Author: Harman Minhas

Imagine a war film set in Afghanistan. It opens on wide desert shots. Dust. Mountains. A convoy of American soldiers rolls into a remote village. The U.S. general speaks for four minutes. The Afghan elder nods once. No subtitles. The camera cuts away. You’ve seen this scene before-even if you haven’t. That’s the problem.

Films like War Machine and The Outpost frame Afghanistan as something to move through, survive, or strategize around. But never something to hear. In these movies, Afghanistan is not a country-it’s a set. “A powerful portrait of brotherhood under fire.” That’s how The Outpost was praised in many reviews. And yes, it captures trauma-but only American trauma. What about Afghan lives? What about their grief? Why was that scene of the story hidden from the audience?

In War Machine, Brad Pitt’s character General McMahon talks endlessly about “winning hearts and minds.” Yet Afghan characters are mostly mute. No voices and opinions of their own. Who listens to them?

Dear Hollywood, why is it easier to choreograph airstrikes than write one honest Afghan conversation?

In The Outpost, orchestral swells accompany every American death. We’re trained to grieve. We’re told who matters. But when Afghan civilians are killed? There’s no music. No pause. Just another cut. Sound design isn’t neutral—it tells us who deserves empathy. And these films make it loud and clear. If an Afghan director made a film about a foreign army landing in Kansas-U.S. civilians shown from a sniper’s view, dialogue limited to “yes” and “no,” soldiers get slow-motion death scenes while Americans die off-screen-would we call that honest? Or disrespectful?

That’s what Hollywood’s doing to Afghanistan.

In this piece of writing, I explored how voices were snatched from those who were just glorified props for the American films to use—not a country with its own people, culture, and values. Afghanistan as a nation is often demoralized by the Hollywood forces as being nothing more than a battleground. It’s so much more. I never myself acknowledged this detail and went along with whatever visual propaganda was being offered to us, never pausing to think about how Americans were always set in a position of power in these films—with dramatic helicopter entries and heroic soundtracks. Afghan people are often shown as illiterate, violent, and emotionally unreadable.

These films, though different in tone, share a common flaw: they use Afghanistan as a setting for American drama while silencing Afghan lives. In both these films—War Machine and The Outpost-Afghanistan is confined to being the “unknown land” where violence rules. Through rough terrains, wide desert shots, and dramatic visuals, it is shown as wild and unpredictable. Afghan people are reduced to brief glimpses of farmers or villagers. In The Outpost, the U.S. base in Nuristan is filmed like a death trap: the surrounding mountains constantly remind viewers of the soldiers’ vulnerability. The camera rarely enters Afghan spaces-it circles them from a distance. A particular scene from War Machine shows General McMahon visiting villages, supposedly to understand the situation. Yet there is no real interaction with locals; it is just another photo-op.

Edward Said’s theory of Orientalism helps explain this. He wrote, “The Orient was… a stage on which the East was confined” (Said, 1978). That’s exactly how these films treat Afghanistan: as a dramatic location for Western characters to perform bravery, loss, or leadership. Landscapes replace lived experience. Culture is flattened into setting. And Americans-yet again-are shown as the ones who are there to save the day.

Afghan characters never truly evolve in these films. They are either helpful or hostile, never deeply human. In The Outpost, every U.S. soldier has a rich backstory. We know their fears and roles in the team. Afghan villagers, by contrast, are either suspicious or instantly cast as threats. War Machine briefly introduces an Afghan character as the local voice McMahon brings into the team. But this character is not there to challenge American strategy, only to validate it. His presence is symbolic, a checkbox. As Nivi Manchanda puts it, “Afghanistan is less a place, and more a narrative construction—an empty space imagined into being by those who sought to govern it” (Manchanda, 2020). These films don’t reflect Afghan reality; they reflect Western invention. Afghanistan is seen through binoculars and briefings, not conversation or care.

Soundtrack in war films matters. It guides emotional response. In The Outpost, music swells when American soldiers fall inviting us to grieve. But when Afghan civilians are harmed, there is no such pause. No score to mark their loss. In War Machine, upbeat ironic tracks mock the system, but Afghan voices remain toneless, reduced to background translations. These are sonic hierarchies: they tell us whose pain matters.

Despite their different tones, both films silence Afghan voices. American pain, strategy, and sacrifice take center stage, while Afghan lives remain unnamed and unheard. As Al Jazeera wrote in 2021, “Afghanistan was not lost it was never truly seen” (Al Jazeera, 2021). These films follow a blind format that repeats a stereotype. Until Afghan voices are legitimized and centered, the media will continue to tell only half the story. And that silence, repeated often enough, begins to sound like truth.

References

• Al Jazeera. (2021, August 17). Afghanistan was never ours to save. https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/8/17/afghanistan-was-never-ours-to-save
• Manchanda, N. (2020). Imagining Afghanistan: The history and politics of imperial knowledge. Cambridge University Press.
• Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism. Pantheon Books.
• Lurie, R. (Director). (2020). The Outpost [Film]. Millennium Media.
• Michôd, D. (Director). (2017). War Machine [Film]. Netflix.