I'm reposting this diary (which got crushed by sen. Kennedy's funeral) regarding Afghan Star, a wonderful documentary I saw recently on British TV. The film won an award at Sundance.
In a nutshell, this is about an Afghani TV show that's a variation on America's Got Talent or Britain's Got Talent. The film follows the really dramatic and moving stories of four contestants as they attempt to become Afghanistan's favorite singer. People vote for them by texting their choice from their cell phones.
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Over 2,000 people auditioned for Afghan Star. Many of those taking part (especially women) are literally risking their lives. Yet millions of people watch the show
The four contestants we follow are Rafi, a boy from Mazar-e-Sharif with a strong voice and a pretty face; Lima, a young woman from Kandahar who fears for her life every time she goes home; Hammeed, a young musician and classically trained singer from the Hazara ethnic group; and Setara, a controversial figure from Herat who wears the latest fashions and Bollywood make up.
There are all to brief, heartbreaking clips of life in Kabul in the 1980s when women could sing and dance. Today, it is a virtual death sentence.
The Afghani government is under pressure to shut down the program and the bravery of its executives is awe-inspiring. Theirs is truly a "revolutionary" action in every sense of the word.
Here is a link to their official website.
In terms of how it relates to us, Afghan Star reinforced my conviction that our approach to confronting our enemies in that region since 9/11 has been deeply misguided.
Our enemies, overly religious intolerant muslim factions, were/are well aware that our culture was/is a threat to their values. Arguably, we won the Cold War against the Soviets just as much with jeans and rock music and personal computers than with missile shields.
By going after these factions militarily, by fighting them with men and weapons, we have engaged them in their arena of choice; we have validated them as equals; we have fought with their weapons (just bigger and more heavily) and arguably, we have descended to their level of savagery, further justifying their own fight.
When the exec from Afghan Star points out that even some Talibans vote in their contest, he makes us realize that, in a smarter world, we should have launched a cultural war, or an ever greater cultural war, instead of a military one.
Whatever money we spent on military hardware would have been better used giving away TV studios and satellite dishes, even giving away geostationary satellites, so that entertainment could have become our weapon.
I challenge anyone to watch Afghan Star and not feel deep empathy for this brave people who refuse to sink back into the dark ages, and deep despair for the western powers whose entire Afghanistan policies comes across as a hugely mistargeted, misguided effort.
(A recent example is this: according to a local paper, of the 60 cross-border predator strikes carried out by the Afghanistan-based American drones in Pakistan between January 14, 2006 and April 8, 2009, only 10 were able to hit their actual targets, killing 14 wanted al-Qaeda leaders, besides perishing 687 innocent Pakistani civilians.)
Even the simple, unfamiliar act of voting for someone (even if it is on;y a musical contest) is having an effect on the Afghani. Who knows where it might lead?
There, and not in all our CIA and military, is the answer to Afghanistan's problems.