. Important? Things America needs to see, despite that FoxNews probably won't touch this with a 10 foot pole? Or security breach that endangers American lives?

kildy

If he's not giving out allied information, there's no possibility of security breach or anything else.

This type of documentary is common outside of war (at least in the US) in the form of anonymous interviews with criminal elements. I don't see what's particularly horrible about the same concept of "why do they fight" in warfare.

The only way to look at this as "bad" is if you think it's giving a human side to the enemy (and thus lowering our willingness to paint them as subhuman and in need of eradication), or you think it's simply an enemy PR piece (which it IS, same as our press embedded in our units)

Drake

How can anyone say what a Swedish citizen says or does is treason against the United States?

Mind boggling.

Azio

Drake wrote: »

How can anyone say what a Swedish citizen says or does is treason against the United States?

Mind boggling.

We are all subjects of the Empire now. Perhaps you didn't get the memo.

Buttcleft

oh god he show's the enemy isnt mouth breathing demons who salivate venom that erodes our freedom which might actually have a plausible reason for distrusting to outright hating the west?

lets execute him

SniperGuy

Buttcleft wrote: »

oh god he show's the enemy isnt mouth breathing demons who salivate venom that erodes our freedom which might actually have a plausible reason for distrusting to outright hating the west?

lets execute him

Yeah pretty much.

Jephery

It would really be an easy war to win if we could demonize the Afghan population enough so that there wouldn't be a blowback from carpet bombing the entire country. I mean, we won World War 2 by reducing Germany and Japan to rubble and ashes.

It would be horrible and evil but it would be easy.

ChillyWilly

Buttcleft wrote: »

oh god he show's the enemy isnt mouth breathing demons who salivate venom that erodes our freedom which might actually have a plausible reason for distrusting to outright hating the west?

lets execute him

You don't understand, man. I need someone to hate.

Bionic Monkey

Your coworker is a goddamn moron, and I'm amazed he's remembered how to breathe for this long.

Altalicious

Even if the reporter were an American or [insert country here], it wouldn't be treasonous or morally questionable. He is a reporter, a neutral classification under Geneva unless they demonstrate otherwise, and as such is not obliged to take sides despite the stance of most news networks. The flip side of that is that while he is living and following the fighters there during operations, he is vulnerable to getting accidentally killed by our forces - as happened in the Wikileaks Apache video. More to the point, he is not actually commissioning them to fight our troops - they would be fighting them whether he is there or not, and actually are likely to be more predictable, take less risk, and pose less danger to our troops while he was present, purely because they could not trust him to keep a highly damaging attack secret. Following a Taliban section going about their day-to-day is one thing, but can you really imagine them letting a western reporter follow a high-profile suicide attack which great time, effort and financing have gone into?

As for the video...you do realise that Norwegian reporters don't just 'infiltrate' the Taliban? The access has been allowed, like several other reporters have been allowed access when it suits Talib PR. What is presented there is no more or less real than a US reporter doing a puff piece on US soldiers, as allowed by the miltary media teams. The Taliban are just as capable as us - actually, more so actually - at producing propaganda.

By the way, the title of the video (don't know if it was your upload) - Taliban are not Mujahideen. Call them that in front of any Afghan other than Talibs and you'll get a smack.

President Rex

Is this the same one from that other thread? The one who was embedded for a few weeks and then special forces raided a nearby home so the insurgents disbanded and one of them gave his phone number to the reporter so that he could continue reporting later. Then he went to continue the story and was kidnapped and happened to turn up a few weeks later as a convert to Islam?

Zilla360

AFAIK he pretended to convert in order to escape his kidnappers.

Res

The Taliban are pretty shitty people in my experience. They extort shopkeepers, intimidate witnesses, threaten voters, murder their own country's police officers, and take advantage of the ignorance of the populace (Afghanistan has a 5-10% literacy rate) to twist the popular perception of Islam to their advantage.

And last week they shot a little girl in the face.

Drake

The Taliban being shitty doesn't justify the wars we wage, the way we wage them or the wholesale demonization of Islam that seems to be going with it.

Buttcleft

Drake wrote: »

The Taliban being shitty doesn't justify the wars we wage, the way we wage them or the wholesale demonization of Islam that seems to be going with it.

to be fair the demonization of islam isnt from the war arm.

its from the stupid people back home.

Nartwak

"This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Journeyman Pictures."

override367

Res wrote: »

The Taliban are pretty shitty people in my experience. They extort shopkeepers, intimidate witnesses, threaten voters, murder their own country's police officers, and take advantage of the ignorance of the populace (Afghanistan has a 5-10% literacy rate) to twist the popular perception of Islam to their advantage.

And last week they shot a little girl in the face.

I agree, but the vast majority of people with guns and/or bombs in Afghanistan who are "enemy combatants" are members of neither the Taliban or Al-Queda though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obSOmABJorw

In this one only one member of their group, the bomber, is actually a "professional terrorist". Some of them are taliban, who will be taliban whether the US leaves or not. Quite a few of them are just farmers or laborers who decided to join the cause. As I understand it, this is pretty representative of our enemy in Afghanistan.

The thing that gets me is the second group here with them, foreigners who are there just to fight American imperialism. They have no stake in Afghanistan or its people and its disheartening that these native Afghanis are working with them.

Edit: thats not the video I was thinking of, if you can find it (its on netflix) it has the same name but its a Frontline piece I think, lots of the same clips though, including the guy bragging about personally blowing up 7 US tanks (which seems unlikely)

[Tycho?]

http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=96239

We already have an Afghanistan thread people.

I saw this video a day or two a go, or tried to anyway, because it has been taken down. Anyone know where I can view it, I am quite interested.