Portraying the Political: National Geographic's 1985 Afghan Girl and a US Alibi for Aid

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Portraying the Political: National Geographic's 1985 Afghan Girl and a USAlibi for AidRae Lynn Schwartz-DuPre

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Portraying the Political: NationalGeographic’s 1985 Afghan Girl anda US Alibi for AidRae Lynn Schwartz-DuPre

Post-9/11, communication scholars have published a number of articles invested in the

relationship between US representations of Afghan women and imperial policy*a genre

I dub the Afghan Alibi. I highlight this literature as a catalyst to consider an older image

that functioned in much the same way. A critical consideration of National Geographic’s

1985 Afghan Girl provides an opportunity to consider the ways in which representations

and public policy get fused together to rhetorically coordinate and organize meanings.

After considering the significance of the image’s cultural location, and the role National

Geographic played in US public policy, I take up six visual signifiers*veil, childhood,

eyes, anonymity, refugee, and femininity*that mark this image as victim. I conclude by

arguing that the 1985 Afghan Girl offered viewers the opportunity to rhetorically

constitute public support for President Reagan’s initiative to arm Afghanistan.

Keywords: Afghan Girl; National Geographic; Representation; Policy; Afghani Alibi

Since September 11, communication scholars have taken great interest in US

representations of Afghan women (Ansari, 2008; Cloud, 2004; DeFrancisco, LaWare,

& Palczewski, 2003; Droogsma, 2007; Fahmy, 2004; Klaus & Kassel, 2005; Kumar,

2008; Macdonald, 2006; Roberts, 2007). Many of these intellectuals seem to concur

with media scholars Stabile and Kumar (2005) that Afghan woman ‘‘provide the

perfect grounds for an elaborate ventriloquist act in which they serve as the passive

vehicle for the representation of US interests’’ (p. 778). Despite distinct methodol-

ogies, scholars across the discipline appear to share an interest in how and in what

Rae Lynn Schwartz-DuPre is an Assistant Professor of Communication at Western Washington University. This

manuscript is derived from a dissertation chapter advised by Dr. David Hingstman at the University of Iowa. An

early and significantly distinct version of this essay was presented at the 2005 NCA/AFA Summer Conference on

Argumentation. The author wishes to thank the editor and anonymous reviewers as well as Dr Karen Pitcher, Dr

Michael Karlberg, Dr Karen Stout, and Dr Anna Eblen for their instructive comments. Correspondence to: Rae

Lynn Schwartz-DuPre, Western Washington University, Communication, MS 9162, 516 High Street, CF 283,

Bellingham, WA, 98225-9162, USA. Email: [email protected]

ISSN 1529-5036 (print)/ISSN 1479-5809 (online) # 2010 National Communication Association

DOI: 10.1080/15295030903583614

Critical Studies in Media Communication

Vol. 27, No. 4, October 2010, pp. 336�356

Downloaded By: [Schwartz-DuPre, Rae Lynn] At: 20:41 28 September 2010

ways Eurocentric representations of Afghan women at home have facilitated US

support for military intervention abroad.

This seemingly new genre, hereafter referred to as the ‘‘Afghan Alibi’’ (an

alliteration that seeks to describe the excuse US officials provided for military

occupation of Afghanistan), is unique in that it bridges gaps between qualitative and

quantitative research as well as domestic and international communication scholar-

ship. While different in some capacities, most Afghan Alibi articles draw heavily on

postcolonial and feminist theory in an effort to discern the ways in which

representations of women signify and organize meanings or sense making for US

constituencies. Though this promising genre is relatively new to the field of

Communication Studies, it is far from the first time that representations of Afghan

women have been used as a discursive justification for colonial and territorial

occupation. To date no one representation has circulated as widely as National

Geographic’s famous 1985 image of the Afghan Girl.

First featured on National Geographic’s June 1985 cover, the Afghan Girl, as she has

come to be known, is believed to be the most recognizable picture in the history of

the magazine (Winfrey, 2001). This iconic photograph1 is arguably the most popular

image2 of an Afghan circulating in Western discourses. In the past twenty-three years

the Afghan Girl has circulated extensively within media discourses*including

National Geographic’s 100 Best Pictures, museum exhibits, speeches, history books,

sculptures and the popular 2002 follow-up article and accompanying film The Search

for the Afghan Girl.3 By rhetorically defining and managing commonly held

assumptions about American-ness, the Afghan Girl image evokes civic identity for

US audiences.

I take up the ways in which the original June 1985 image functioned in a particular

moment of US political history, specifically, in conjunction with President Reagan’s

initiative to aid Afghanistan. I critically consider the complex, and often contra-

dictory, exploration of this text as the embodiment of a universal victim figure*one

that simultaneously evokes difference and its erasure. Situated contextually as an

emblem of National Geographic and conjuncturally in the midst of the US’s increase

in Afghan military aid, the Afghan Girl, I argue, had less to do with Afghanistan and a

good deal more to do with how Americans come to figure as supporters of policy.

Drawing on the visual signifiers that constitute the 1985 Afghan Girl, I read this

popular portrait as an opportunity to demonstrate the ways in which representations

can rhetorically constitute evidence for US policy. This case study displays that the

media deployment of Afghan women ‘‘in need of rescue’’ is not entirely new while

contributing to an understanding of how female images have been historically

deployed as truth claims prior to September 11.4 Rather than a vernacular or

subaltern text, the Afghan Girl is a dominant discourse in both the visual and

representative senses (Spivak, 1988)*one that is produced by, produces, and

reproduces colonial narratives of rescue. As a rhetoric of rescue (a discourse that

deploys the power of chaos to evoke responses in concerned citizens) (Procter, 1987),

the Afghan Girl’s circulation constitutes American audiences as democratic citizens

with the capacity to combat communism.

Portraying the Political 337


The relationship between images and their reception is a not always a conscious

process; thus I take interest in the common conventions, codes, and rules that govern

visual elements and their organization (Burnett, 2004).5 As a Western production

composed for European explorers, the Afghan Girl image embodies complex colonial

discourses capable of constituting the US desire to position ourselves in opposition

to, and as a potential savior of, the uncivilized processes of Afghan culture long before

September 11.

Specifically, I advance four arguments. First, in the Afghan Alibi section, I consider

communication scholarship that frames post-September 11 research to demonstrate

the emergence of a genre and the common ways in which scholars across the

discipline document the relationship between representations of Afghan women and

public policy. Second, The Magazine’s Gaze, highlights the importance of the Afghan

Girl’s cultural location by considering the role National Geographic has played in the

Western mediascape. Accordingly, I argue that the Afghan Girl is marked by her6

position on the cover of a powerful cultural magazine whose personnel acted as an

institutional arm of the US government. In the third section, Gazing at the Afghan

Girl, I offer a formal reading of the Afghan Girl by taking up six visual signifiers *veil, childhood, eyes, anonymity, refugee, and femininity*that mark this image as

victim by simultaneously producing both difference and erasure. I conclude by

suggesting first, that prior to September 11, Afghan bodies were deployed to ‘‘confirm

the urgency of rescuing them from their own fate’’ (Macdonald, 2006, p. 10) and

secondly, and more generally, it is productive to consider visual traces of the past in

pictures that protect the policies of the present.

The Afghan Alibi

Afghan Alibi articles, emerging in post-9/11 communication scholarship, have both

clear methodological differences as well as important overlaps. There are at least three

overarching similarities that constitute this rising genre: First, a central focus on the

veil as symbolic of Afghan women’s oppression; second, a critical deployment of

postcolonial theory; and third, an articulation of the ways increased visibility and/or

representations of Afghan women has led to the support for, and in some cases

implementation of, imperial policy that directly effects Afghan women.

First, like much Western literature on Muslim women, scholars focus on the

symbolic value of the veil. Usamah Ansari (2008), for example, drew heavily upon the

postcolonial scholarship of Edward Said (1978, 1997) and Gayatri Chakravorty

Spivak (1990, 1999) to detail how film can mask the invasion of Afghanistan in

feminist desires to liberate Afghan women. Premised upon the belief that ‘‘the

invasion for Afghanistan was clocked in supposedly feminist desires to liberate

Afghan women’’ (p. 48), Ansari considered how a 2004 documentary produced an

orientalized insider subject. The US belief that the veil is symbolic of Afghan women’s

oppression is also central to the scholarship of Cloud (2004), Klaus and Kassel

(2005), and Stabile and Kumar (2005). While Droogsma (2007), Macdonald (2006),

and Roberts (2007) expand the scope of their research to include post-9/11 Muslim

338 R. L. Schwartz-DuPre


and Arab-American women respectively, their scholarship is also concerned with how

the hijab*also called a ‘‘veil’’ or ‘‘headscarf ’’*often functions to define the identity

of the women who wear it (Droogsma, 2007). Although an uncommon focus of

communication scholarship until recently, the rhetorical value of the veil has

historically been an important component of postcolonial theory.

Postcolonial theory, particularly Orientalism, devotes significant attention to the

representations of non-Western people and places, thus it appropriately performs an

important function in the Afghan Alibi genre. Fahmy (2004), for example, offers

international communication readers a content analysis of Afghan women depicted

in the Associated Press both before and after the Taliban regime. Before offering

evidence that post-US involvement depictions show Afghan women as more involved,

interactive and equal, Fahmy sets the stage for readers by devoting attention to the

orientalist scholarship of Said (1978) and Shaheen (2001). Klaus and Kassel (2005)

perform a similar organizational strategy by laying the foundation for orientialism

prior to describing how German magazines report on Afghanistan. Macdonald

(2006) mimics this theoretical gesture by responding to the sexist limitations of Said’s

orientalism through introducing readers to feminist postcolonial scholar Meyda

Yeægenoæglu (1998). Doing so enables Macdonald’s (2006) central argument that

‘‘following 9�11 the apparent openness to a plurality of Muslim women’s voices’’ was

repeatedly undermined by the ocular-centric oppression, to attend to both the non-

Western and female aspects of representation (p. 7).

Lastly, Afghan Alibi articles are committed to considering the relationship between

representation and public policy. Dana Cloud’s (2004) essay, for example, is heavily

invested in this important relationship and claims that widely circulated images of

Afghan women participate in a clash of civilizations rhetoric which constitutes a

verbal and visual ideograph reproducing the narrative of the White man’s burden.

Taking up the post-9/11 invasion of Afghanistan, Cloud contends that the binary

oppositions of self and other created through these images act as ideographs and thus

produce a domestic sentiment that war is justified.

Stabile and Kumar (2005) advanced an argument similar to Cloud’s (2004) by

claiming that the increased visibility of Afghan women post 9�11 served as ‘‘little

more than a cynical ploy*it served as one of the pillars on which elites sought to sell

the war to the US public’’ (p. 766). Stabile and Kumar construct their argument by

first focusing on US economic and strategic interests in the region, then attending to

the absence of media accounts of Afghan women prior to 9/11, and finally by

considering how the sexist visibility of Afghan women constructed the ‘‘west as a

beacon of civilization with an obligation to tame the Islamic world and liberate its

women’’ (2005, p. 766).

Aside from an astute consideration of how representations of Afghan women

provide humanitarian justifications for US military intervention, Cloud and Stabile

and Kumar also share a definitive claim to know the condition of Afghan women.

Theoretically invested in hermeneutics, Cloud purports to ‘‘uncover’’ and ‘‘expose’’

how images of Afghan women have functioned to ‘‘establish the barbarity of a society

in which women are profoundly oppressed’’ (p. 287). Similarly, Stabile and Kumar



argue that because Afghan women ‘‘still endure terrible conditions’’ the rhetorical veil

simply hides the ‘‘ugly face of US imperialism’’ (p. 766). Yet in doing so, perhaps these

landmark essays foreclose the degree to which Afghan women differ in power and

privilege among themselves. This is not to suggest that many Afghan women of

different classes and locales did not, and do not, face increased discursive and

material violence under the US, mujahideen, Soviet, and Taliban regimes (Farrell &

McDermott, 2005). Rather, it is to highlight that Afghan women as a group do not

live under homogenous conditions and their positions and experiences are far more

complex than statistical data can account for. While these scholars offer some of the

most exceptional feminist postcolonial communication research in the Afghan Alibi,

their work also illustrates an important distinction I am trying to make between 1)

critically interrogating dominant texts as a means to understand how imperialist

cultures come to understand Afghan women (a project I share) and 2) potentially

problematic claims to refute and/or authenticate that dominant read as a accurate

condition (an area in which we differ).

Deepa Kumar’s (2008) recent essay, while more specific to Iran than to

Afghanistan, overcomes the limitations of the previous scholarship by arguing that

while Western feminists often position Muslim women as in need of rescue, many

‘‘Muslim women are agents, capable of organizing for their own rights’’ (p. 23). By

positioning Muslim women as agents rather than victims, Kumar is able to draw

attention to the ways in which the Iranian women’s movement acts as a progressive

model for women all over the world.

This short review was by no means meant to exhaust the strengths, limitations, or

even catalogue all the essays that constitute the post-9/11 genre I refer to as the

Afghan Alibi. Instead, this section marks the emergence and existence of a growing

communication subfield and highlights the important relationship between repre-

sentations of Afghan women and public policy; a relationship evidenced by the 1985

Afghan Girl long before September 11.

The Magazine’s Gaze

Divorced from its context on the cover of National Geographic, audiences may not

have come into contact with the Afghan Girl. Regardless of authorial intention, the

historical legacy and function of National Geographic as an institution demonstrates

the ways in which this iconic image circulated the pressing public policy agenda of the

1985 Regan administration.

Since its inception National Geographic had generally been considered to be an

educational journal worthy of collection and value. For more than a century, National

Geographic has claimed itself to be a precise source of information, ‘‘which has made

it one of the most authoritative and prestigious publications in magazine history’’

(‘‘Mags on the Net,’’ 2004, p. 2). Authenticated in part by its opposition to trendy

counterparts, National Geographic is a global enterprise known for its ability to take

readers to the far-off reaches of the earth without having to leave the comforts of their

living rooms.



In 1907, the magazine’s editorial board decided that its focus would be on the

visual, and consequently the text would be a byproduct of the pictures (Poole, 2004;

Steet, 2000). Accordingly, articles’ written narrative might best be understood as

extended captions that anchor the extensive flow of visual images. In fact, marketing

experts suggest fifty-three percent of readers read only picture captions (Lutz &

Collins, 1993, p. 76). Despite the magazine’s metaphor, a ‘‘window on the world’’ (an

understanding of photographs as unmediated and authentic replicas of reality), much

of the magazine is made up of ‘‘political’’ photography*images that make clear

statements about the world and are meant to educate and motivate a desire for

change (Lutz & Collins, 1993). Such rhetorical strategies seek to expose human

suffering and ‘‘often operate by encouraging an empathic involvement with the

photographed subject*a desire to intervene directly with the frame of the

photograph in order to ease the depicted pain or comfort a hungry child’’ (Lutz &

Collins, 1993, p. 271). When National Geographic is most effective, ‘‘these pictures

lead us to ask how such a thing can happen*and how it can be kept from happening

again’’ (Lutz & Collins, 1993, p. 271).

National Geographic obtained its prominent position within US society by those

who received, or literally did not receive it. Though the magazine began publishing in

1888, Africans (despite a few royal exceptions like Haile Selassie) were excluded from

the National Geographic Society membership through the 1940s (Poole, 2004). Even

then ‘‘racism remained a fact of life in National Geographic’s upper echelon from one

regime to the next, remaining that way until a new generation of leaders began to

assert their control in the 1970’s’’ (Poole, 2004, p. 202). While not entitled to be a part

of the magazine’s production, Africans were often portrayed in the journal as

shuffling stereotypes of manual labor (Poole, 2004). Former editor and historian

Poole (2004, p. 30) comments on the ‘‘unabashedly racist’’ stereotypes reinforced

through the magazine’s depiction of ‘‘Europeans at the pinnacle of civilization’’ and

the consistent failure of other cultures to come to terms with the twentieth century.

This bigotry was ‘‘politely dressed up as geographical determinism. Those who lived

in the temperate latitudes were civilized . . . while those who lived beyond that zone

were, with few exceptions, barbarians’’ (Poole, 2004, p. 31). The ‘‘uncivilized,’’ were

worth recording, for, as Lutz and Collins (1993) explain, all ‘‘primitive’’ cultures

‘‘with guidance and support from the West’’ can overcome their problems, ‘‘acquire

the characteristics of civilized peoples, and take their place alongside them in the

world’’ (p. 164).

The rhetorics of progress, rescue, and colonization depicted in the magazine are in

part what make National Geographic authentically American. By portraying Third

and Fourth World7 people as exotic, idealized, and natural (Lutz & Collins, 1993), the

magazine oppositionally situates its own readership. Its position of influence in the

hierarchy of print media, as well as its rank as a widely respected authority and

authentic source on Third World ethnography, warrant its representations worthy of

investigation (Parameswaran, 2002), ‘‘not only as a single artifact but a powerful voice

in the cultural discussion of difference’’ (Steet, 2000, p. 2).



Cataloging the idealized and exotic lives of ‘‘Third World’’ people ‘‘stumbling or

marching on the path of modernity,’’ National Geographic continued to play a role in

the constitution of American identity as ‘‘rational, generous and benevolent’’ (Lutz &

Collins, 1993, p. 46). As an unofficial arm of government, the National Geographic

Society played an important role in war. During World War II National Geographic’s

map department literally outfitted the US government providing over 500,000 maps

for military generals and specialized maps that went directly to the President’s

personal map room (Lutz & Collins, 1993; Poole, 2004).

During the Cold War National Geographic opened its doors and files to the

government. In more than a few cases, National Geographic briefed government

officials and kept members of its staff on payroll while secretly lending them to the

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for extended spy missions throughout Asia (Poole,

2004). Climbers from the society were covertly commissioned by the CIA to install

tracking devices in the Indian Himalayas to detect communist chatter in the region.

Further, the strategic location of the National Geographic’s headquarters, in plain

view of the Soviet Embassy, made it particularly useful. During most of the Cold War

the society literally dedicated its Southeast corner of the magazine’s offices to the

Federal Bureau of Investigation. In the midst of the 1980’s, Poole (2004, p. 217)

summarized the National Geographic Society as a ‘‘friendly extension of the

government’’.

National Geographic’s patriotic commitment was evidenced both in the actions of

the magazine’s staff and its published content. For over forty years, National

Geographic published very little that directly related to the Soviet Union. Yet the

silence was broken in June of 1985 when McCurry’s image of the Afghan Girl hit

magazine stands. In March of the same year, the Reagan administration covertly

increased military support for the mujahideen8 Afghan rebels/resistance fighters

combating Soviet invasion.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan began in the late 1970s and lasted ten years

(Kolhatkar & Ingalls, 2006). In 1979 President Carter began using Afghanistan as the

last battle ground for the Cold War by backing of the mujahideen resistance based in

Pakistani refugee camps under. Yet the US government never considered the effect the

mujahideen would have on the people of Afghanistan once they were in power

(Kolhatkar & Ingalls, 2006). US aid forced the people of Afghanistan to pay a heavy

price (Dreyfuss, 2005)*thousands of dissidents and intellectuals disappeared,

‘‘hundreds of thousands became refugees, and any progress made by women’s rights

advocates in the context of an already conservative Muslim society was set back

decades’’ (Kolhatkar & Ingalls, 2006, p. 3). Nevertheless, covert US aid to Afghans not

only continued but increased.

One of the reasons aid was kept covert until the mid-1980s, was that the US public

might never have supported it. A 1980 Gallup poll suggested that while 52% of

American citizens favored US economic and diplomatic pressure in response to

the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, only 30% favored a military-type response

(Kolhatkar & Ingalls, 2006). Yet when President Reagan took office in 1981, covert

military aid skyrocketed into the billions. ‘‘Between 1981 and 1985 annual US



military aid to the mujahideen channeled through Pakistan’s ISI [Inter-Services

Intelligence] grew from $30 million to $280 million, making it the biggest single CIA

covert operation anywhere in the world’’ (Rasanayagam, 2003, p. 105). In March of

1985 Reagan signed of the National Security Decision Directive 166 to escalate US

support to the mujahideen in an attempt to win the last battle of the Cold War. The

directive invested over $2 billion in guns and money (Coll, 1992). Among other

equipment,

the CIA supplied the Mujahedin with extensive satellite reconnaissance data of

Soviet targets on the Afghan battlefields, plans for military operations based on thesatellite intelligence, intercepts of Soviet communications, secret communicationsnetworks for the rebels, delayed timing devices for tons of C-4 plastic explosivesfor urban sabotage and sophisticated guerilla attacks, long-range sniper rifles,a targeting device for mortars that was linked to a US Navy satellite, and wire-guided anti-tank missiles (Coll, 1992, p. A1). Less than six months later, the US

outfitted Afghan fighters with over two thousand Stinger missiles, the first of theirkind (Coll, 2004, p. 11).

As covert US military supplies rolled through Poland, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia

on their way to Afghanistan, CIA director William Casey worked with Pakistani and

Saudi leaders to coordinate the shipment of subversive propaganda through

Afghanistan to the Soviet Union’s predominantly Muslim Southern republics (Coll,

2004; Dreyfuss, 2005). In the hopes of stirring up Soviet dissent, thousands of

Qur’ans and books accounting for Soviet atrocities in Uzbekistan were added to the

US’s bill. As media spread abroad detailing violence directed by the Soviets, so too

did the circulation of anti-communist media at home. Throughout the US, article

after article sketched out the evils of Soviet atrocities committed in the name of

communism. Notably, amidst the reports of Soviet slaughter and just two months

after Reagan signed the directive, National Geographic introduced the now iconic

Afghan Girl.

As the cold war ended, so did National Geographic’s unofficial boycott of

‘‘communist’’ countries. Between 1987 and 2000, there were over thirty articles

published documenting the fall of the Soviet Empire. Yet, no photograph received

more attention than the Afghan Girl.

Gazing at the Afghan Girl

Since her 1985 debut, National Geographic’s Afghan Girl has been reprinted

numerous times, circulated through popular media by way of television, art galleries,

hardcover coffee table books, calendars, Web sites, and movies. As the cover girl for

the magazine’s feature article Along Afghanistan’s War-Torn Frontier, the portrait

features a young girl draped in a red burqa with little expression and striking ‘‘sea

green eyes’’. Suggested is that armchair tourists9 nestled in their living rooms are

invited to tour Afghanistan’s ‘‘war-torn frontier’’ through the ‘‘haunted’’ eyes of this

twelve-year-old refugee. Interestingly enough, the twenty-six page article makes no

mention of her.



National Geographic, June 1985

Draped with a tarnished red burqa surrounding her face, the Afghan Girl’s formal

and defining features establish the illusion of intimacy between the reader and the

image (Lutz & Collins, 1993). Boxed off by the bright yellow and white trim of the

glossy magazine cover, the written text and captions are peripheral to the central

figure. From forehead to chin, she is relatively unmarked by the details of the

headlines. The white bold block letters ‘‘NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC’’ sit centered on

her brown forehead, positioned such that the ‘‘GRAPH’’ is directly above her pupils.

The placement is suggestive*National Geographic will now graph for its readers an

Afghan object of desire.

Where the wrinkled burqa swoops down just to the left of her chin, it sharply

contrasts the sea-blue background, small-italicized words towards the bottom of the

page read ‘‘Haunted eyes tell of an Afghan refugee’s fears.’’ The caption anchors the

photograph by confirming and reinforcing its visual enthymeme (Finnegan, 2001).

Continuing clockwise readers encounter a list of the magazine’s headlines sitting

square on her right shoulder. Captions previewing the GREAT SALT LAKE flood;

LIFE ON THE LINE of the US-Mexican border; the return of JAVA’S WILDLIFE; and

the FAIR SKIES of the Cayman Islands sit together in a similar style of block lettering.

Sandwiched between them, the print grows and softens to highlight the feature article

Along Afghanistan’s War-Torn Frontier.

While the magazine’s framing and reputation direct readers toward explanation, so

do the Afghan Girl’s salient signifiers*veil, age, eyes, anonymity, refugee status, and

femininity. Together they create a unified assemblage that narrows the possibilities for

potential reader interpretation. The estrangement many Westerners had (and

continue to have) with veiling and refugees is paradoxically juxtaposed against their

compassion for children and admiration for sea green eyes. Together these visual

features act as abbreviations*tropes or signifiers*for long-standing cultural myths

and means of knowing, marking the Afghan Girl as a colonized subject who signifies

to her audience both who she is and who they are, or whom they desire to be*namely, the ambassadors of both compassion and freedom.

Veil

A great deal of scholarship has been devoted to the representational nature of the veil

as a signifier of Third World women’s inferiority (Abu-Lughod, 2002; Ayotte &

Husain, 2005; Bhabha, 1983; Cloud, 2004; Donnell, 1999; El Guindi, 1999; Fanon,

1965; Grewal, 2005; Heng, 1997; Hoodfar, 1997; hooks, 2001; Kensinger, 2003; Mehta,

2002; Moghissi, 1999; Mujadedi, 2003; Naghibi, 1999; Razack, 1999; Vivian, 1999;

Woodhull, 1993; Yegenoglu, 1998). For all too many Westerners homogenizing

images of veiled Third World women serve as universal signifiers of religious, familial,

and cultural oppression (Mohanty, Russo, & Torres, 1991). Images of covered women

are often used to illustrate the ‘‘backwardness’’ and subordination of Muslim women

(Droogsma, 2007, p. 294). Despite the various different types of people and traditions



that participate in veiling (Muslim, Islamic, Jewish, Persian, and Christian) the

practice, as it is currently read by dominant US culture, is understood as a universal

mark of oppression.

Various types of head-coverings (burqas, hijabs, niqabs, al-niqabs, chadors, and

foulards) and their color coding are often reduced to stand in as visual marks of

restriction (Roberts, 2007). Guindi (1999) and Macdonald (2008) explain:

The single item of clothing identified as ‘‘the veil’’ obscures diversity in body-covering practices and brings both the loose head-scarf and the all-encompassingburqa into a singular discursive frame . . . there is no one Arabic term equivalentto the English ‘‘veil.’’ Yet media discourse and debates are fixated on ‘‘veiling’’and ‘‘unveiling’’ and rarely differentiate between styles of Muslim clothing. AsEl Guindi indicates (1999, p. 10), the veil has marketable and even ‘‘sexy’’ qualitieslacking from more culturally specific terminology. The singularity of the veilalso elides a crucial distinction between coercion and freedom of choice inwomen’s adoption of the variety of head- and/or face-coverings so defined. ‘‘Theveil’’ becomes an all-encompassing symbol of repression, and in its dominantassociation with Islam (with equivalent Jewish, Christian, or Hindu practiceswritten out of the script) reinforces the monocular representation of that religion(Macdonald, 2008, p. 8).

Understood as such, the Afghan Girl’s head covering can be read as a signifier of

Afghan repression. Moreover, my reference to it as a veil or burqa is not meant to

denote accuracy. Instead I aim to articulate the ways in which it arrests Westerners as

a visual abbreviation for a subject in need of rescue.

While it is true that the veil possesses numerous meanings in multiple religions,

Westerners overwhelmingly associate the headcovering with anything believed to

be either Islamic or Arabic (two terms that are all too often deployed interchange-

ably). Yet it is relevant to note that for Arabs, the hijab is a three dimensional word

whose root, hajaba means to hide (Steet, 2000). Literally marked as a spatial

separation or forbidden space, many Arabic women are very uncomfortable being

viewed in pubic without the hijab. Thus, the significance of McCurry’s mass

circulating photograph might also be understood as a violation of the young girl’s

practices.

Encountering the Other, bell hooks (2001) reminds us, does not require

individuals to relinquish their positionality; rather, it is the position of supremacy

that produces the urge to commodify race and ethnicity as resources of pleasure.

Thus, understanding the Afghan Girl as oppressed enables National Geographic’s

American readership to position themselves as liberated subjects of human agency.

Such veiled images, hooks continues, are longed for and consumed since they offer

Western readers contact with that which is foreign (hooks, 2001).

‘‘The metaphoric desire’’ to unveil alien cultures, Macdonald (2006) contributes,

by ‘‘laying them bare and bringing them into conformity with the ideological norms

of the dominating power has a long discursive history amongst Western colonialists

and imperialists . . . contests for power were played out across the bodies of women’’

(p. 9). In 1985 the Afghan Girl’s body is marked by the prospect of losing the Cold

War. As a veiled child she is symbolic of the future in which Americans can invest.



Her young age provides for Western audiences the ‘‘privilege’’ to view a face that

might soon be covered.

Child

A second salient feature of the Afghan Girl is her age. Like most culturally defined

weak subjects, the twelve-year-old girl looks directly into the camera (Lutz & Collins,

1993). Cultural critic Lauren Berlant (1997) unpacks the image of the exploited child

as a not unprecedented hero of emerging class consciousness. The child or youth is

the current model citizen on whose behalf national struggles are being waged

(Berlant, 1997).

Pictured alone, orphaned by her parents, the Afghan Girl represents for

Western readers the state of an unaccompanied Afghanistan under Soviet

attack. According to Berlant (1997), the nation (in this instance, Afghanistan) is

simultaneously infantile and constitutive of betrayed children, and functions as

parents who lack the capability to protect their children. Suggested is that

Afghanistan’s future generation might be best saved by ‘‘good official parents’’

(Berlant, 1997, p. 65). ‘‘The spectacle of children violently exploited’’ Berlant (1999)

argues ‘‘produces a ‘universal’ response . . . Feeling politics takes all kinds, it is a

politics of protection, reparation, rescue’’ (p. 58). Feeling bad for the young refugee

girl becomes the condition of possibility for, and empirical evidence of the belief that

the Other is an unworthy victim of injustice, and that the self is hailed by a

responsibility to act. The common belief that children are innocently honest positions

the Afghan Girl, and thus the war-torn people for which she stands, as a site worth

rescuing.

While Berlant (1997) uses youth and child interchangeably, psychologist Erica

Burman (1994) makes a clear distinction. The image of a ‘‘child’’ is predominantly

feminine, while ‘‘youth’’ has a masculine nuance (p. 244). Youth, in Burman’s

opinion, is discussed in issues of criminal or troubled behavior, and ‘‘child’’ is the

quintessential image featured in Third World aid packages. Western fantasies of

childhood are deployed in the iconography of emergency discourses. ‘‘Boundaries

between adult and child are reproduced through the paternalism between the North

and South, such that infantilization of the South exemplified in imagery of children

works to secure the competence and maturity of the Northern donor’’ (Burman,

1994, p. 238). Images of sick, poor, and suffering Third World children, Burman

explains, maintain for the West ‘‘prevailing colonial and paternalistic relations’’

(Burman, 1994, p. 238).

These descriptions of passive aid-promoting children are strikingly similar

to those surrounding the Afghan Girl*they are pinned up, often framed

icons of disaster. Images of childhood function as a vehicle through which themes

of vulnerability, dependence, and insecurity can be explored at a safe distance

(Burman, 1994, p. 240). While not yet featured as the overt image of aid agencies

(it was not until 2002 that National Geographic launched its official Afghan

Girl’s Fund), the 1985 Afghan Girl positions a US mid-Cold War audience as



the recipients of an aid appeal. The appeal privileges colonial paternalism,

where the adult North offers knowledge and assistance to the infantile South

(Burman, 1994).

The prototypical aid image is female, Burman continues, such that ‘‘femininity and

childish dependency are collapsed to evoke sympathy,’’ only reinforcing the

patriarchal relations between donor and recipient countries (1994, p. 242). In the

instance of the Afghan Girl, the twelve-year-old plays the aid recipient child and

the mobilization of aid implies the culpability of others. In other words, the Afghan

Girl works to confirm the failure of Afghanistan to provide for its own children. Like

other suffering children, her image functions as a type of disaster pornography*a

term used to describe the gruesome fascination with depicting and commercially

benefiting from people’s suffering and degradation. The Afghan Girl child functions

as fetish, enabling viewers to avoid the specific conditions that gave rise to her

(Burman, 1994). She mobilizes viewer’s anxieties and promotes policy that aims to

parent Afghanistan from Soviet invasion. Readers who do not give, or attitudinally

support giving, can be ‘‘positioned as failing to meet the ransom demand of the child

hostage’’ (Burman, 1994, p. 247).

Eyes

Void of a smile, the Afghan Girl’s ‘‘haunted’’ eyes are the object of utmost attention.

National Geographic Web sites describe the Afghan Girl’s eyes as ‘‘fiery,’’ ‘‘haunted,’’

‘‘sea green,’’ ‘‘striped with blue and yellow,’’ and ‘‘shocked with hints of blue and fear.’’

Highlighted by the sea-green background and green fabric exposed through her

ripped burqa, the girl’s European colored eyes function as a punctum,10 arresting the

audience with that which is familiar within someone foreign. Distinct from the dark-

skinned, dark eyed-girls often depicted as Other, the Afghan Girl’s green eyes signify

similarities between herself and her Western audience.

This preoccupation with the girl’s eyes is one way in which the female figure is

characterized in distinct and separate parts. She is ‘‘void of subjectivity and rendered

available for use and consumption without regard for consent or participation’’

(Burman, 1994, p. 245). Her photographer, Steve McCurry, describes the Afghan

Girl’s eyes with the power to ‘‘penetrate the distance between her place and her

time and that of the viewer’’ (Bannon, 2005, p. 9). Her gaze is directed squarely at the

viewer. The ‘‘clear, strong green of her eyes’’ McCurry comments, encourage ‘‘a bridge

between her world and the West’’ (p. 12). While direct eye contact, clarity, and

strength are rarely associated with a universal victim image, in this instance there are

at least three explanations for the apparent contradiction: her presumed weakness

and availability, her status as a female child, and her Afghan nationality.

First, it is the accessibility of her frontal portrait pose that enables viewers close

examination of her eyes. ‘‘A gaze toward the viewer’’ Lutz and Collins (1993) suggest,

‘‘in National Geographic’s photographs, appears to represent the accessibility of the

photographic subject’’ (p. 201). While many images of the impoverished, such as

Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother (1936), depict the central subject gazing away



from the viewer or looking down, images like the Afghan Girl depicts social

inferiority by suggesting the subject’s assent to being watched (Metz, 1985).

Acknowledgment of the viewer need not be read as confrontation, coupled with

her other signifiers of inferiority, race, veil, and refugee status, the girl’s frontal

posture offers audiences a sense of closeness*the illusion that her ‘‘helpless’’ plea is

directed solely to them. Photographic historian John Tagg (1988) explains that

portrait composition is inscribed with social identity. As such, wealthy subjects often

look away, suggesting an untouchable status. The Afghan Girl adheres to this trend.

‘‘Those who are culturally defined as weak*women, children, people of color, the

poor . . . are more likely to face the camera’’ (Lutz & Collins, 1993, p. 199). Direct eye

contact is a common strategy deployed by Western aid agencies that use children as

their choice suffering subject.

The Afghan girl’s child status is the second possible explanation for her direct

eye contact with viewers. Children, particularly female and non-White children,

are universally understood to lack agency. As such their look is less of a gaze and

more appropriately understood as an unthreatening appeal. Further, most children

have not yet been socialized to have shame for their condition. Simply, children do

not understand their own positionality as victim through the Western narrative of

sympathy. Yet it is this very narrative of sympathy that enables readers to make sense

of both the Afghan Girl and the country she stands in for.

The third and final explanation for the Afghan Girl’s face-the-camera posture plays

into the larger rubric of this essay; one that argues images rhetorically figure

audiences to make sense of public policy. Lutz and Collins (1993) in their

comprehensive study of National Geographic found a slight trend towards ‘‘higher

rates of looking at the camera in pictures taken in countries that were perceived as

friendly towards the United States’’ (p. 199). Considering the magazine’s close

relationship to the government as well as President Reagan’s initiative to aid

Afghanistan, it would make sense that United States viewers should be granted the

ability to look through the eyes of a girl who had witnessed Soviet oppression. The

presumption is that her eyes function much like National Geographic*providing

readers with a window into the world.

Anonymity

The force of the Afghan Girl is derived not only from the constellation of visual

signifiers in the image, but also stem from that which is absent. Without a name, the

girl’s anonymity performs the role of any and presumably every Afghan girl. Lutz and

Collins (1993) describe this maneuvering:

One of the most important of these [objectifying functions] is the anonymous,iconic character of most of the individuals depicted . . . most of the people whohave been photographed through the last hundred years remain unnamed. They arerendered as ‘‘typical’’ rather than as named subjects; they are depicted as involvedin the daily or yearly round of activities rather than participating in a specific event.It is in part through this anonymity that they are denied real historical pasts and



that they lose their perceived ability, as Clifford points out, to invent their own‘local futures.’ Their story ceases to be about their own autonomous concerns;individuals become signs in a story the West is telling about its relationship to thenon-Western world (p. 275).

Unnamed and synonymous with her nation, the girl’s anonymous status interpolates

her audience to read her as one among millions.

National Geographic’s failure to formally mention its cover girl pressures readers to

make sense of her as little more than a victim of the Soviet atrocities detailed in the

article. Additionally, the nearly thirty-page article only mentions US aid once*admitting that the US has been covertly supplying the mujahideen, yet noting the

small quantity was not enough to do any good (Denker, 1985). The majority of

the text details Soviet violence and Afghan suffering. There is nothing to suggest

either the ways the US may be culpable for violence or the very active ways in which

Afghans, particularly women’s groups like the Revolutionary Association of Women

of Afghanistan (RAWA), fought to emancipate their people.

It is worthwhile to mention that while covert US funds aided the mujahideen,

members of RAWA made international appeals for financial and personnel support

through self representations of oppression (Farrell & McDermott, 2005). Yet in 1987

after RAWA’s leader Meena was killed by US backed Gulbuddin Hekmatyar

(Kolhatkar and Ingalls, 2006), RAWA tried to take on a more powerful agency laden

advocacy. As conditions for Afghans under the US bread rebels worsened, RAWA

members attempted to create transnational feminist alliances that would enable them

to promote both a powerful and needy image. Yet these politics of international

human rights discourse illustrated how the rhetoric of protection inevitably seems to

invoke ‘‘some sort of authoritative intervention that redistributes or reinscribes

power’’ (Farrell & McDermott, 2005, pp. 51�52). Simply, a successful appeal for

international support is rarely accepted by Westerners if it is not couched in the

rhetoric of rescue. Thus, perhaps the absence of the Afghan Girl’s narrative within the

text of the magazine may have done more to signal to Western viewers her victimized

position than explicitly mentioning her story could possibly accomplish. The dearth

of description positions audiences with an all too familiar enthymeme they are more

than capable of completing without ever addressing their own country’s colonialism.

As sufferer, the Afghan Girl becomes the Migrant Mother of her generation;

symbolic of the plight of her nation. These images share quintessential features of

victimhood*their distressed expressions, distant eyes, disheveled attire, infantile

appeal, nameless identity, feminine beauty, and sympathetic affect. Museum curator

Anthony Bannon notes the images offer viewers ‘‘compassion around the world . . .an international emblem for a difficult era and a troubled nation’’ (Bannon, 2005,

12). Both the Migrant Mother and the Afghan Girl position their audiences as

American citizens. Lange’s image, a product of the Farm Security Administration

project, emphasized rural life and the Great Depression, in much the same way the

Afghan Girl’s image emphasized urban refugees and Soviet Communism. While the

context of the young Afghan Girl’s struggle is more esoteric to National Geographic’s

audience than the Migrant Mother’s was to Dorothea Lange’s (Hogan, 2003, p. 2),



both images feed on pathetic appeal, stand in for a nation in need, and beg for

patriotism from their viewers. Unnamed figures perform a condition that is typical of

a people rather than specific to a person. This technique is commonly deployed in

Western depictions of refugees.

Refugee

The linguistic baggage accompanying the caption ‘‘a refugee’’ further situates the

Afghan Girl for viewers. In 1985, the Afghan Girl was but one of the 2.2 million

Afghan refugees living in Pakistan (Rasanayagam, 2003, p. viii).11 Anthropologist

Liisa Malkki (1995) explains that the term ‘‘refugee’’ was originally coined to describe

the bureaucratic and international humanitarian realm (p. 513).

The visual representations of refugees, Malkki (1996) suggests, mark the

displacement of heterogeneous narratives (p. 386). She characterizes two common

types of visual depictions: the first displays refugees in large mass or ‘‘seas.’’ The

second, like the Afghan Girl, portrays a single woman or child refugee; an anonymous

image meant to stand in for all refugees. This figure ‘‘cuts across cultural and political

difference . . . visual prominence of women and children as embodiments of

refugeeness has to do not just with the fact that most refugees are women and

children but with the institutional, international expectation of a certain kind of

helplessness as refugee characteristic’’ (Malkki, 1996, p. 388). While refugee images

tend overwhelmingly to feature children, only about three to five percent of actual

refugees are children (Boyden, 1994).

Universal depictions of ‘‘the refugee’’ not only prevent ‘‘involved’’ narratives of

individual refugees from making news, but also keep ‘‘the refugee’’ as the type of

figure who is understood by international audiences as speechless (Malkki, 1996,

p. 390). The ‘‘generic refugee,’’ functions as a generalization and problematization of

the Third World and the processes (or lack thereof) associated with it (Malkki, 1992).

The humanitarian concern and compassion evoked from refugee images simulta-

neously reinforce them as timeless, unchanging, and absolute (Malkki, 1996). Like

most refugee figures, the caption situates the Afghan Girl as an object of knowledge

and management (Malkki, 1992).

Femininity

Although the Afghan Girl is not explicitly mentioned in National Geographic’s June

article, the image and the written text work paratextually to provide a justification for

military aid to Afghanistan. The relationship works, in part, because of the

stereotypical feminine attributes evoked by the girl’s image. The sympathy that

viewers have for the Afghan Girl might be understood as a result of the stereotypes

Westerners impose on women of the Third World. Chandra Mohanty’s landmark

essay ‘‘Under Western Eyes’’ lends insight by cataloging commonly held assumptions

of Third World women as victims of male violence, colonial process, familial

structure, religion, development and ‘‘progress.’’ These narratives both contrast and



constitute Western women in opposition as educated, modern, in control of their

own bodies and sexualities, and free to make their own decisions (Mohanty, 1991).

The Afghan Girl’s veil, brown skin and Afghan identity invite Western viewers to

impose some, if not all, of these stigmatisms. But more than a victim, the Afghan

Girl, as her name suggests, embodies both a nation and a female.

Historically, discursive (and material) occupations have literally and figuratively

penetrated women’s body. Canonical American literature details such violence and as

a result, has been the site of much postcolonial critique. In one such example, Joseph

Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (Achebe, 1977; Jameson, 1981; Said, 1993), shares striking

narrative similarities to the Afghan Girl. National Geographic photographer Steve

McCurry can be read as a contemporary version of Conrad’s Kurtz*a heroic explorer

who bravely traversed the dangerous unknown (read: Afghanistan and the African

Congo respectfully) to acquire knowledge of the colonial Other. Conrad’s Africa, like

McCurry’s Afghanistan, is represented as a premodern timeless place whose land and

people are in need of civilizing.

Correspondingly both female characters bare an anonymous identity, named for

the country they stand in for. Like the ‘‘virgin’’ land upon which they live, both

Conrad’s ‘‘African Woman’’ and National Geographic’s ‘‘Afghan Girl’’ are suggested

to invite possession, discovery, and protection. While their first names exemplify

the similar role these characters play in colonial narratives, their last names explain

how they differ. As alluring temptress, the African ‘‘Woman’’ poses a threat to

Kurtz*the fear that he might ‘‘go native’’*a move foreclosed by the Afghan

‘‘Girl’s’’ young innocence. Over eighty years span between the African Women and

the Afghan Girl, yet sadly they both embody the colonial stereotypes of non-

Western women.

Six Signifiers

Interpreted collectively in a pictorial field, the six signifiers (veil, childhood, eyes,

anonymity, refugee, and femininity) rhetorically govern how National Geographic

readers can make sense of the 1985 Afghan Girl as simultaneously different from,

yet similar to, themselves. Marked by features that evoked cultural (veil, refugee,

femininity) and universal conditions (age, eyes, anonymity), to which readers can

relate, the young girl’s image positions her audience as her potential savior. Viewers

can understand themselves as promoting the unveiling of girls, parenting of

orphans, and detesters of communism. The image is both other to, and the heart of,

the self.

Reviewing documentary photography’s long history of portraying suffering

victims, journalist Simon Watney (1990) considers the universal victim category as

one that engages our responsibility as readers (p. 190). The image waits, ‘‘dependent

on the faint chance of relief or remedy’’ (Watney, 1990, p. 190). Simply, National

Geographic’s 1985 cover girl articulated for audiences sympathy for Afghanistan and

the desire to aid its people.



Visualizing Politics

Susan Sontag (1973) points out that ‘‘photographs of the victims of war are

themselves species of rhetoric. They reiterate. They simplify. They agitate. They create

the illusion of consensus’’ (p. 6). This framework provides the lens through which I

understand the emergence of the 1985 Afghan Girl. The effect of capturing and

exhibiting a young beautiful Afghan Girl on the cover of a powerful cultural and

political magazine in the wake of one of the largest and most sophisticated aid

expenditures in US history helps to explain the powerful force of the visual. The 1985

Afghan Girl functions as a marker of the political trajectory of her time. Her elevated

status on the cover of National Geographic accompanied by the image’s rich signifiers

enabled her to stand in for a nation in need. The Afghan Girl’s victim status is

constituted for her viewers through a simultaneous sense of both difference and

identification. The image provokes a sympathy that provides American audiences the

ability to confirm their own identity while attitudinally supporting her rescue*a

policy that Reagan was already secretly furnishing with US tax dollars.

Pictures, as Lutz and Collins (1993) contend, are far from neutral sites. Rather, they

are constituted by the discourses that circulate with them. Their signifiers, locations,

and relationships to the world inform the ways in which their audiences make sense

of them. Such sense, often considered to be knowledge, is by its very nature related to

politics and policy. Over twenty years later, when freedom fighters (now ‘‘terrorists’’)

resurfaced and US troops stormed Afghanistan, American soldiers found themselves

fighting the very enemy Reagan outfitted. And, while September 11 pushed the

circulation of Afghan women into the US media, most Americans were already

familiar with one Afghan girl. Now as communication scholars diligently document

the important relationships between victimized images of veiled Afghan women and

the US public’s support for war, Afghan Alibi articles have come to occupy a place

in the discipline’s journals. It is no doubt important to detail the rhetorical

justifications that sell any and every war, yet it is equally important to recognize that

history often repeats itself; for the images that refigure our future are in many cases,

mirrors of our past.

Notes

[1] Iconic photographs ‘‘provide an accessible and centrally positioned set of images for

exploring how political action (and inaction) can be constituted and controlled through

visual media’’ (Hariman & Lucaites, 2007, p. 5).

[2] Images ‘‘combine all media forms and are a synthesis of language, discourse, and viewing.

Images are, among other things, sites of communication’’ (Burnett, 2004, p. 9).

[3] Hesford and Kozol (2005), Kolhatkar and Ingalls (2006), and Schwartz-DuPre (2007)

astutely attend to the rhetorical significance the 2002 text.

[4] While this essay is specific to the ways in which female images have been deployed as

justifications for colonial conquest in Afghanistan specifically, it is worthwhile noting that

representations of ‘‘women-in-need’’ have provided justifications for occupation in a variety

of imperial occupations. Deepa Kumar’s 2008 essay details a few of the many instances where

‘‘women’s liberation has served as a prop to bolster imperial rhetoric’’ (pp. 26�27).



[5] I am not making an argument regarding the truth of the image; rather I am demonstrating

how it sutures together US imperial desires with their political commitments.

[6] I move between referring to the Afghan Girl as a subject (her) and an object (it) because I do

not consider the image to have a static reception among audiences.

[7] I use the term ‘‘fourth world’’ as a means of calling attention to the inequality and privilege

that functions within and between people occupying the same territorial space, race, and

class configuration.

[8] There are various spellings for mujahideen. I have intentional selected this version because it

is the one feminist scholars Kolhatkar and Ingalls (2006) advance.

[9] Steet (2000) adopted the term from the magazine’s first senior editor Gilbert Grosvenor’s

1894 annual address (p. 19).

[10] A term Barthes (1982) borrowed from Lacan meaning ‘‘a sting, speck, cut, little hole’’ . . . an

accident which pricks and bruises’’ (p. 27).

[11] The United Nations Relief and Works Agency estimates that during the 1980s they were

anywhere between, or beyond, 25 and 30 million Afghan refugees and displaced persons

(Boyden, 1994, p. 255).

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Portraying the Political: National Geographic's 1985 Afghan Girl and a US Alibi for Aid

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