Alexander Stories – Vietnam and Afghanistan
Photography Exhibit
By Daniel Schwartz
Columns in the desert. Terror more radical than all previous afflictions of the most recent wars. Main enemy of America, the black squadrons, and now of Europe as well. Mare nostrum, escape route for the displaced. The sea, per se.
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| “… dossing on and under the benches” (Ernst Jünger, War Diaries 1914–1918) NATO/ISAF soldiers en route to their first Afghanistan intervention. Urgench, Uzbekistan, “Bentonka” Built by the Soviets in the 1950s to withstand tanks, the northwestern section of the Afghanistan Ring Road weathered three decades of war better than the Americans’ asphalt strip in the south. Ad-hoc pot hole repairing remains a source of income for children and war-disabled to this day. Farah Province, 27 March, 2001. |
Mediterraneus – the basin that “lies between lands.” A bridge for populations ever since the three inhabited areas of the world have been known. A consequential topographical feature of the oikumene and its finiteness. First on the disc then all the more on the globe. The possibility of conquering the entire world in one go. Initially on the outer edges of Asia! A javelin thrown in the narrows of the Hellespont. A clever trick of biographical-political staging. Crossing the countries all the way to Persia over roads that are still to some degree known. Self-conception as representative of divine authority validated through local Oriental traditions. Attrition is nonetheless simply a matter of time and greater distance from all that is familiar at home. An ephebe still, just, and then underway as a murdering torch. Although under the exclusive protection of a God the Father. A countenance stamped en masse – that of the Egyptian Zeus/Ammon’s son, manipulated by the oracle in Siwa with a ram’s horn in curly locks.
Released from the after-world, searching for the person behind the “Great Man of History,” forbidding actual and invented genealogical bands to decree the insignificance of one’s own self. He who aspires to be a “permanent hero” and build a lasting legacy proceeds without rest and expires before reaching middle age. Bellwether, whose imagined chosenness collapses when the hoard refuses to march on to India.
Natural trap of the mountainous stretch along the Indus, where every invading force goes astray. The occupation of old sites in order to deploy one’s might over the valleys and tribes is meaningless.
A. hangs his name on these places: Alexandria in Areia, Alexandria Arachosia, Askandria Paro Paizad, Alexandria on Oxus, Herat, Kandahar, Bagram, Kunduz – synonyms of recent mistakes and transgressions. Civilian casualties, targeted killings, secret detention camps. All consequences of covert operations against the insurgency, to which the coalition of occupiers gives legitimacy with their presence. The blindly promised reconstruction is mostly just for show, the business of zealous colluders and war criminals. The military enforcement of peace is not remotely possible without armed confrontations and losses on one’s own side. Both unwanted, both the case. Every announcement of success accompanied by the proviso of its inversion by the enemy. Amongst the occupiers there is surely more than one Parmenion. Deaf to his counsel, A. had already slipped into megalomania. After more than a decade, no peace agreement ended the ill-advised mission – that only occurs in a war with rules.
No modern state in sight. “The simultaneity of the non-simultaneous” is too crass – the coexistence of archaic models and global trends. Without outside funding, the government and national army will likely collapse. More territory than ever is under enemy control.
Here, the mission pretty much forgotten. Then suddenly this flood. The throngs at the wire fence in A.’s homeland. Not just Syrians. Afghanis, too. Emerging from the fog of our thirty-years’ war in the mountains of Macedonia. Everyone wants out, the friend in Kabul said in 2012. Those who stay lose their future before their lives.
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| The Void in the Cliff Niche of the smaller of the giant Buddhas (destroyed on the night of 8 March, 2001 under the Taliban). Bamiyan Province. |
The question of our role as repeat offender in the Orient arises. According to the sense of history, in which a return is only possible with parallel failures. Today in the valleys. Back then in the rice fields. In the countries of Indochina, the outcome of an occasionally covert war, in Afghanistan of a war that may never end.
Biography DANIEL SCHWARTZ
PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBIT:
During the Leukerbad Literary Festival, Daniel Schwartz will display photographs from his “Alexander Stories” series in the Galerie St. Laurent on the village square (Dorfplatz).
Galerie St. Laurent,
Time: see detailed programme.