Dirty Wars: a persuasive indictment of the US government’s War on Terror with something hidden and unexpected

Richard Rowley, “Dirty Wars” (2013)

Part documentary, part personal testimony, this is a searing documentary following investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill across the Middle East and the United States as he follows the scent of a secret war waged by a secretive military force within and authorised by the US government and its agencies. Initially he visits a remote community (Gardez) in Afghanistan where local people tell him of an assault by unknown US soldiers late at night on a family celebrating the birth of a baby. The assault leaves a man, local police chief Mohammed Daoud, and three female family members dead and another man, related to all three women, in shock and harbouring suicidal thoughts and anger at the US army. After interviewing the family, Scahill hunts for details on who the attacking soldiers were and who was in charge of them, and discovers that the attack had been ordered by the head of a secret paramilitary force, the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), embedded within the US government and acting on orders from its executive.

The trail takes Scahill to a poor desert community, al Majalah, in Yemen where he learns that a Cruise missile fired by a US destroyer has killed a number of nomadic people in a camp. Whereas the US forces in Gardez removed traces of their presence and even paid some compensation to the family who lost their relatives, in al Majalah Scahill finds that the US attack left plenty of evidence; the difference between the two attacks is that the US is not officially at war with Yemen. Further on in the documentary, as Scahill discovers that the US War on Terror has extended to Africa as well as western Asia, he travels to Somalia to speak to warlords there and learn about the role they play.

Back home, Scahill does more research on lists of people targeted by the US as terrorists and turns up the name of a US citizen, Ansar al Awlaki, a Muslim preacher who initially helped the US government after the September 11, 2001 World Trade Center attacks but later was repelled by the Bush administration’s brutal actions in Iraq and Afghanistan and began advocating resistance. Scahill interviews Ansar al Awlaki’s father Nasser al Awlaki about how his son became radicalised. In the course of making this film, Scahill learns of Ansar al Awlaki’s killing by a US drone and then of Ansar al Awlaki’s 16-year-old son by a drone as well.

The documentary is well made for its subject matter: it is an indictment of the US government’s resort to use of a paramilitary force, one that may well have a psychopathic agenda of its own, to harass and terrorise Muslim peoples across the globe with impunity; and it gives an insight into the often dangerous work carried out by foreign and war correspondents. We see a tiny part of Scahill’s feelings about the work he does, how thankless it can be: he is stonewalled by US Federal politicians and military generals, and ridiculed by US TV news media hosts in the course of his investigations and attempts to bring his revelations to a wider public audience. He finds ordinary life as an American difficult to readjust to after his hair-raising, adrenalin-filled adventures in Afghanistan and Somalia.

The pace of the film, the quick editing and Scahill’s presence in the majority of the film’s images and in voice-over suggest that “Dirty Wars” was deliberately made in the style of a mystery thriller; the problem though is that mystery thrillers usually have closure and this particular mystery thriller doesn’t really have one. Fortunately Scahill is up to the role of mystery detective: good-looking with a clear voice, something of a lone wolf, he obsessively chases leads on his computer, collects clues and puts them together, plasters and pins up lists on his office wall. His private life is all but non-existent. The use of close-ups puts viewers uncomfortably close to scenes of action, even car sickness at times, giving them the same POV as Scahill’s: this is a clever if sarcastic comment on the embedding of news reporters with US army units in war zones.

Viewers will rightly be horrified that a secret war using missiles and drones is being waged by a paramilitary force obeying the personal orders of the US President on innocent and impoverished peoples around the globe. Audiences might also feel some despair that a US citizen was targeted for exercising his First Amendment right to free speech and his Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights violated when he was killed. After all, if al Awlaki and his son could be killed, then might not other US citizens also be targeted simply for being relatives or friends of suspected terrorists who have yet to be caught and charged with crimes?

Throughout the film, Scahill refers to things hidden that are out in the open (as in the JSOC being a hidden force committing war crimes openly) but there is one thing hidden yet open that he does not mention: the people he visits in Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia are generous towards him and ply him with tea, hospitality and as much information as they feel they can give. In particular, Nasser al Awlaki, on learning that he has lost both a son and a grandson, welcomes Scahill and treats him warmly: the meeting between the two men and the silence between them, Nasser al Awlaki looking grave while Scahill is visibly upset and contrite, are very moving indeed. The warmth and openness of the Afghans, Yemenis and Somalis contrast strongly with the manner of many of the Americans portrayed: porcine politicians, supercilious and shallow talk show hosts, and one rather creepy military trainer incriminate themselves as corrupted and hollow people.

As long as there are people like Nasser al Awlaki in the world, there is some hope that the rest of us will learn that grace and compassion are better weapons to bring people together to solve considerable problems than raining brutality, death, terror and fear on people.

 

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