Broken Bodies, Disruptured Landscapes
67
What's Left
NATO forces brought a new wave of bio-power to Afghanistan in the
form of uranium-alloyed precision weapons used during Operation Enduring
Freedom, which have contaminated both people and land. For NATO such
contamination was justified in assisting the necessary humanitarian aid to
Afghan people.
Gittoes’ reluctance bespeaks the “historical crisis of witnessing”.^^ In a
similar vein Caruth and Athanasiou address the “unrepresentational nature of
trauma” and its unavailability for witnessing."*^^ Maurice Blanchot writes in The
Writing of the Disaster, “there is a limit at which the practice of any art becomes
an affront to the affliction”."^' As Gittoes discloses:
Never before have I felt the drawing of a subject’s physical
likeness to be so totally inadequate as a means of
communicating their presence. In that room the door between
life and earth was wide open—his bed suspended above an
abyss, Abdul clinging to life—his spirit floating inches above
his body unable to draw away—while his mother’s prayers
keep him suspended between realties.^*
In his essay on terrorism in a post-September 11 world, John Carroll
reminds us of the West’s relationship with Afghanistan. “We will destroy
Afghanistan, in order to rebuild it anew. .. Then everything will be back in
order, as it was.”*^‘^ As I have suggested, the introduction of landmines (an aspect
of the global arms trade) has disintegrated Afghan social networks and