> Afghanistan needs order, and some emergency relief.
> Brian
>From Gino Strada,
great surgeon,
in Panshir,
and now in Kabul,
founder of "Emergency",
leftist-humanitarian.
And I fwd.
----------
November 1st, 2001
>From Gino, Panshir, to all the friends of Emergency
Time fliesŠ Those images symbolically atrocious of skyscrapers torn by
airplanes, those thousands of dead ones almost not seen - but imaginable in
all their desperate anguish - seems to me so very close in time, almost a
matter of days.Instead, 50 days have already past, 50 days of war. Every
minute broadcasted live, rivers of words, voices, analysis, inventions about
war.
For a change I would be tempted to say up with tv coverage. I see that you
may wonder if I am fine or out of my mind but I will try anyhow to explain.
First of all, here in Afghanistan, I can receive quite normally all tv
channels from Italy and other countries, so that I have the privilege of
hearing and seeing what is being said and what is being shown in Italy about
AfghanistanŠ while I rest on a straw mat and a small pillow in the Panshir
Valley.
And be sure, sometimes it is really rewarding: you can savor "Reporting from
the front line" that come from locales where we regularly go to the market
to buy some vegetables, all flavored with footage of bombers that dash
through cloudy skies swollen with rain while here it is twenty days that
there is not a cloud to be seen. And so on and so forth, to come, but here I
would stop, to the comments of the "politicians" about Afghanistan,
terrorism, Islam.
Really it is not the case, the urgency of the situation does not allow it,
to waste time to point the finger against this and that mocking their
ignorance and their obtusity. If I were in Italy, probably I would get as
mad as you are, but I think that this, at this time is of little value. What
counts, instead, is that this war, contrary to the Gulf war, can be seen.
Perhaps somehow distorted - each reporter tends to bring water to the mill
of each mill's owner - but it is there, we can witness it. We can even watch
the newly named "Arab CNN", Al Jazeera - by the way, can you imagine those
in Qatar define CNN as the "American Al Jazeera"? - And we can also follow
the tiny newly born EMERGENCY site named "Another Afghanistan". For now is
just a bit more than a tiny window, but if many of us think about it and
work about it, if in many will be available to put in ideas, time,
professionality, it might become a very, very interesting project.
Because this time we, too, can show the war: photos, witnesses, stories,
video clips (for these I am told there are some technical problems, but
nothing is impossible for the creativity of EMERGENCY). So far we have
documented victims: today we have again updated the list from Kabul, our
data are limited, but perhaps just because of their limitations, they are
true. Absolutely true. This is a great advantage that we have compared to
the televisions undeclared footage style, those that show marines with
painted faces, dashing through the palm tree of some asian jungle.
We can show the war, and we will be able to continue showing it even when
the hundreds of reporters will have migrated towards "new" news. So we will
be able to give even further substance to our conferences, to the thousands
information and cultural initiatives that the EMERGENCY people are carrying
forward. Because there is only one war to show, that war made of dead and
wounded, made of lives and houses that are crashed, sacrificed to the
"global war against terrorism".
If we were able to develop our ability to communicate and reach many
persons, not only in Italy, we could really make some "heavy"information, of
the kind that cannot be ignored. Let us hope. For the time being a hug to
all of you.
-Gino
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat May 11 2002 - 17:44:20 MDT