What’s Unsaid | Who are the bad guys anyway?

Ali Latifi

Today on What’s Unsaid: Who are the “bad guys” anyway? 

 

Since the early days of the American west, World War Two, the Cold War, the War on Terror, conflict has been presented in the movies and TV as having two sides: good guys and bad guys. And sometimes that lens is how we view politics in our life. But reality – as always – is a lot more complicated. So, what are we missing when we rely on these tropes? And how are they distracting us?

 

After the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham – or HTS – group led the campaign that ousted Syria’s president Assad in December, they were initially portrayed as liberators. Now, the media narrative labels them with problematic terms like Islamist and Jihadist. I wanted to dig into this need to brand groups and people in such binary ways – often ignoring the complexity of conflict and crisis.

 

Idrees Ahmad

We need to make a distinction, not so much, between good and bad people rather than good and bad causes. And even some good causes have had, not the best of representatives. 

 

This is What’s Unsaid. A podcast by The New Humanitarian where we explore open secrets and uncomfortable conversations around the world’s conflicts and disasters. My name is Ali Latifi, staff editor at The New Humanitarian. 

 

On today’s episode: Who are the “bad guys” anyway? 

 

Joining us is Idrees Ahmad. He’s a director of journalism at the University of Essex in the UK, and a founding editor at New Lines Magazine. He has also lectured in film and cultural studies.

 

Latifi

Idrees, thanks for joining us.

 

Ahmad

It's my pleasure.

 

Latifi 

I wanted to address this issue, because I've been thinking a lot about the way the media has been covering the HTS in Syria.

 

Major, major, major developments in Syria. It could descend into another civil war. HTS is considered a terrorist organisation by the US and the UN. Was the German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock blurred from the official photos of her visit to Syria? And he says the group is no longer linked to al-Qaeda. Many Syrians however, are sceptical.You know that there are people who say that maybe you want to behave like the Taliban?

 

Latifi

We also came across an article that you wrote titled Are there really 'no good guys' in Syria? So, I guess we should kind of start there. What do you think about the way that the media has been portraying the new caretaker government in Syria?

 

Ahmad 

So, after 2014, once ISIS arose, the whole discourse about Syria changed from the earlier framing as part of the Arab Spring to a counter-terrorism narrative. You know, ‘there's no really good guys here, so we need to make a pragmatic decision.’ So, that's what prompted me to write the article at the time, pointing out that goodness or badness is not something that we have to peek into people's souls, that we are able to see it through their actions. And the actions told a very clearcut story. The Syrian opposition, and especially even Assad's victims would occasionally make an appearance when there would be some spectacular atrocity, but mostly they were absent. I mean, to me, the most telling moment was in 2019 when the G7 met, and that was a time, the biggest displacement of the Syrian war had happened. And there was absolutely zero coverage, only the UN was reporting about it. And at G7, Macron made a point of excluding Syria from the agenda. So, you had this combination of indifference and callousness, but now when the power dynamic has shifted, you have obviously the typical colonial tropes, and amid that, I mean, there is far more sympathetic coverage, but that is reflective of the shifted balance of power, rather than any kind of change in sympathies in the coverage.

 

Latifi

So much of the emphasis has been on things like alcohol. Like, one of the first posts I remember from this white, female journalist was, ‘Oh, they're breaking bottles in the Aleppo airport duty free.’ And then there was a video of a bar still being open in Damascus. And then, obviously there was that famous BBC interview where, right after they asked about women's rights, they asked about alcohol. You know, as someone who has lived through sort of similar things here in Afghanistan, it seemed sort of pejorative and judgmental, very colonial in its tone. I mean, how do you think that that fits into it? Do you think that it sort of brings in more of the suspicion than the sympathy? 

 

Ahmad

Well, there's certainly an imposition of what kind of a shape an acceptable government should take in any part of the Muslim world. So, that's why alcohol became a key focus. The handshake, refused - not even refused - in the meeting between the German foreign minister and Ahmed Al-Sharaa. So, they acquired this oversized influence in how the coverage was framed, and what was ignored was Syria is making a big transition from a literal state of genocide to something where, obviously when you have state collapse and then a new government is being formed, there are going to be things which are in disarray. There are things which are unsettled, and they take time to take shape. But the question is, what is the hierarchy of concerns? The hierarchy of concerns for Syrians is completely different than the hierarchy of concerns for the Western media. And it is precisely because of this gap between these two things, that we have had such poor understanding for so long, of what the dynamics were in Syria. And one of the reasons why that counted in Assad's favor, according to the Europeans, was that he was seen as somebody who dresses like us, who acts like us, and wears a tie. All these things acquired oversized significance in the Western coverage, and completely ignored the disappearances, the torture, the prison networks, and the displacement. One of the things we have seen over the years is whether a regime is authoritarian or, for that matter, even [if] it has overtly Islamist tones, its palatability depends on how willing it is to subscribe to the Western hierarchy of concerns. I mean, there's a lot of internal conflict in Syria at the moment, because there's a big concern about how to tackle the problem of Israel. Because Israel has taken over territory, but the Syrian government at the moment is completely obviously unprepared to take on a powerful regional adversary. If it confronts Israel, immediately, you will see that the coverage - the tone of coverage - that even that remote sympathy that exists at the moment, that is going to completely vanish, because it will be presented as yet another intransigent Islamist regime which has come to power, and which is bent on creating chaos in the region. So, the tone, the character of the regime becomes secondary to the fact that how much it is willing to play ball with the West. 

 

Latifi

I've been noticing essentially since the HTS came to power, here in Afghanistan, the Islamic Emirate government, the Taliban-led government, they were really happy about it. They were hyping it up. They were citing it as an example of, you know, sort of more of the world going in their direction - so to speak - of, you know, becoming truly what they view as Islamic. If I remember correctly, the Islamic Emirate was the first government to officially congratulate the HTS. But it seems that in subsequent interviews, the HTS has been very cautious to try and distance itself from the Taliban, right? That I find sort of interesting, is how even these groups that might be bunched together, sort of draw their own lines. Do you think that that's sort of a conscious effort on the part of the Taliban, and on part of the HTS?

 

Ahmad 

Yes. There's an interesting dynamic here, because when the Taliban had succeeded in expelling the US, there were a lot of celebrations in Idlib led by the HTS. And people started dressing like the Taliban and all that. So, there was a lot of admiration for what the Taliban had achieved. But obviously, as you pointed out, this is one of the problems with the Western coverage, that they always collapse these very different types of categories. For example, during the War on Terror era, they would always put Taliban and al-Qaeda in the same category, regardless of the fact that they have very different aims, scope of their actions, and ultimate vision that they have. So, HTS, was very Syrian - like the Taliban, in that respect - that it had a national ambition, but at the same time, tactically, they also realized that the Taliban's unwillingness to compromise has isolated them. As a result, they made a very conscious effort to distance themselves from [the] Taliban. In fact, even the choice of clothing and everything else is very much reflective of that. That's almost like a plea: We want to be modern, and not isolated. We want to be part of the world.

 

Latifi

So, how much do you think that this whole image of Ahmed Al-Sharaa wearing a tie, and a suit; as opposed to, say, the Islamic Emirate, the Taliban here in Afghanistan, you know, who still basically wear their traditional Afghan clothes, keep their beards, keep their turbans and everything; do you think that that really plays a role in how much leeway a government will be given?

 

Ahmad

I think that - even the ties and everything - he knows what the media coverage is going to be. So, he has preempted that by obviously getting himself a new get up, and trying to appear like the kind of leader that the West would do business with. It's a pragmatic decision, and it makes sense too in the current climate, because the key test of how all of this pans out is, it's not so much the Western demands for conformity that are going to matter so much as, within Syria, there's this big concern that there's going to be obviously an accumulation of power by the transitional government, whether that's going to submit to any kind of democratic will in the future, or whether that's going to become like a lot of the post-revolutionary governments across the Arab world, which came, some of them with total legitimacy at the beginning, but then they devolved into these authoritarian regimes which nobody could dislodge for decades. So, for Syrians, that is the bigger question at the moment.

 

Latifi

When we were just talking about the Taliban, and HTS, and al-Qaeda, you mentioned the War on Terror after 9/11, how much damage do you think that that framework has done? Because we all remember George Bush constantly saying, ‘this is not a war on Islam. This is a war on quote, unquote terrorists.’ And Donald Trump, in his inauguration address, brought up declaring war on cartels in South America. When this sort of rhetoric comes along, of ‘war on’ this, ‘war on’ that, how do you think that also affects the way these different groups are seen? Do you think that at some point these cartels could become sort of the new al-Qaeda, the new Daesh in the Western imagination, or at least the American imagination? 

 

Ahmad

Well, the irony is that, even though their tactics have been pretty brutal. I mean, they carry out beheadings, they carry out assassinations, and they kill journalists, but the thing is that they have never been portrayed in a way similar to al-Qaeda or Taliban. The lasting legacy of the War on Terror was twofold. On one hand, regardless of what George Bush said, obviously it did take the form of targeting Muslims. And the second thing was that it also created this new… this break with the norms of international law. We were talking about good guys and bad guys. So, the thing was that in war, generally, the concept was that you're a combatant as long as you are engaged in warfare. So, international law gives you protections that you cannot be killed. You cannot be targeted - as long as you're not engaged in hostilities. But the War on Terror absolved all the regimes from that responsibility. Now, because you have been declared a terrorist, you have been declared essentially evil. That's an unchanging quality, that you are always going to be somebody bad, and because of that, you can be targeted. And that became the logic that you could bomb places where somebody is having dinner with their family, or you can bomb people, you know, at their homes. Because you cannot be a reformed terrorist. That's why they even came up with those categories back then of illegal combatant and all that, because then they won't be subject to the norms of the Geneva Conventions, and other forms of international humanitarian law. It was almost like a depoliticisation, and it was almost casting it as a theological thing, that whoever you declare to be a terrorist is always going to be evil. So, because of that, you can target them anytime, anywhere, and without evidence. And that was, I think, the most damaging and lasting consequence of the War on Terror.

 

Latifi

Do you think that Gaza has sort of shaken the idea of how people who care about humanitarian issues, how they view this idea of, quote, unquote, good and bad guys?

 

Ahmad

Well, absolutely. I mean, I think that there was no - at least in the region - there was never any doubt about the good and bad of it. They saw Israel as occupying Palestinian territory and being very oppressive. But obviously in the West, it was still portrayed as this more modern society, has a free press, and has democracy and all of this. What happened over the past year, is that the gap between the rhetoric and the reality became so pronounced that it has basically collapsed under its own weight. You have a massive shift in how, especially younger people, are seeing this. I mean, because one of the big gaps that has emerged is the official voices in Britain, in the EU, and in the United States, that the reality that they come and speak from their podiums is completely at odds with what people are able to see through direct postings on places like Twitter or TikTok, that you've got direct firsthand videos shot by witnesses - or perpetrators, because Israeli soldiers have been posting so many of their own war crimes. And so, when you see that this is what Israel is doing, and then you see your government sending unlimited supplies of weapons, obviously that is going to completely change the notion of good and bad. It's also going to create immense distrust with both the media and the governing institutions. And one effect of that is going to be total cynicism in the shape of disengagement, but also a reflexive rejection of any claim that is officially made, because everybody distrusts it. ‘Well, we saw it in Gaza. Why should I trust you now?’ An irony of that is that they were blaming Russia for doing that to the Western democracies, that it's kind of creating distrust among the populations, against institutions, except now they achieved it all by themselves.

 

Latifi 

It's interesting that in your article, you wrote that “there are no good guys, or that everyone is equally bad,” right? That these sorts of sayings, they've become a trope that are used by what you might consider decent people to absolve themselves of moral guilt, or being bystanders to injustice. Can you sort of elaborate what that means? Because some people might look at certain conflicts and be like, ‘Well, there really wasn't a good side.’

 

Ahmad  

Ultimately, the test of it is what principle each represents. So, for example, a lot of the state violence happens around the world on the justification of stability, that we are ensuring stability, whereas what happens is that revolutionary violence a lot of time, it takes, ‘Well, we are trying to do something better. We are trying to create something better, and to do that, sometimes you do horrible things.’ That's the justification sometimes that's offered. The question is that that kind of a justification when the means are ignored because you have a noble end. It taints any kind of cause. But the question also becomes: are the means ‘policy,’ or are the means the inevitable consequence of war? Because one of the things that we should disabuse ourselves - everybody - is that wars inevitably lead to atrocities. Even the best side that you can think of has committed atrocities in any kind of war. The question ultimately becomes whether that atrocity is policy, or is that atrocity an inevitable consequence of war? In the case of Israel, the reason why we can be clear about the good and evil in this particular conflict, is because we are seeing that it's policy. Because you have had direct statements from officials, from military leaders, and they are being very visibly implemented. So, it's a very clear pattern to it. In the case of Syria, there were atrocities by the opposition. First of all, because there was no such hierarchy which could issue orders that, ‘Okay, you do this, you do that, in that other part of the country.’ So, there were atrocities. But they were not systematic. Whereas, on the other hand, you had the regime, which had its vast networks of torture centres where it was using things like the barrel bombings, or even the chemical weapons, or generally, the way it crushed protesters. That was very much deliberate policy. So, because of that, what I was trying to argue in that article was that when we throw up our hands, ‘Oh, there's nobody with clean hands,’ that shouldn't be the test. The test should be: is there a pattern to the behavior? If it suggests that there's a systematic disregard for human lives from one side, so then it's very clear that, ‘Okay, you know, the other side may not be perfect, but I know who the bad guys over here are.’ 

 

Latifi  

Last autumn, we spoke to academic and activist Maung Zarni about the Arakan army in Myanmar, and sort of the heroic framing that they, and other groups in Myanmar, have been getting, despite their actions on the ground. I'll play a clip:

Maung Zarni

You know, this Hollywood-type happy ending is something that readers and viewers like to feel. There has to be some kind of resolution where the groups that are portrayed as good guys prevail over the bad guys, right? 

 

Latifi

And then he went on to say that the media should take a step back… 

 

Zarni

And stop promoting this good versus evil. Yes, there are good, and there are evil people in organisations. But this template is simply fueling the multiple conflicts in Burma.

 

Latifi

Do you think that if we moved away from this sort of ‘Super Mario’ binary of good and bad, that that would actually help people to understand the complexities of these conflicts?

 

Ahmad 

I think we need to make a distinction, not so much between good and bad people rather than good and bad causes. And even some good causes have had some, not the best of representatives. So, the question ultimately becomes, or in fact, I remember Myanmar when there was a big monks' protest, more than a decade back. So, universally they were seen as, ‘Well, you know, these peaceful Buddhist monks are up in arms against the regime, and something worth supporting.’ But later, many of the prominent figures of that were directly implicated in the genocide against the Rohingyas. So, ultimately, the test of it is not so much who are the good guys and bad guys. It's about who has the better cause? It’s multi-dimensional, because people even, for example, the idea of equality between people, it's a very noble idea, but if the person implementing it becomes Stalin, obviously, it leads to very different type of outcomes. So, there has to be vigilance. Does the cause justify mass atrocities or any kind of things that we would morally reject? If even that noble cause is leading to actions which we cannot accept, we have to be naturally skeptical. One of the things that we should again abandon is this notion of goodness or badness as being inherent to people or organizations. Situations change and the character changes accordingly. In fact, power is the most important factor in what changes this dynamic, you know in Algeria, you had the FLN lead a very popular uprising against French colonialism, but after the defeat of French colonialism, they got accustomed to power. They accumulated power, and then they became a really oppressive force. So, there's no inherent goodness or badness. It's the situation that determines how actors respond to it - whether they act nobly or not.

 

Latifi  

Unfortunately, the media does like to create good guys and bad guys though. Talking about distrust of the media. You're a senior lecturer in the Department of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies. How much do you think that film and television have affected how the global public sees humanitarian crises and conflicts?

 

Ahmad  

Well, I think the main way they have affected this is because they don't see humanitarian crises and conflicts. Or, to the extent that they see it, they see it in these very depoliticised terms. That there are some places where people are very unfortunate, and then some white guy was going to come in and be very nice to them, and the situation will become a scene for the redemption of the Western hero. I mean, if you look at the way the Iraq war was portrayed, or the way the war in Afghanistan was portrayed, in fact, just after the retreat of the United States, several films came out, and they all had the same trope. Here are the well-meaning Westerners who came in, and who wanted to do good, but the people were not prepared for it, and they are too backwards to accept that. Or, the good guy is usually a very meek and needy person whom the West can feel better supporting. The way these stories are written and the way they are portrayed, end up reinforcing the existing tropes. I mean the films from Iraq which became successful were not films which were critical, because the films that became popular were films like Hurt Locker, or Zero Dark Thirty, or American Sniper.

 

Your dad, he’s a hero. He saved my life. A lot of guys wouldn’t be here without him. 

 

Ahmad 

It was more about the Western internal struggle, that the person who goes there and gets trauma, and is dealing with his trauma, because of the horrible things he has seen the people out there do, that he was there to help. So, you have this sense of innocence, of Western innocence, which is perpetuated through this medium. And art is a very powerful medium, because, for most people, it becomes a substitute for history. You know, they are not going to be reading a lot of books about Afghanistan or about Iraq, but what happens is that the art becomes a substitute for that, and because of the whole sheer materiality of Hollywood, when they speak about it as an industry, the amount of money that gets invested in the production and distribution of films, it can't be matched by any smaller, cultural power. So, that cultural authority gives you immense power to shape, not only the discourse, but perceptions over a longer period of time.

 

Latifi  

I remember this online trope that goes around every time these kinds of movies come out, where people say that, you know, the West invades your country only to make a movie 20 years later about how bad they felt about it.  

 

Ahmad 

Yeah, it's always centered on the innocent Westerner who goes there very often with good intentions, and then is kind of disabused by the reality. And in fact, we have this sense that, because we are good guys, we could go and do good. But the thing is our goodness doesn't always yield the right results, because those people do not necessarily want to be helped. So, it was presented as somehow their flaw that they don't want to be helped, and the West somehow has always pure intentions. And there are no - in these cases - no extra judicial killings, no night raids, no bombings, which kills some, some grandmother, and so all of these things are swept under the rug. I mean, I would love to see a film about that, about an elaborate raid on a - I mean, like the MSF hospital that was bombed in Afghanistan.

 

Latifi  

In Kunduz.

 

Ahmad  

Yeah. I would like to see a film about something like that, about not just the incompetence, the indifference, and just the intentional disregard for the lives of the people whom the West is supposedly out to help.

 

Latifi

To end all of this, I wanted to ask you, how would you want people to think about the real actors in conflicts and crises around the world that goes beyond, as you said, this trope of good and evil, right and wrong, I guess?

 

Ahmad

My background is in Sociology, and one of the most important books in Sociology was by C. Wright Mills. It's called The Sociological Imagination. And people have to develop a certain degree of sociological imagination when they look at conflicts, or even acts of terrorism. When you see something, you have to always think in terms of nothing comes out of the void, and there's no such thing as pure evil. In fact, this was one of Hannah Arendt's big insights, that even when you looked at mass murderers like Adolf Eichmann, his evil came from very banal motivations. You know, somebody wanted a career advancement, somebody wanted just to enrich themselves. Banal motives lead people to do evil things. So, evil as a category has to be reconsidered. And in conflicts, is the cause worth supporting? And secondly, the people who are pursuing a cause, are they adhering to their own stated principles? So, the US could be saying we're bringing freedom in the world. And who would be against freedom? You know, all of us like the idea of freedom. But the question is: Are they living up to their own stated principles? They say they defend human rights, or they value individual rights, and political rights, and freedom of speech? Are they protecting all of these things? If they are not, there is the reality of the evil that you have [to] fight. The evil is situational. It's not something inherent to people who, in fact, evolve. And this is the irony that when Hollywood does its own productions about some story, there's always a character arc. Somebody goes from being mean to being kind. Somebody goes from being ignorant to having some kind of an enlightenment. And because of that, we have to reject [the] notion that people are inherently one thing or the other. People have the potential to change. But if people are abusing power, especially if they are abusing the power to oppress others, that is the evil that you always have to then be against.

 

Latifi 

Idrees, thank you so much for speaking with us today.

 

Ahmad  

It was an absolute pleasure. Thank you. 

 

Latifi

Idrees Ahmad is a director of Journalism at the University of Essex in the UK, and founding editor of New Lines Magazine. 

 

Please visit TheNewHumanitarian.org for ongoing reporting on humanitarian work and crisis zones across the world. 

 

And what are people afraid to talk about in today’s crises? What needs to be discussed openly? Let us know by sending an email: [email protected]. Subscribe to The New Humanitarian on your podcast app for more episodes of What’s Unsaid – a podcast about open secrets and uncomfortable truths. Hosted by Obi Anyadike, and me. 

 

This episode is produced and edited by Freddie Boswell, sound engineering by Tevin Sudi, with original music by Whitney Patterson, and hosted by me – Ali Latifi. Thanks for listening!