Review: Afghanistan Is Not Funny

In 2002, frustrated by the BBC’s coverage of the nascent war in Afghanistan, Henry Naylor wrote a satire skewering the media’s panting opportunism (the resulting play, Finding Bin Laden, premiered at the Fringe in 2003). Realising that he knew nothing of the country or the conflict he was writing about, him and his photographer pal Sam Maynard set off to uncover the ‘facts’ for themselves. Twenty years on, what they actually found haunts him still.

Naylor is a superb storyteller, capturing both the ignorance that led him into a war zone 20 years ago, with the hard-won self-awareness of the intervening years. Though he still carries plenty of disdain for the various agents tearing the country apart, this time Naylor reserves most of the censure for himself. Who was he to be endangering the lives of others for the sake of a story; one which he might not have the right to tell, and ultimately will not alleviate the suffering of its victims?

Despite Naylor’s best, most genuine intentions, there are moments where people and events feel reduced to pat moralising – a girl in a photograph is a ‘gift of empathy’, not a full person caught up in a senseless war. Overall, however, with Maynard’s deeply affecting photographs projected behind him, Naylor offers a glimpse into a complicated country that does not shy away from our part in its destruction. The afterimage of what he’s seen – and what we’ve tried to look away from these past two decades  burns on.