the morningside post

A Death in Kabul with No End in Sight

By Tanya Domi
Adjunct Professor

Thor David Hesla, an American development worker, was murdered January 14th in the men's locker room of the Serena Hotel in Kabul, Afghanistan.  A Taliban suicide bomber had entered the hallway leading into the locker room and blew himself up, in the process killing at least six people, including a Norwegian journalist.  People in the women's locker room heard shouts, a blast and laid on the floor, surviving the attack. Hesla's death has come as a big shock to so many of his friends who wrote me Tuesday morning from Afghanistan, Kosovo and Washington, D.C., Hesla's adopted home in the U.S.  As news of his death traveled the globe, memorials were being planned and held around the world by so many who respected and loved him.

America, Orwell, Iraq: Michael Massing’s “Thought Police” in the new book, What Orwell Didn’t Know: Propaganda and the New Face of American Politics

Comment by Tom Lansner

Tom Lansner is adjunct associate professor at Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs, specializing in international media and communications. He covered conflicts in many countries over a decade as correspondent for the London Observer and other publications. His three-part e-seminar on war reporting is available at Columbia Interactive.

Americans are killing many, many civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Does that resonate anywhere? It is a reality that most of the world, outside the United States, recognizes and finds repugnant. But it is a fact little mentioned by most American media, or covered too lightly to move the issue from the dust of the public record into a debate on the public agenda.

Are these killings accidental or unintentional or mistaken or avoidable, or simply murderous? Are they “un-American?”

Words do matter, of course. George Orwell’s 1946 essay, “Politics and the English Language,” still commands our attention in its lucid warning that language can corrupt as much as enlighten political discourse. What we call something shapes our perception of it. And the battle for perceptions is keenest in times of violent conflict, where public support for spending [especially our own] blood and treasure can easily wane if reasoned arguments are unconvincing — or emotional appeals insufficiently compelling.

Baharistan Journal: Images from Afghanistan 2003-2007 @ SIPA

By Matteen Mokalla
MIA 2008

"Dangerous" David Trilling's new photography exhibition on the fourth floor of the SIPA building offers a fresh insight into the view of an expatriate living and working over several years of change in Afghanistan.

Entitled, "Baharistan Journal: Images from Afghanistan 2003-2007," Trilling, MIA ‘08, reflects on his experiences consulting on development projects there over the last four years. Originally a photojournalist, in Afghanistan Trilling says he moved away from commercial photography: "Editors back home always had a preconceived idea of what pictures they wanted," he told the Morningside Post. "I got tired of giving them the same scripted colorful images of either pain or rebirth, always pain or rebirth."

Trilling's exhibit statement summarizes his passion for new perspectives:

SIPA's Man in Kabul

Some stories are sometimes just too crazy to be believed and this is one of them. Shaheen Rassoul (SIPA '05) was featured on This American Life on Public Radio International in 2005.  The title they gave to the story is  "Froggy Goes A-Courtin" and described it as "....a story of a series of misunderstandings with very dire consequences. Shaheen was stopped by the police, who looked at what was in his car and before Shaheen knew it, he'd come to the attention of some of the highest ranking officials in the Defense Department."

I'm not sure that description does it justice.  So to whet your appetite I will mention it starts with painting frog drawings on pavements and ends with the suspected Muslim terrorist in the story being sentenced to community service and wrapping Christmas presents at the Salvation Army to pay his due to society. Some events are just too bizarre for even a Hollywood movie plot! To hear the story just click here and listen. (The story about Shaheen and Molly starts 4 minutes 45 seconds into the piece.)

When I found  the story I was intrigued to find out what Shaheen is up to now. It turns out that he and Molly now live in Kabul.  Shaheen is the Country Director for Global Rights and according to a friend of mine Shaheen and Molly are regular participants in a pickup ultimate frisbee. I suppose after the trials and tribulations recounted in the radio piece above ultimate frisbee in Kabul is about as normal as it gets.