As the US involvement in Afghanistan comes to its calamitous end, I have been thinking about how this twenty-year conflict can be looked at through the lens of Costume Studies. Costume Studies is the cultural analysis of dress in its broadest definition, through an interdisciplinary approach incorporating cultural studies, sociology, and history. The vast majority of the US has experienced the war in Afghanistan (and the broader Global War on Terror) as purely a media event in newspapers, TV News, social media, and refracted through visual entertainment like movies to video games. The war has created a visual language of clothes and uniforms that have become representative of the conflict-- and the public’s understanding of it.
On Twitter, it is not uncommon to see replies to Tweets about the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban like this one:
These types of comments directly link clothing to the commentator’s conception of technological advancement, modernity, and who is “civilized.” What the Taliban wear should make them no match for the “most advanced military in human history.” Their robes and sandals, in these comments, make them primitive and also undeserving of victory. The “sandals and robes” type arguments directly echo those made during the US War in Vietnam about the US enemy there, dressed in “black pajamas” and sandals could defeat the US military. How true the statement is about what US enemies wear is not the point, it is to portray the enemy as unworthy, unequal, and uncivilized. In reality, Servis “Cheetahs” a high-top sneaker are often the footwear of choice for many Afghan fighters on all sides of the conflict.
For many people around the world, the first time they saw Osama Bin Laden in the media in the days after the 9/11 attacks, he was wearing a US Military Woodland camouflage M-65 Field Jacket along with his signature Soviet AKS74U assault rifle. The use of camouflage in his highly orchestrated propaganda videos is worn to send a message to the viewers. The imagery conveys Bin Laden as a soldier in uniform, a leader of an organized army, a force to be taken seriously, and one with the ability and legitimacy to wield violence. it is the uniform that transforms the terrorist into a soldier. But Bin Laden is wearing a US camouflage, subverting the uniform’s intended meaning now turned against its original owner.
Wesley Morgan recounts a story from the from the early days of US war in Afghanistan in his superb book The Hardest Place: The American Military Adrift in Afghanistan's Pech Valley and covered on a lengthy Twitter thread. In 2003 a Green Beret team living and working in the Pech Valley, raised and trained a local Afghan militia who worked bedside them. Paying out of pocket, the Green Berets fashioned their militia in Tigerstripe camouflage uniforms purposely referencing the unit’s Vietnam War service and the 1968 John Wayne movie, named after the unit. They even modeled the front gate of their bass of the one from the movie and named a stray dag after the one in the film as well.
While comparisons between Afghanistan and Vietnam hav become common, both in visuals and commentary, this is a unique self referential comparison. The Green Berets is often derided as an awful movie, “so unspeakable, so stupid, so rotten and false in every detail.” But, it is one of the few Vietnam war movies that show counterinsurgency — like the green berets in Afghanistan we’re attempting — working. While later US soldiers in Afghanistan compared scenes from their time there to Apocalypse Now, these Green Berets in 2003, found a much rosier reference. The choice of Tigerstripe camouflage also reveals the extent media depictions soldiers inform how real life soldiers see themselves, striving to recreate what they have internalized a soldier is supposed to look like and war is supposed to be like. The conscious copying of movie costumes for real uniforms blurs the line between reality and fiction. A new war, and new media depictions of it, would require a new camouflage, one that could define the war in Afghanistan as much as tiger stripes defined Vietnam.
John Wayne in Tigerstripes in The Green Berets (Warner Bros).
The Universal Camouflage Pattern (UCP) became easily the most visually recognizable uniform of the conflict. Introduced by the US Army in 2005, the tan gray and green pixelated camouflage was both instantly recognizable and controversial for its poor effectiveness. The new camouflage was worn by the US Army during the 2006 Iraq surge and the 2009 Afghanistan surge, bringing renewed media attention to the war. Images of US soldiers in the pixelated camouflage covered newspaper front pages, nightly news reports, and were captured in documentaries like Restrepo. The camouflage stands out to the viewer in part because of its ineffectiveness, making it instantly recognizable.
The pattern was criticized as soon as it was introduced as being inappropriate for most terrains, and for not being properly tested. In 2009 Congress would get involved insisting troops deploying to Afghanistan be issued with “with a camouflage pattern that is suited to the environment”. With a $5 billion price tag, UCP became a visual metaphor for a war many Americans saw as too costly and mismanaged.
This topic is far from over and I may pick up this thread in the future, but for now, I will leave it here. As always please reach out with any suggestions or critiques. I am going to link to a few resettlement charities below you should consider giving to.
International Refugee Assistance Project
Till next week,
C.W.M.
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