An American “covenant, bond, pledge, and commitment” to what?

On similar days two years ago, our screens – not in the West for sure – were flooded with footage of American military jets taking off from the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, reckless of the Afghans clinging to their tires and wings only to fall to a certain death a few seconds after departure.

An airport full of Afghans chasing after Western airplanes, some of which carried thousands of liters of beer and wine as well as cats and dogs, that are of more value, according to Western standards, than the human lives of their local collaborators who served them for a decade or two during their occupation of Afghanistan.

Germany had designated one of its evacuation crafts to ship about 65000 cans of beer and 340 bottles of wine to Germany – according to German media. Also, an international “animal rescue” organization evacuated 300 cats and dogs in a private jet to Vancouver in Canada. Meanwhile, human remains of Afghans were found in the wheel well of an American Air Force jet that made an emergency landing in a nearby country a short time after departing from Afghanistan back then.

Within just a couple of days, T-shirts mocking these horrific scenes of slaughtered human beings were being sold online. Grey and black T-shirts featured a slogan that says ‘Kabul Skydiving Club, Est 2021’ next to silhouettes of the C-17 plane with people (Afghans) falling off beneath it.

 

This, and much more, were part of what we witnessed during the Western-American withdrawal from Afghanistan after a two-decades-long brutal invasion and occupation of the country. The USA alone allocated more than 2 trillion USD in taxpayer money to war costs and killed, along with its allies, more than a quarter million Afghans.

The primary plan of withdrawal, announced in the first quarter of 2021 by the Biden administration, was to finalize the evacuation by September 11, 2021. Exactly 20 years since the 9/11 attacks on the USA that allegedly led to the invasion of Afghanistan. However, under the consecutive attacks by the Taliban on American targets and its fast advancement in the following weeks, the defeated US-led coalition had to fasten the withdrawal and accomplish it disastrously on August 30, 2021.

You might think you should see all or any of this in a movie produced to tell about these events. However, this is not how Hollywood works.

In fact, Hollywood seems to never run out of imagined war tales to whitewash the US bloodshed around the world and clean its image. And indeed, this is what you will watch in the 2 hours long 2023 American movie titled “The Covenant.”

No warm yellowish filter this time to indicate the eastern setting of the movie, which is Afghanistan, but more blatant fiction instead.

The movie kicks off with a drone camera hovering over the vast high mountains of Afghanistan, with text telling how on “October 7, 2001 and in retaliation for the 9/11 terror attacks in America, 1,300 US troops were deployed to Afghanistan. By December 2011, the number had risen to 98,000 US troops. 50,000 Afghan interpreters were employed by the US military under the agreement that they would be eligible to apply for special immigration Visas and relocation to America.”

The events of the movie are set in 2018. Long story short, Ahmad is an Afghan interpreter who joins a US force to replace their late interpreter who was killed in a Taliban truck bombing, which targeted them while they were searching vehicles at a checkpoint.

John is the commander of this small force specializing in “the recovery of explosives or weapons of mass destruction.”  Ahmad expresses to John that although he knows the risks involved in this job, he wants it for the money. We later understand from a conversation with his wife, that Ahmad also wants the promised U.S. visa to leave his miserable war-torn country.

But what exactly is meant by “interpreters” in this movie? Is it really just a language-related position?

From what the movie portrays, Ahmad does a lot more than just language. We barely see him interpreting one or twice. But we see him identifying faces, names, and locations, and even reading through people and uncovering traitors from the locals like him “collaborating” with the US military, as well as beating them up to confess. He is portrayed to know a lot and share a lot, too. He sometimes displays more commitment to the missions than the US soldiers themselves by going steps further than required in many places. The character, not to our surprise, strives to prove its worthiness and humanity for its White western bosses.

Into the first third of the movie, the force Ahmad is “interpreting” for falls under a huge Taliban attack. Hollywood never fails to impress in the setup of mind-blowing battles.

Only Ahmad and John survive and escape in a vehicle with the Taliban on their trail. When they rest in an abandoned home for the night, the Taliban attacks them again. John is severely injured and is saved by Ahmad from capture. Now, loyal Ahmad will risk his life over and over again while he carries wounded John through the harsh Afghan wilderness back to base while the Taliban continue chasing them and burning entire villages during their quest! Ahmad appears to excel at fighting, hiding, and finding aid from random “friends” in the wilderness who hate the Taliban.

He finally succeeds. John is transferred back home, and Ahmad becomes the number one wanted by the Taliban in Afghanistan as he begins a journey of hiding. He has a wife and a baby, and he is aided by Afghans, who after hearing his “heroic” story, formed an “underground” support community that informs him before and during Taliban raids so he could escape. They even take care of relocating him immediately in a very organized manner. This is a reassuring message by the movie for people who consider working for the U.S. in any country around the world. It suggests that collaborators can find support from their people, while in reality, people who “collaborate” with the occupier of their country are normally branded traitors and would find no support ground from their people.

John recovers and is haunted by Ahmad who was left behind to a terrible fate. He feels that he has no choice but to pay his debt to Ahmad and that there is a hook inside of him that won’t go unless he saves him.

When he tries the official channels to get a visa issued for Ahmad to come to the US and fails due to bureaucratic procedures, John takes things into his own hands. With the full support of his wife, they renew the mortgage of their house to pay 150,000 USD to a private security contractor called Parker to get Ahmad out. Meanwhile, he also pushes old commanders of his in the Army to get the required visas issued.

John eventually flies back to Afghanistan to save Ahmad, but he begins the mission on the ground alone with only an Afghan driver after he refuses the delay requested by Parker, the private contractor.

John “heroically” manages to reach Ahmad, and they all try to make a nerve-wrecking drive and escape, but they get trapped over a dam fighting a fierce battle with the Taliban fighters who followed them. We see the usual American movie clichés including close-ups on the Islamic slogans worn by the Taliban followed by close-ups on Ahmad’s wife and baby hugging under “barbaric” fire.

Just when chances of survival seem to be diminishing for them, Parker finally arrives with his team to the aid of Ahmad and John, accompanied by an AC-130 gunship (angel of death) and helicopters. They kill all the Taliban fighters, drive over the bridge in Toyota vehicles with Islamic flags hovering on top of them, get John and Ahmad with his family on a helicopter, and hand them the required visas to get into the U.S.

Parker tells John that if he had known they were the renowned John and Ahmad, he would have carried out the whole mission for “free.” The viewer can only wonder to himself, if Parker says so, why not exempt John from the payment now?

The final scene holds a lot. Parker, played by a white blue-eyed actor, directs most of his conversation with the two rescued men to John only. He firmly shakes John’s hand before leaving, and just when he is about to turn and leave, he looks passively at Ahmad and says “Good work.” No shaking hands with him. Just the usual American superior behavior towards a tan man from the “East.”

In the Helicopter, Ahmad seems to remain in distress. The two men seated face to face. More written info in the closing scene about the 300 interpreters murdered by the Taliban after the U.S. withdrawal, and the thousands of others that remain in hiding for collaborating with the U.S. army.

In the transport airplane, Ahmad’s tense features only seem to relax a bit when he takes a look at the file John gave him. An American visa – finally! – and a much-earned U.S. passport after a lot of sweat and blood. He nods a thank you to John. John nods back and releases his head backward in relief.

The movie blacks out and we read this on our screen, “Covenant. A bond. A pledge. A commitment.”

When the credits roll, we start seeing white soldiers smiling with their arms around their Afghan interpreters on the battlefield, some with their faces blurred or their eyes blacked out. But none of these real images belong to the story we just watched in the movie, which is supposedly based on real events but not on a specific true story. Those pictures, indirectly, affirm in the head of the viewer that the movie is a true story, despite that, to our knowledge, no such incident has ever occurred in the war or during the withdrawal.

What we know to have happened instead, is U.S. soldiers trying to “control the chaos” by opening fire at the Hamid Karzai airport during the evacuation and shooting down their Afghan interpreters among the crowds that were trying to board the U.S airplanes. What also really happened is some U.S. soldiers paying thousands of USD to get their pets – cats and dogs – rescued out of Afghanistan to give them a better life in the U.S. One example is staff Sgt. Katie Catania, a U.S. Army reservist, who brought her pet dogs Charley and Flea back home from Afghanistan and paid 3,000 USD for their rescue.

Hollywood once again tells a completely made-up story about the kind, loving, humane, and valiant U.S. soldier who will do anything and cross every boundary to save an Afghan “ally” and honor his “covenant.”

The invading soldier is now a savior, and the traitor is now merely an “interpreter.” The Afghans shot at and left to drop in the air from evacuating airplanes, are now saved in costly and highly complicated missions. And the country that cuts the strings with its local “allies,” leaving them to a terrible fate once they are no longer of value to it, is now exempted by its soldier who risked his life and paid 150,000 USD to save one person of these allies.

The movie was announced in October 2021, less than two months after the catastrophic withdrawal, and filming began in January 2022. It was released in April 2023. A very rapid production that tells a lot about the immediate need to reproduce in the public’s awareness the horrific events, images, and videos of the catastrophic withdrawal and defeat on many levels.

Back to the words that concluded the movie, the only American “Covenant, bond, pledge, and commitment” we know about is one to invade, occupy, seize resources, slaughter populations, and then leave countries in a complete wreck that needs centuries to be repaired.

By:

Mariam Mohammad