Educational Media Reviews Online

Opening with a scene of mostly men and boys flying kites above the dusty city of Kabul, Afghanistan, Kabul Transit provides viewers with an admittedly fragmentary, but unfortunately cloying impression of the capital city five years after the NATO-led war against the Taliban in the aftermath of September 11th, 2001. This primary scene will be both familiar and foreign to Western viewers – familiar in the images of people at play in a fairly peaceful setting; foreign in that some of the boys are in more unfamiliar-type garb or in the image of a lone girl who is among the men, but does not interact with them. The opening sets the tone for the documentary overall in that slices-of-life are presented to the viewers in a way that is at once immediate to their experiences, but also unfamiliar enough to perhaps warrant an engagement of interest. The sense of the first scene that these are “just boys” playing typifies the film as the viewer is constantly reminded that the people in the film are at once not at all different and substantially unique (especially in their experiences) from the audience itself. The increasing insistence that “we are all the same, really,” though, works more and more against any educational value of the film.

Indeed, it appears that the filmmakers’ intention is to present the subjects in a manner that makes their humanity immediately clear to audiences while downplaying any sense of “otherness” that viewers may prejudicially have imposed upon them. Unfortunately, residents of Kabul certainly must be somewhat different than the presumed Western audience. They have experienced and suffered so much, and it ought to be Kabul Transit’s place to provide a mouthpiece for their thoughts, ideas, and concerns. Still, though, the film can only provide fairly mundane episodes in somewhat oriental garb. Scenes of a young man buying a written spell or amulet for his lemon of a car, for instance, or images of the Kabul currency market are certainly not at all unimaginable to audiences, and the “foreign” feel of these scenes is made too concrete and too familiar to viewers as individual chapters unfold. The young man, buying an amulet, might certainly seem odd to Western viewers; but the fact that he seeks spiritual or supernatural aid for a “clunker” of a car is surely understandable to most audiences. (My surprise, honestly, was the apparent prevalence and sense of innocuousness regarding a written spell or prayer at all.) It may be that where our mass media and political monologues present Westerners with a very standard idea of life in a Muslim nation, Kabul Transit insists upon and proves the very diversified or even heterodox nature of all countries and faiths. Is there no debate to the man’s behavior? Is it normal, acceptable, perverse? The film needs to make this clear.

Again, through straight documentary, narration-less filmmaking, Kabul Transit presents a scene, makes it accessible to audiences, and explores the topic at hand, highlighting the many similarities but also glaring differences between audience and subject. The film focuses on three major areas: The NATO bases and soldiers, the new Afghan government, and ordinary Afghani citizens. This formula is repeated over and over, observing children selling cigarettes to soldiers, the Ministry of the Interior selecting weapons (from a catalog!), coalition soldiers describing rebuilding efforts….

A short chapter chronicling a women’s class at Kabul University provides some insights (and actual argument) into what Afghanis themselves feel about the plight of their country, underscoring how the push for women’s rights in the nation is generally a sham. There is almost all talk, they say; and what little action there is will keep women in poor, advanceless circumstances. A scene like this, though, leaves the viewer wanting more and highlights the essential flaws with the film. A later episode shows other young women describing how tense the NATO peacekeepers were, how they seem to regard the Afghanis as wild animals. It is necessary for the film to explore these reactions much more in depth. With chapters and scenes that are very short (running fewer than five minutes), it is impossible to explore any topic at length. Too, given that only approximately one-third of the scenes present “real” Afghanis, their legitimate concerns are necessarily muted. The speeches of and scenes involving Afghan government issues – such as defense and police – sound like any politician anywhere presenting sanitized concerns to the audience. In the light of daily reports of brutalities being committed in the nation, it is difficult to engage in the government ministry’s assertion that the most essential concerns facing police are education and equipment. Similarly, NATO soldiers are presented being profusely thanked by citizens, and they speak to the camera in almost universally glowing terms regarding their experiences, which sound somewhat like an army recruitment campaign: Soldiers want to be “proactive” and not “negative.” Later scenes have NATO soldiers interviewing Afghanis, who insist that crime is much, much lower as the war has continued. Even war orphans are shown to be deliriously happy. Surely Afghanistan is not so tame! Surely there is more to every story here!

Even when the topic of too few jobs or the poor general health of the citizenry is broached, the mood is entirely optimistic. If this is objectively true, it is difficult to determine what message Kabul Transit is trying to send; if, as media reports imply, it is not true, it is difficult to determine why the film does not make any violence or anger clear. Indeed, if the latter is so, this film is at best one-sided and narrativistically incomplete – and at worst propaganda.

A soldier central to the narrative admits that “Afghanistan is not clear in my head” and that the direction of the country is murky. This is one of the only sour – and admittedly realistic – notes of the entire film. But even the origins of this statement are unclear: What has the soldier seen? What makes him think this? Kabul Transit is unfortunately silent on this point, and thus cannot be recommended for audiences interested in or collections that focus upon Asian studies, anthropology, Middle Eastern studies, or sociology.