The Soviet Union involved itself in many world affairs, such as the power shift in Afghanistan. This power shift began in the year of 1979 and continued until the year of 1989. Critics called it the Soviet Union’s “Vietnam,” criticizing the necessity of such violent quarreling (Central Intelligence Agency). The conflict between Afghanistan rebels and the newly propped up Communist government that the Soviet Union reinforced largely influenced this campaign. Such fighting caused a great upheaval in the lives of many Afghanistan citizens as the United States involved itself, largely due to their already preexisting hostile relationship.
The US mainly challenged the Soviets on Afghanistan soil to attempt to halt the spread of Communism. Afghanistan, while not the main focus of the Cold War, served as just one of the many stages in the years of 1979-1989 to showcase the battle for Communism. As aforementioned, certain critics coined the title “Soviet Union’s Afghanistan” to describe this conflict. This message reveals the futility to launch an intervention in Afghanistan. In fact, according to “The Afghanistan War and the Breakdown of the Soviet Union,” the Soviet government in the 1980s first thought this war as an insignificant “small-scale intervention” (Rafael Reuveny and Aseem Prakash 696). Internal Soviet propaganda “encompasses over 4,000 newspapers, a large book publishing empire, a nationwide radio and television system, and an incessant stream of public lectures” (Central Intelligence Agency). With such a wide expanse of censorship coverage at their disposal, I believe that the intricacies of this conflict grew transparent or warped in favor of the propaganda that suited the government’s agenda (Central Intelligence Agency). Specifically, the “agitation and propaganda component” of the armed forces lead many of their officials to understate the military and financial commitment required to win this larger than expected conflict (Rafael Reuveny and Aseem Prakash 696). As this “small-scale intervention” began to advance, it warped into a “decade-long war involving nearly one million Soviet soldiers, killing and injuring some tens of thousands of them” (Rafael Reuveny and Aseem Prakash 696). As such, the early indoctrination of its citizens within the Soviet Union’s multimedia propaganda platforms served to lull the population into complacency.
In the early 1980s conflict, the Soviet media supported the claim that the Afghan government requested Soviet interference in Afghanistan. They firmly asserted that their government required Soviet military forces to aid in humanitarian and non-violent endeavors. However, some tales of injured soldiers and war casualties crept into the media, despite the Soviets’ censorship initiatives. According to A. Trehub in their article “Soviet Press Coverage of the War in Afghanistan: From Cheerleading to Disenchantment” the military efforts in a foreign country distorted the Soviet government’s perception, but they maintained a firm grip of the positive spin projected in their media outlets. Trehub specifically claims that “from 1979 to 1986, Soviet media and leadership portrayed the war as an ‘international duty’, and as an exercise in ‘good neighborliness’” (Trehub 2). The Soviet media, in this regard, hoped to cover the controversy around the fighting “next door”; they claimed the war fought to regulate the unstable governing and to promote peaceful relations between two countries.
This “good neighborliness,” as portrayed by the Soviet media, however, comes at a price. Beginning in the early 1980s, refugees rushed from Afghanistan, children and adults alike, fleeing their war-torn country. Among them, Sharbat Gula, a twelve-year-old girl with the haunting green eyes that swept the nation, joined this great migration. Gula was a refugee who stayed in a camp on the Afghan/Pakistan border in the year of 1984. In Cathy Newman’s article for National Geographic, “A Life Revealed,” Newman exposes the hidden life story of the woman behind the 1985 picture which caused such controversy. Newman claims that Gula, her brother, her three sisters, and her grandmother all walked to the Pakistan border. In an interview, Gula’s brother explained that the Russians slaughtered people, planes bombed civilians, and their family decided they had to flee such a savage environment (Newman). The Afghanistan bombings killed Gula’s parents in 1983, which left her, her sisters, and her brother under the care of her grandmother.
Steve McCurry hoped to capture Gula’s fierce struggle for survival as he photographed her among the refugees in 1984. An American photographer who wanted to capture the intricacies of war and the devastation that it brought to the people, McCurry traveled to the same refugee camp that Gula and the remaining members of her family hid in. He hoped to bring media attention to the lives of the people who were trying to survive the war in 1984 like Gula and her family. According to his biography in National Geographic, McCurry has “covered many areas of international and civil conflict,” so he has an ethos in capturing conflict on foreign soil and dangerous terrain (National Geographic). McCurry specifically “focuses on the human consequences of war, not only showing what war impresses on the landscape, but rather, on the human face,” which can be evident in his most famous photograph of Sharbat Gula and her striking sea green eyes (National Geographic). These eyes did not smile, but glared, as Gula dared the international public to acknowledge the conflict raging in the home she had to abandon. In certain types of literacy practices, the art of posing a character to stare at the audience directly is called “demand.” Authors and photographers use this pose to “demand” or evoke attention on a particular subject. This particular case of “demand” evokes attention from the media to spark America’s interest in the Soviet/Afghan War affairs.
Certain public representatives claimed this photo managed to challenge the media’s focus away from the war. Since the photo has reappeared on the cover of National Geographic two more times after this initial viewing, one can argue that the photo created a significant impact on the media (National Geographic). Robert Draper, a representative for the New York Times Magazine claims that this photo has had “game changing effects” (Pictures). He essentially argues that the apparent demand from the eyes of Gula in the photo affect the perception of this conflict more so than the efforts of diplomats and relief workers. Additionally, this New York Times representative believes that Gula’s stare “stopped a heedless western world dead in its tracks” (Pictures). According to this newspaper’s perspective, this photo, as portrayed in the National Geographic media, forced the population to sympathize with the plights of the Afghanistan peoples: “we could no longer avoid caring” (Pictures).
Backlash in Pakistan and Afghanistan began after the release of McCurry’s photo, “The Afghan Girl” in 1985. The photo, while anonymous and mysterious to some, caused many problems with Gula and her attempt at a new life after the war made an orphan refugee of her and her remaining family. According to Ali Akbar in his article for the Dawn newspaper, “Nat Geo’s ‘Afghan Girl’ Sharbat Gula to be Deported from Pakistan,” Gula became the object of interrogation after a raid found a forged national identity card in her belongings in 1988 (Akbar). Akbar claims that National Geographic coined the term “Mona Lisa of Afghan Girl” to describe the impact of her debut picture. Through this, Akbar hints that the Pakistan government might have wanted to embarrass Gula as well as deport her to punish her for the notoriety from this photo. Akbar essentially asserts that Gula lost all anonymity in McCurry’s decision to transform her into the iconic face of Afghan refugees. Pakistani and Afghan negative views of women could also have made Gula’s perspective and reputation that much more frustrating to the male government officials.
Through this snapshot in history, we can only imagine the horrors of war and the utilization of the media to influence public appeal and sway the world to a single perspective. The moment regarding “The Afghan Girl” deserves our attention because without seeing images and proof of the ramifications of violent conflicts, these wars might seem more insignificant. Regardless of the lives lost and the people scarred, without public appeal and media representation, people will turn their attention elsewhere. Responses to “The Afghan Girl” shows us that, unless a problem is blown up in the media, no one would care about an irrelevant, petty border squabble between foreign neighbors. Without the notoriety and media representation of those victims like Gula, “The Afghan Girl,” their story will never make it out of the rubble.
Works Cited
Akbar, Ali. “Nat Geo's 'Afghan Girl' Sharbat Gula to Be Deported from Pakistan.” DAWN.COM, Scribe Publishing, 4 Nov. 2016, www.dawn.com/news/1294231.
Central Intelligence Agency. “Soviet Internal Propaganda.” Youtube, Youtube, October 26, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ishc15IVZ6o.
Pictures, Michael Shaw Reading The. “Thoughts on Afghan Girl's Third Cover Appearance as National Geographic Looks Back, Forward.” Reading The Pictures, Reading The Pictures, 2 Oct. 2013, www.readingthepictures.org/2013/10/thoughts-on-afghan-girls-third-cover-as-national-geographic-looks-back-forward/.
Reuveny, Rafael, and Aseem Prakash. “The Afghanistan War and the Breakdown of the Soviet Union.” Review of International Studies, vol. 25, no. 4, 1999, pp. 693–708.,
doi:10.1017/s0260210599006932.
Trehub. ‘Soviet Press Coverage of the War in Afghanistan: From Cheerleading to
Disenchantment’, Report on the USSR, 1 (# 10, 1989), p. 2.
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