It's no secret that the military is attempting to wage a massive PR campaign both in the United States and in Afghanistan. Sometimes it’s stunning how effective it is at home, while quite the opposite is true abroad.
The Guardian recently published a video report by Sebastian Meyer on “counter-insurgency operations,” which are basically attempts at “PR campaigns,” as a soldier claims in an interview. Meyer even names the soldiers “front-line anthropologists…mapping out the intricacies of Afghan tribes.” The operations entail landing in villages and speaking to locals about various construction projects that the military can fund.
I’m sure the motives behind such actions are pure in at least some of the ground troops, but how is it that they fail to understand that tearing someone’s homeland to shreds pretty much erases his capacity for meaningful reconciliation? The whole humanitarian angle is a farce, one that is nonetheless skillfully put on by the upper echelons of the military.
Anyways, while this attempt at pacifying the natives by throwing them goody bags is going on, Meyers documents the real purpose of the mission: biometric data acquisition. Richard Tomkins writes, “in the Garmser District of Helmand Province in Southern Afghanistan…virtually every adult male in [the army’s] area of operation” has his details scanned and recorded.
Tomkins quotes Marine Corp. Caleb Owens discussing the practice: “It’s a good tool and no one since I’ve been here has objected to giving us their information.” Meyer’s video clearly shows one of these scans. What could be more humiliating than being held down while one’s intimate physical details are efficiently recorded? I doubt many civilians would voice objections to a group of heavily armed retinal photographers, especially in a region of Afghanistan that hasn’t seen foreign soldiers since the Russians were fighting the mujahedeen.
But then again, the army neatly skirts the trap of having to physically force each Afghan to submit to a scan: the same corporal brags that his soldiers tell the Afghans the scans are only needed for ID cards. IDs by their nature do require some proof of authenticity, so why should any villager question the practice? Yet the information gathered is used principally to add to a growing database of Afghan biometric information whose entries number approximately 800,000. To boot, all this information is exclusively in the domain of the US Army.
Noah Sachtman details exactly how transparent this program is: President Hamid Karzai was unaware that roughly 20,000 residents were coerced into providing biometric information in exchange for IDs until he saw a photo in the US weekly Newsweek. He immediately stopped the practice at the three checkpoints that where the photos were taken. However, it is clear that biometric scanning in the rest of the country continues despite his repeated objections.
A Marine officer nonchalantly classifies the practice of biological identification under “basic population-control measures.”
The consequence of these measures is a civilian population that is tagged and released like a herd of cows. Uttering a few soothing words during the process (offering cash for village construction projects) does not alleviate the humiliation of being tricked or forced into a system of racial subjugation.
Another prime example of how the media reframes the conflict: most of these articles speak in terms of military strategy or read like a press release straight from the army. There is no regard given to the basic civil and human rights that are being brushed away. Even sitting down with village elders in an attempt to sway them to NATO’s side is an incredibly misguided attempt to placate an indigenous population. No one forgets what the troops’ primary role is, and stowing a few assault rifles out of sight as if the Afghans will feel safer is little better (and possibly worse) than just kicking a few doors down, performing weapons searches, and handcuffing a few villagers.
