“The Weaponization of Nostalgia: How Afghan Miniskirts Became the Latest Salvo in the War on Terror”
“US national security adviser McMaster showed Donald Trump 1970s-era photos of Afghan women wearing miniskirts in order to convince him to maintain the 16-year-long US military presence in the country, the Washington Post reported this week…
Like the Europeans who supported the “civilizing mission” of colonialism before them, this new generation of colonial feminists jumped on the bandwagon to “free” Afghanistan’s women without considering what liberation at gunpoint would deliver.
Sixteen years later, the US is still occupying Afghanistan, and women are hardly freer. Indeed, heavy-handed US tactics have isolated large segments of the population and fueled the Taliban insurgency, which is now accompanied by an ISIS insurgency as well. While there are bright spots of progress across the country, these are often in spite of the US occupation and its support for the corrupt central government…
As Mohammad Qayoumi, who published a book of old photogaphs explained: “Remembering Afghanistan’s hopeful past only makes its present misery seem more tragic. But it is important to know that disorder, terrorism, and violence against schools that educate girls are not inevitable. I want to show Afghanistan’s youth of today how their parents and grandparents really lived.”
But for the broader English-speaking public, the point of these articles is often not reducible to dreams of a better future, nostalgia nor historical learning — especially when one considers how few other articles about Afghanistan on any other topic manage to go viral. Why is it that non-Afghans only care to learn about Afghanistan when there are pictures of women in miniskirts involved?
The point of these essays is to suggest that before 1980, Afghanistan was on its way to becoming a “westernized” society. Some even note that if the US hadn’t supported Islamist extremists, it might have remained one. This appears to be how the images were explained to Trump, essentially to suggest he shouldn’t give up on Afghanistan because Afghans could, essentially, be “civilized” again.”
