Feb
13
8:19 PM
Slideshow: A photographer who couldn’t forget Afghanistan
Westerners have come and gone in Afghanistan, but photographer Robert Nickelsberg kept returning to the war-ravaged country.
He'd been at Time magazine’s New Delhi bureau for a year, when he made his first trip in 1988. It was a historical moment: The last throes of one of modern history’s bloodiest conflicts, which gave way to another era, and then another, of Afghanistan’s now 35 years of constant war.
With U.S. troops withdrawing, and Afghanistan facing another enormous transition, Nickelsberg collected his photos into a book, “Afghanistan: A Distant War,” published at the end of last year. His intimate portraits cover the sweep of Afghanistan’s modern history. Here are just a few:
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In April 1989, military cadets march in Kabul to honor the Saur Revolution, the Afghan communist party’s seizure of government 11 years earlier. For almost its entire time in power, Soviet troops had been fighting insurgent groups, the Mujahideen, on its behalf. “The Soviet Army had already killed a million people,” Nickelsberg told America Tonight, about the time when he first arrived. “A lot of violence to throw down on people in less than 10 years.”
Robert Nickelsberg
In the largest covert operation in its history, the CIA funneled billions of dollars to the Mujahideen, in close cooperation with Pakistan. Critics of the operation point to the militant Islamic groups that received U.S. help, and to the controversial resistance leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who received significant Pakistani support. In this February 1989 photo, a Mujahideen fighter carries a U.S.-made stinger missile launcher up a hill near Jaji, Afghanistan.
Robert Nickelsberg
Afghan students read the Koran at a madrassa funded by Afghan Mujahideen commander Jalaluddin Haqqani in May 1990. In these early days of covering Afghanistan, Nickelsberg says both civilians and the mujahideen, who had only ever been exposed to government-controlled media, took a liking to his camera. “They also didn’t understand the cycle of taking a picture and seeing it printed,” he said. “They would never see the final copy.”
Robert Nickelsberg
“He is known as the Don Corleone of Afghanistan,” Nickelsberg said of Haqqani. “He's essentially the first person to start looking for funding for global jihad outside of Afghanistan.” An early convert to global jihad, Haqqani, who’s still alive today, opened training camps to Muslims willing to fight, and befriended Osama bin Laden. This May 1990 photo was taken at base camp in Khost, near the Pakistan border.
Robert Nickelsberg
In March 1992, a month before the Mujahideen took Kabul, a boy sells the government communist party newspaper on the city’s streets. “A very industrious boy, there’s a good chance that he’s not literate,” said Nickelsberg. A person behind the young hawker was reading the paper out loud, he added, “to the people around him who are also unable to read.”
Robert Nickelsberg
With the Cold War over, and the Mujahideen in power, Afghanistan devolved into a bloody civil war. The different factions agreed to share power, but one of the leaders refused, and began rocketing Kabul. Chaos ensued. Mahboba, a newsreader for Radio Afghanistan, made this appeal in September 1993: “Now that the call for peace has reached every household, every region, and in every tongue, brothers, fathers and mothers: let’s rebuild our country peacefully, in friendship.”
Robert Nickelsberg
In 1994, an Islamic fundamentalist student movement emerged, advocating for order and Islamic law. The husband of the woman in this October 1996 photo was a mujahideen fighter, killed while battling this new force, known as Taliban. She was one of between 30,000 and 50,000 war widows in Kabul at the time, Nickelsberg said, and they received little support to care for their families.
Robert Nickelsberg
This January 1996 photo shows a ravaged science classroom in a Kandahar school, the first area controlled by the Taliban. Propelled by the support of ethnic Pashtuns, and the generosity of Pakistan’s leaders, their forces rapidly took over great swaths of the country. The Taliban’s brutal interpretation of Islamic law, particularly with respect to women and human rights, became well-known around the world. The public was less aware of how the regime harbored the Al Qaeda leadership.
Robert Nickelsberg
Taliban fighters fire at retreating forces in September 1996, the same month they took control of the capital. In two and a half years, Mullah Omar went from an obscure guerilla commander to the supreme ruler of 20 of Afghanistan’s 32 provinces. The Taliban went on to consolidate its power, and create one of the least tolerant societies in the world. Military training centers thrived in the country’s borderlands, with many foreign foot soldiers for jihad brought in on bin Laden’s dime.
Robert Nickelsberg
When the Taliban took control, it was much harder for Nickelsberg to cover the war. “They said pictures of human beings weren’t permitted,” he said. “Particularly, photographs of women were not permitted.” This June 2001 photo was taken in Hazra-i-Sayeed, one of the dwindling areas not under the Taliban's power. It was governed by Mujahideen commander Ahmed Shah Massoud, who a few months later, and two days before the 9/11 attacks, was assassinated by Al Qaeda.
Robert Nickelsberg
After 9/11, the Taliban refused to give up Osama bin Laden, and the U.S. deployed special forces and began targeted airstrikes. This November 2001 photo captures the gaze of Kandahar residents at foreign journalists crossing the market, after U.S. aircraft spent two weeks attacking the Taliban-held city.
Robert Nickelsberg
Unable to find Osama bin Laden, the U.S. shifted policy to nation-building and battling the Taliban insurgency. In this August 2006 photo, three wounded U.S. Army soldiers await evacuation by helicopter from Kamdesh after they were ambushed. Since the start of U.S. operations in Afghanistan, 19,650 American service members have been wounded, and more than 2,170 have lost their lives, according to the Department of Defense.
Robert Nickelsberg
In August 2009, an Afghan farmer stands outside his home in Khan Neshin as a U.S. Marine patrol walks by. Initially, Afghans largely welcomed the intervention. But attitudes changed as the war dragged on, with its relentless toll on civilians. Errant U.S. strikes and botched night raids, which the Afghan public increasingly associated with abuse and impunity, further stoked resentments, and anti-American protests.
Robert Nickelsberg
In May 2013, an American soldier at Bagram Airforce Base checks all-terrain vehicles before they’re shipped back to the U.S. The American drawdown in Afghanistan began in 2011, and all combat troops are slated to depart by the end of this year. The Taliban, once considered defeated, now has significant control over parts of Afghanistan, and there are concerns that its power could grow as forces withdraw.
Robert Nickelsberg
In this May 2013 photo, schoolgirls cross a main road in Kabul. “The people right now are very hopeful. They've reached a certain amount of employment, economic, social improvement. Schools have opened,” Nickelsberg said. “But at the same time, corruption is rife, crime is up. Kidnapping still goes on at a low level. There's no real solid sense of security.”
Robert Nickelsberg
A U.S. Army helicopter offers this view of the Hindu Kush mountains in September 2009. “Every trip in Afghanistan had its unexpected moments, that’s the nature of the region,” Nickelsberg said. “It’s the nature of the country. It’s the nature of the story. It’s a country without law.” As a journalist, he added: "You'd have to be out of your mind not to go."
Robert Nickelsberg
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