Dirty Wars Documentary: Review
Dirty Wars (2013), a documentary directed by Rick Rowman, is a modern classic of national security cinema. It examines the consequences that flow from a mind-set that views ‘the world as a battlefield’, sees things in simplistic, ‘you are with us or against us’, terms and is prepared to work via the ‘dark side’.[1] It is a simplified re-telling of the narrative in a book of the same name by investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill, who plays a leading role on screen within the documentary.
From the start, the film has a critical, and at times deliberately claustrophobic and creepy, feel. Through this frame, Rowman shows Scahill exploring the activities of the Joint Strategic Operations Command (JSOC) and the US’s deployment of drones in the Middle East and the Horn of Africa. JSOC is a part of the US military that draws special forces personnel from its different branches. It was responsible for the raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, that led to the death of Osama Bin Laden. Drones, meanwhile, have been an important tool used by the US during the War on Terror.
The examination of JSOC begins with Dirty Wars exploring a raid that interrupted a family celebration in Afghanistan and led to a number of deaths. The documentary shows the raid was a mistake that turned into a harrowing tragedy for the family involved. It further highlights efforts to cover up the raid in particular and the operations of JSOC in general.
As Dirty Wars develops, the viewer learns about the evolution of the scale and scope of JSOC operations in Afghanistan and that Scahill was subject to surveillance and had his hard drive hacked. Eerily, a member of JSOC who is interviewed claims that it operates ‘without any thought to future repercussions’ as a ‘paramilitary arm of the [US Presidential] administration’ in over seventy states around the world.
The examination of US’s drone strikes focusses on the stories of Anwar Awlaki and his son Abdulrahman Awlaki. Both Anwar and Abdulrahman were US citizens killed in 2011 by US drone strikes in Yemen. Anwar was an Islamic preacher who gained a level of respectability within the US media in the aftermath of 9/11 while living in the US. However, he later became critical of US foreign policy and developed a large following by placing videos on websites like YOUTUBE. Anwar, like others killed by US drone strikes in Yemen, was assassinated in a country that the US is not at war with. The documentary does well to tease out this contradiction.
More disturbing still, perhaps, is the case of Abdulrahman, who was 16 when assassinated in Yemen. Having run away from his grandparents’ house in Sana’a, Yemen, in search of Anwar, he was, Dirty Wars argues, targeted because he had the wrong father. Such guilt by association may be hard for many to process. As Scahill notes, Anwar was a teenager with a ‘facebook page and a group of adolescent friends. Why would his name have been put on the [kill] list? What could he possibly have done?’ The official US line was that the killing of Abdulrahman was an accident. In a further post-script, however, it seems that Newar Abdulrahman, Abdulrahman’s sister, was killed in a JSOC raid in Yemen in January 2017.
By shining a light on the assassinations of Anwar and Abdulrahman Awlaki, Dirty Wars manages to place a human face on just two of the thousands targeted on the kill lists used by the US and its allies during the War on Terror. Yet, just as importantly it draws attention to the areas of doubt regarding the supposed guilt of Anwar and the guilt by association that likely led to the death of Abdulrahman. It is exactly such areas of doubt and guilt by association that legal proceedings are designed to take into account when societies deal with those suspected of wrongdoing. The use of Drones, it seems, has deliberately sought a route round such legal proceedings.
By playing its part in telling the ever evolving story of the shadowy sections of the US’s national security operations, Dirty Wars brings some clarity to the activities deliberately designed to avoid the checks and balances intended to reign in such operations. Journalists and filmmakers who are prepared to fully interrogate these activities and, by doing so, challenge and counter official narratives are as indispensable as they are rare. Made in an era when coverage of the national security operations of the US was driven by broad support of a bipartisan mind-set that viewed the world in simplistic terms, Scahill and Rowman managed to penetrate and present digestible summations of important topics. The shape that Turmp’s national security operations will take is, at the time of writing, not fully known. However, it seems unlikely that the need for journalists and filmmakers such as Scahill and Rowman will diminish.
