By Meena Nanji

20 years in the making, Shadow of Afghanistan is a comprehensive telling of a history that stretches all the way back to 1959, when "Ike" Eisenhower became the first American president to step foot in that country. Using fascinating archival footage, the film moves through this period—then ruled by King Mohammed Zahir Shah, up until he was overthrown in 1973—to the various subsequent leaders and up to the Soviet invasion of 1979. Then comes the exile of five million refugees, the rise of the Taliban in the refugee camps, the assassination of Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Massoud in 2001, the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center just two days later, and the subsequent U.S. bombardment of Afghanistan. It's a lot of ground to cover, and, like the terrain of Afghanistan, the film goes through its own peaks and valleys, with a decidedly uneven result.

"Shadow of Afghanistan"The most compelling parts of the film are accomplished in its first half. Filmmakers Jim Burroughs and Suzanne Bauman first went to Afghanistan in the early 1980's, "realizing there was a story there" that not many others felt was worth documenting. They arrived with a team of independent journalists and split up into different groups, working their way across the country, making friends with the locals, and witnessing first-hand the effects of the Soviet occupation upon Afghan civilians. The footage they shot is remarkable and works best as a powerful anti-war statement: newly decimated villages by Soviet air-strikes; victims of mines and other explosives; families forced to leave their homes with meager belongings; a group of boys hopping around on one leg, play-fighting each other, in preparation for when they would lose their limbs but would still fight the foreigners; a young girl in a makeshift hospital who has lost an eye, the other in stitches: these are the horrific yet strangely poetic images that speak of the human costs and devastation of war-raw, heartfelt, no politics here, they can only evoke compassion and the mindlessness of war.

The film also attempts to tackle the issue of war-reporting itself, but is less successful in this endeavor. The murder in 1987 of one of the team of journalists who worked with Burroughs and Bauman, Lee Shapiro, perhaps prompted this line of inquiry, yet it is under-examined and leaves one wanting more. Still, Shapiro's death is movingly portrayed and foreshadows the loss of many professional journalists that wars all over the world have claimed.

Perhaps referencing his death, a quote appears in the film's narration: "Kill the journalist—or the story—but the truth still lives in the shadows..." Yet, curiously, and despite several claims to the contrary, the filmmakers don't seem to look for "truth" very much at all. The narration almost completely regurgitates U.S government and mainstream news accounts of this period, and there is an almost jaw-dropping lack of critique. Even cursory investigations would have revealed the fallacies of this official line, yet the filmmakers make no attempt to do so, thus depriving the film of any real import in terms of its analysis of events in the country.

One of the "myths" the film purports is that it was purely the Afghans who fought against the Soviets and their tenacity and will brought down the superpower. U.S support is depicted as almost incidental. Certainly, the Afghans did put up valiant resistance, but if not for U.S financial, logistical and arms support—which included the financing and arming of an influx of thousands of fighters from other countries (including Osama Bin Laden)—the Afghans had no chance of overcoming their occupiers. While the filmmakers do point out that most U.S support went to the then nascent fundamentalist mujahideen based in Pakistan, the most extreme of these being Gulbuddin Hekmatyr, this is not treated as key. U.S support of these extremist Muslim groups—who then had little, if any, support within Afghanistan—did of course have enormous consequences: by funding and arming them, the U.S nourished and allowed them to flourish, and this in turn led not only to civil war in Afghanistan directly after the Soviet pullout, but also to the instances of extremist "jihadi" violence we see globally today. Yet, these linkages are not made, and deeper inquiries remain absent.

It is when the film gets into the post-Soviet era that it begins to lose direction. The civil war (1992-1996) between the different US-backed mujahideen groups is quickly dispensed with, charging Gulbuddin Hekmatyr with the destruction of Kabul. A considerable amount of time is spent, however, in lionizing another of the mujahideen leaders, Ahmed Shah Massoud. He is painted as an Afghan hero, and the fact that he too was responsible for the shelling of Kabul and the deaths of at least 50,000 civilians, is somehow ignored.

The film then goes into the rule of the Taliban, and for the first time the term "Arab" is used in an attempt to link the Taliban foot soldiers with those of Al Qaeda. Because no reference was made in the 1980's section to the influx of non-Afghan Muslims from all over the world, this term comes out of the blue. However, "Arab-Afghans"—as foreign Muslim mujahid were termed by Afghans—came into Afghanistan in the 1980's and were not repatriated after the Soviets left, so they just stayed on. Many of them did join Al Qaeda, yet again, they are linked only to the Taliban, and not to U.S backing of extremists during the ‘80's.

After Sept 11th, 2001, the filmmakers went back to Afghanistan, and returned with snippets of footage about a variety of different subjects. One thread they pick up is the death of Lee Shapiro, re-examining how he was killed. They then return to the theme of war-reporting, with a fair critique of the media frenzy in the country post 9-11, and then an account of another four journalists, whom the filmmakers had just met, who were killed by gunmen on their way to Kabul. With the focus shifting to western journalists, the film enters an almost colonial space whereby Afghans become just another backdrop for western adventure. This undermines a sensibility claimed by the filmmakers in other parts of the film: their long commitment to reporting on the country, life-taking risks, and admiration for Afghan culture and people.

Another fruitless theme they set out upon is a search for Osama Bin Laden. They go up to the Tora Bora caves, shooting footage of abandoned belongings, and of jeeps leaving the country at midnight implicating Bin Laden's presence and departure. Yet, there, the story stops: there‘s no follow up, no meaningful analysis, the snippet remains thus. With the emerging leadership of Hamid Karzai, when he was still a favorite of the US, the film ends on a slightly positive note, with hope for a better future.

Shadow of Afghanistan would have been a superior film had it remained focused on the human tragedy of war, as it so movingly portrayed the catastrophe of Soviet occupation. Unfortunately, perhaps in their rush to make the film more current, or in their reservations about treating the US occupation in the same way as they did the Soviets', (even though unstated parallels abound), the filmmakers lost their way, and many themes are left unexamined and incoherent, robbing the film of its potential power.

Meena Nanji is a writer and filmmaker in Los Angeles. Among her achievements is the award-winning documentary, View From a Grain of Sand, about women in Afghanistan and Pakistan.