Monday, 27 November 2017

All We Leave Behind: A Reporter's Journey Into the Lives of Others



I have no expectation that telling someone's story will fix anything because if I did, I would have an agenda and the truth would run the risk of being lost. I didn't return to Asad's side as a journalist; I did so as a human being. It was simply the right thing to do, a choice made in good faith. I appreciate that in my profession it's easy to become tangled in a cause and cross the line into advocacy. I understand why we have codes of conduct both in journalism and in society. But life is complicated. We do what we can and what we must.
I chose to lead with the above quote advisedly because it captures what I believe to be the primary caveat about All We Leave Behind: I won't contradict that author Carol Off is “one of Canada's most respected journalists” (as states the book's blurb), but this is not a work of journalism – it's a highly personal and opinionated narrative of a time that Off's actions did cross into advocacy. As she relates the story of how her own quest for a scoop led an Afghan man to put himself (and his family) in danger, I am absolutely convinced that Off did the right and moral thing when she then spent years trying to expedite their refugee claim and bring them to Canada – as a personal effort to redress unwitting errors. Everything about this story is informative and highly pertinent to our times, but it's not a cold-eyed work of journalism (and to be fair, it never claims to be), and every time Off uses the term “holy war” to describe both Ronald Reagan's and George W. Bush's entrees into Afghanistan, every time she accuses the Harper government of xenophobia and fear-mongering, I was reminded that she has spent her career working for the left-biased CBC; was probably relieved to drop any pretense of impartiality in her reportage here. And that's not to say that this isn't an important and interesting book to read – I just think it's key to keep in mind that this is a story that puts Off at its center, not merely a dispassionate reporting of the facts.

Off begins with an informative history lesson. As the Berlin Wall fell and Moscow retreated from Afghanistan, the country was left in a power vacuum; and in horrific condition:
For the previous ten years, billions of US dollars and USSR rubles had poured into Afghanistan to fund destruction but little else. By the end of the 1980s, half of all refugees in the world were Afghans, mostly exiled to Iran or Pakistan. A million and a half civilians had died because of war, while countless others were maimed and wounded; the International Red Cross estimated it would take 4,300 years to remove all the landmines that the contending armies had buried in the countryside. Afghanistan ranked third from the bottom in development of all countries of the world. Its children were severely malnourished. The place was swamped with Kalashnikovs, Stinger missiles, rocket launchers, armoured vehicles, bullets, bombs and angry disillusioned men.
Off describes the ensuing years of conflict between the Taliban and the far-flung warlords who resisted ceding power, and after the US-led Operation Enduring Freedom, Western journalists began flooding into the country (she has no kind words for celebrity newscasters like Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw whose presence distracted American viewers from the real news), and in pursuit of her own story on the rising power of the warlords as the Taliban fled the country, Off met and interviewed Asad Aryubwal. Asad had been forced into one such warlord's militia in the north of the country during the years since the USSR left (Asad had been given the rank of General, but insists he had been an unwilling conscript and had no combat role), and he was eager to be part of a news story that might warn the West that they would be foolish to partner with his former boss, Rashid Dostum. Asad led Off and her documentary crew to the site where Dostum's men had massacred Taliban POWs in the weeks following the Coalition's invasion, at great personal risk, and when the interview was over, Off went on to receive an award for her piece and Asad went back to living his life.

Usually, Off gets her story and doesn't look back – understanding that subjects who seek her out for interviews are aware of the risks they are taking and have their own motivation for speaking with a foreign journalist – but she kept in touch with Asad's family; exchanging email greetings and giving heartfelt advice. Off, however, had no idea that Asad was experiencing mounting threats until, for the third time in his life, Asad packed up his family and fled to Pakistan. With Rashid Dostum now the Vice President of Afghanistan, and with no support from his own clan back home, Asad knew he could never return to Kabul; and as the Pakistan around him grew ever wearier of supporting an ever-growing mass of fleeing Afghans, Asad knew that he and his family couldn't remain where they were indefinitely. With Off's support, they applied to the UNHCR as refugees, and as she arranged sponsors for them here in Canada, the Aryubwal family faced down unending years of looming danger and maddening bureaucracy.

The first half of All We Leave Behind is about everything leading up to Off's initial interview with Asad, and the second half is about dealing with the UN agency responsible for refugees; in this way, it feels like two different books. I appreciate the frustration and impotence that Off must have experienced as the refugee application process stretched out indefinitely for people that she had come to love and feel responsible for, but with persistent errors and corruption within the UNHCR's office in Peshawar, and the refugee crisis growing in Syria (and other areas where people were desperate to get to any safe country), I can almost understand why a seven person family with members working and going to school and stably renting an apartment weren't the highest on the list of those needing safe passage; even with a sponsor. 

The CBC – where Off worked in television journalism before switching to a more domestic-based role on the radio – may be funded by us Canadian taxpayers to the tune of a billion dollars a year, but that doesn't make it a branch of the government; Off's actions on their behalf were not a proxy for my own. So, the outrage that a person feels in reading about the Canadian government's inaction on Asad's case would likely be proportionate to the degree in which a person agrees with the following statement:
Asad had risked his life when he spoke to the Canadian public broadcaster in an effort to warn our government that Canadians were unwittingly getting involved with the wrong people. I couldn't conceive of a better argument – Canada had an obligation to help.
I don't think that I do agree with that statement, but again, I 100% empathise and agree with Off's decision to have made it her personal obligation to see Asad and his family make it to safety. As her personal story of this journey, All We Leave Behind is a fine and informative read.





*Won by Life on the Ground Floor. All of these books are worthy finalists, and I learned a lot, but my favourite would be Tomboy Survival Guide as the best written/most eye-opening.
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