American-Afghan Enmity

The Hermeneutic Failures of Forgiveness in Afghanistan.
{School of International Relations, University of St. Andrews}

In describing the international political environment prior to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), Archbishop Desmond Tutu stated, “forgiveness, reconciliation and reparation are not the normal currency in political discourse.  There it is more normal to demand satisfaction, to pay back in the same coin, to give as good as you got, to believe it’s a dog-eat-dog world  … forgiveness, confession and reconciliation were far more at home in the religious sphere.”[1]  In just a few lines, Tutu summarized realpolitik and touched upon the predicament of a world characterized by the notion that “amongst masterless [nations], there is perpetual war of every [nation] against his neighbor.”[2]  He aptly described that a world void of compassion, forgiveness and reconciliation is one that is trapped in the unproductive, hostile and oftentimes violent vicious circle of the realist tradition.

Tutu’s book, No Future Without Forgiveness, also suggests that a political realm infused with compassion and forgiveness can serve to transform enmity between groups, mend social relationships, foster the growth of civic bonds and heal the wounds of past injustices.  By providing an optimistic alternative to the realist notions of retributive justice (the prime example being the Nuremburg Trials), the TRC became the flagship of “political forgiveness,” and the leader of the “profusion of examples of what may be termed the ‘politics of apology,’ where many individuals, agencies and governments offered expressions of regret, said ‘sorry’ or apologized for a variety of both recent and long-past actions.”[3]  In this sense, the 1990s saw forgiveness become more prevalent in the international realm, and “in an accelerated fashion, one saw not only individuals, but also entire communities, professional corporations, the representatives of ecclesiastical hierarchies, sovereigns and heads of state ask for ‘forgiveness.”[4]  Since then, the language of forgiveness has become a more deeply embedded, and the idea of forgiving is now a part of peacebuilding processes around the world.

The United States has largely embraced this language, and the American government has come to rely on the political apology in conflicts throughout the Middle East, especially Afghanistan.  As the “War on Terror” rages on and the United States fights to maintain its presence in the region, the US military and government have consistently relied on the political apology to help salvage the waning bonds with the Afghan people.  In light of the continued deaths of civilians, the destruction of property and desecration of religious symbols, the United States has turned to pleas of forgiveness in order to help overcome enmity.  For example, in February, General John Allen, the US commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), broadcasted an apology and asked for forgiveness from the Afghan people for the “accidental” burning of Qur’ans at Bagram air force base.  He stated: “I assure you, I promise you, this was not intentional in any way, and I offer my sincere apologies for any offense this may have caused – my apologies to the President of Afghanistan, my apologies to the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, and most importantly, my apologizes to the people of Afghanistan.”[5]  General Allen attempted to initiate the forgiveness process, but rather than helping his cause, Afghans rejected Allen’s apology, demanded local justice for the criminals (the destruction of the Qur’an is a crime under Sharia law), and violently protested the continued American presence in the region.  Clearly, forgiveness was not given.  In short, the American political apologies have been ineffective, enmity has not been overcome, and the US has failed to create, renew and strengthen their bonds with the Afghan people.

Although the quest for reconciliation and forgiveness have become important parts of international relations, the American experience demonstrates that forgiveness can only be achieved if the perpetrating party and the victims can a have a “fusion of horizons”[6] within the forgiving process.  Apologies may be offered, but this does not mean that the two parties have truly overcome the “hermeneutic gap”[7] that exists within acts of communication, especially those associated with forgiveness.  As General Allen’s apology and the ensuing Afghan response demonstrate, the hermeneutic gap between the United States and the Afghan people is vast, and forgiveness will remain elusive unless this divide is minimized.  The following explores the nature of this divide and uses a narrative methodology, as well as a Ricœurian conception of hermeneutics, to better understand the failures of the forgiveness process in Afghanistan.  I contend that in order to have better success with political forgiveness, the United States will first have to overcome three different, yet complementary, types of hermeneutic failures – (1) the dilemma created by opposing narratives, (2) the misinterpretation of symbols, and (3) a lack of reflective judgment.

Forgiveness: A Definition

 Since forgiveness is a pillar in all the major world religions and a large part of history’s moral discourse, there are copious amounts of literature on the topic and a wide array of definitions for the term.  However, many sources engage and reference Hannah Arendt’s account of forgiveness as found in her well-known book, The Human Condition.  Arendt’s definition states that: “Forgiveness is the exact opposite of vengeance, which acts in the form of re-acting against an original trespassing … forgiving is the only reaction that does not merely re-act but acts anew and unexpectedly, unconditioned by the act which provoked it and therefore from its consequences.”[8]  As Arendt points out, forgiveness is about overcoming past wrongs by removing oneself from the vicious cycle of vengeance and retribution.  Rather than simply continuing the predictable “eye for an eye” paradigm, forgiveness entails stepping out of this destructive dialectic in order to curtail the cycle of resentment, hate, pain and enmity.  Although “retribution, the prevalent state practice in confronting wrongdoing, is an effective strategy for implementing legal justice, it does not necessarily contribute to the healing of victims, or the restoration of community life.”[9]  In other words, forgiveness bypasses retributive logic, and choosing to forgive means to “value the justice that restores political community above the justice that destroys it.”[10]

Although I largely agree with Arendt’s notion of forgiveness, she falls a bit short by placing the onus of forgiveness entirely within the victim’s sphere.  In essence, the idea of forgiveness implies that an offense has occurred against a victim, and thus it also assumes the existence of an offending party.  As Jacques Derrida states, “forgiveness must engage tow singularities: the victim and the guilty (my emphasis).”[11]  So in addition to Arendt’s contribution, our conception of forgiveness should not only focus on the victim, but also acknowledge and consider the role played by the offender; thus, the “classical theory” of forgiveness seems most appropriate when attempting to understand the interaction between both the victim and the guilty parties.  Mark Amstutz argues that the classical theory of forgiveness is the theoretical perspective most concerned with the interaction “between offenders and victims in which the two parties confront past wrongdoings and move toward the restoration of broken relationships.”[12]  In describing this interaction, Amstutz writes: “In order for forgiveness to occur, offenders must acknowledge wrongdoing and express remorse for the injuries they have unjustly inflicted on victims.  They may do this through words (public acknowledgement, apologies or repentance) and through tangible reparations.  Victims, for their part, refrain from acts of vengeance, express empathy toward offenders, and release offenders from part or all of their deserved debts.”[13]  The classical theory of forgiveness is structured so that the interaction between the two parties only leads to forgiveness if both parties can take the necessary steps throughout the course of the process.  By expanding Arendt’s understanding to encompass the victim and offender in the same scope, we come to see the bigger picture as well as set the scene for a more in depth discussion of the hermeneutic failures inherent to the process of forgiving.  It is only by recognizing the role and presence of both parties that we can even begin discussing the idea of opposing narratives, symbolic misinterpretations or reflective judgment.

Exploring the Hermeneutic Gap of Forgiveness

The interaction within the forgiveness process is an inherently communicative matter; consequently, an analysis of forgiveness requires a methodology that is dedicated to assessing and interpreting a communication between two parties, or the horizons of interpretation.  I contend that narratology is ideally suited to do just that.  Narratology is the “discipline dedicated to the study of the logic, principles and practices of narrative representation … its concepts and models are widely used as heuristic tools, and narratological theorems play a central role in the explanation and modeling of our ability to produce and process narratives in a multitude of forms.”[14]   In viewing forgiveness through the lens of narratology, it becomes clear that the forgiveness and narrative processes have a common structure.  Both processes “share the common function of someone telling something to someone about something.  In each case there is a teller, a tale, something told about and a recipient of the tale.[15]  Looking more closely at forgiveness, one can see that its process is determined by the success of the individual parties communicating their stories back and forth between each other.  For example, Gen. Allen’s apology to the Afghan people was a matter of the offending party communicating its story (the story that the Qur’an burnings were accidental) to the Afghan victims.  In this sense, forgiveness, like narrative is “distinguished by the presence of a story, a storyteller and an audience.”[16]  Consequently, narratology provides a system of well developed and accepted theoretical concepts that are highly useful and pertinent to understanding the forgiveness process and the hermeneutic problem inherent to it.

Charles Griswold suggests a similar tactic in his book, Forgiveness: A Philosophical Exploration, and he uses a narrative methodology to “help make sense of how both parties to the scene of forgiveness (victims and offenders) may fulfill the certain requirements”[17] implicit to the overall process of forgiving.   Griswold demonstrates that the structure of the narrative process is dependent on the difference between the various “narrations” (created by the different parties) and the actual “story.”  He asserts that the “story refers to the bare facts – say, that X injured Y in manner Z at time T” – and he argues that the “narrative” is the act of telling or relaying that incident from one party to the other.[18]  In describing the two ideas, he states, “notionally story is content abstracted from viewpoint.  Normally there will be different ways of trying to convey the story, the content; but notionally, just one content to be conveyed.”[19]  This observation is important because it highlights the subjective nature of the narrative process.  Although there may be only one set of “bare facts,” there are countless narrations, or endless ways of telling the story of these facts.  Nietzsche took this idea even further when he said that life is not characterized by the “facts” of daily life, but rather “facts are precisely what there is not, only interpretations.  We cannot establish any fact ‘in itself’ … in so far as the world ‘knowledge’ has any meaning, the world is knowable; but it is interpretable otherwise, it has no meaning behind it, but countless meanings (my emphasis) – Perspectivism.”[20]  Nietzsche recognized that there could not be any “facts” because everyone imposes his or her own perspective and interpretation upon the world.  Consequently, the narratives of any given event, or offense, can, and will probably, vary greatly between parties – that is between victim and offender.

Referring back to the American experience in the Middle East, one can see this sentiment play out.  In apologizing to the Afghan people, Gen. Allen insisted upon the accidental burning of the Qur’ans at Bagram air force base.  This version of the narrative is told from the perspective that “the decision to burn had nothing to do with the material being religious in nature or related to Islam … it was an error.”[21]  However, Allen’s narrative is different than the Afghan one, and the offended party viewed the incident as a malicious act against Islam.  As imam Inayatullah Baleegh said, “burning the Qur’an at Bagram is an unforgivable crime and sin.”[22]  Although one set of “facts” does exist, the perspectivism inherent to the narrative process ultimately led to the creation of entirely different stories by the Afghan and American camps.  In short, each horizon provided its own narrative.

It is at this point that problems arise and the hermeneutic gap becomes evident.  Since the storyteller and audience (the victim and offender, or vice versa) each bring their own narratives into the forgiveness process, their respective perspectival spheres immediately serve to create a divide.  They each have their own narratives, and thus understanding between the parties is limited.  Although these narratives develop in tandem, they nevertheless remain asymmetrical, and the stories “each side offers express different conditions.”[23]  Paul Ricœur argues that the two parties will never converge, that is there will never be a “fusion of horizons,” until both the victim and the offender can come together within one narrative.  This means that the victim and offender will be on the way to understanding one another and finding forgiveness, but they will not get there until they both come to “live together within the mode of the imaginary”[24] – that is to say within the world of the communicative act (such as the apology).  According to Ricœur: “The process of composition, of configuration, is not completed in the text but in the reader, and under this condition, makes possible the reconfiguration of life by narrative.  I should say, more precisely: the sense or the significance of narrative stems from the intersection of the world of the text and the world of the reader … To appropriate a work through reading is to unfold the world horizon implicit in it which includes the actions, the characters and the events of the story told.  As a result, the reader belongs at once to the work’s horizon of experience.”[25]  As the narrative process only becomes complete within the imaginary world of the story, the “hermeneutical problem begins, then, where linguistics leaves off.”[26]  Upon hearing or reading a story, it is up to the members of the audience to interpret the message.  From a hermeneutical point of view, this means the audience must unravel, decode and find the meaning within the story.  In communicating, victims and offenders become interpreters, and interpretation is  “the work of thought which consists in deciphering the hidden meaning in the apparent meaning, in unfolding the levels of meaning implied in the literal meaning.”[27]  In other words, the fusion of horizons and the success of the forgiveness process depend on whether or not both parties can move from interpretation to understanding within the same story.

Since forgiveness is about overcoming a past wrong, this coming together within the story requires each party to agree upon the offense in question.  In other words, the mode of the imaginary, or the story where the victim and the offender’s horizons meet, must be based upon a level of truth acceptable to both parties.  If the narratives told by each party are entirely their own and in opposition to one another, no level of interpretation will allow the parties to proceed beyond the hermeneutic gap.  In the classical theory of forgiveness, this is understood as finding a “consensus of truth,” and it “is an agreement about the nature, causes and responsibility for the wrongdoing.  Since forgiveness is a means for healing the injuries resulting from past wrongs and injustices, it presupposes knowledge about the offense.”[28]  In the case of South Africa, the TRC was based upon the idea of finding a consensus of truth, and their program’s mission of fostering forgiveness revolved around acknowledging and uncovering the crimes of Apartheid.  The TRC only granted amnesty “to individuals in exchange for a full disclosure relating to the crime which amnesty was being sought.  It was the carrot of possible freedom in exchange for truth.”[29]  Although the TRC had limited powers to fully uncover the truth and corroborate the stories of every case, their efforts highlight the importance of truth within the forgiveness process.  In forgiving, parties are not merely coming together and trying to have a fusion of horizons for purely recreational purposes (as one might do when picking up a Harry Potter book); but rather forgiveness is an interaction that needs a level of understanding based upon the “bare facts.”  As Donald Shriver stated succinctly, “absent a preliminary agreement between two or more parties that there is something from the past to be forgiven, forgiveness stalls at the starting gate.”[30]  In this sense, the forgiveness process that actually provides forgiveness is the one in which the story between the two parties is based in truth.  If this element is lacking, the interaction goes nowhere and each party remains trapped within the confines of their own horizon.

In addition to finding a consensus of truth, the United States and the Afghan people are also faced with another hermeneutical challenge, the symbol.  Since political forgiveness is a matter of healing a wrong between groups and not just between individuals, it is forced to lean on the symbolic gesture in order to convey intentions, remorse and apologetic sentiments to large groups of people.  When dealing with forgiveness on a large scale, forgiving “will take a thoroughly symbolic form.  The moral exchange is somehow to be accomplished primarily, if not entirely through that medium.”[31]  For example, the United States has a history of offering monetary reparations to the families of civilian casualties throughout the conflicts in the Middle East.  When US Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales murdered 17 Afghan civilians in early March, the US government paid 50,000 dollars to each of the victimized families.[32]  These monetary gifts were symbolic because there is no form of apology or gesture that can make up for such a tragedy to every victimized party.  Archbishop Tutu describes the TRC’s use of a similar reparation payment (albeit much more modest one), and he too recognized that this gesture “was really meant to be symbolic rather than substantial.”[33] He wrote: “The nation said in effect, to victims: ‘We acknowledge that you suffered a gross violation of your rights.  Nothing can ever replace your loved one.  But as a nation we are saying, we are sorry, we have opened the wounds of your suffering and sought to cleanse them; this reparation is a balm, an ointment, being poured over the wounds to assist in their healing.”[34]  Since forgiveness was offered from a government to an entire population, it was the symbol that bore the burden of communication within the forgiveness process in both South Africa and the Middle East.  In both cases, forgiveness relied on the symbol to convey a message of apology and remorse for the injustices of the past.

The difficulty with the symbolic gesture is that it adds an additional dimension of complexity and interpretation above and beyond finding a consensus on truth.  Symbolism requires another interpretation because the symbol is essentially a part of another language.  As defined by Ricœur, a “symbol is any structure of significance in which direct, primary, literal meaning designates, in addition, another meaning which is indirect, secondary, and figurative and which can be apprehended only through the first.”[35]  A symbol requires a knowledge of the opposite party and the meanings of their symbols.  Theses symbols may derive their meaning from culture, religion, language, history or a plethora of other sources; thus, a thorough knowledge is not likely to be found within the confines of the interaction between the two parties.  This is to say that the interpreter must recognize and know how to identify and read a symbolic gesture from a group with an entirely different understanding of the world.  In discussing the hermeneutics of symbols, Ricœur writes, “symbolism requires an interpretation because it is based upon a specific semantic structure, the structure of double-meaning expression … there is a hermeneutical problem because there is an indirect language.”[36]  So when two parties enter into the forgiveness process, understanding does not only occur within the verbal or written communication, but also on the symbolic level where an entirely new interpretation must take place in a language that is not always obvious or discernable for a party unfamiliar with the other’s symbols.  In short, both parties must have a fusion of horizons within the symbol, as well as in the larger narrative, and the indirect, ambiguity of symbolism only serves to widen the hermeneutic gap even further.

Although decoding and interpreting the indirect language of symbolism is no simple task, forgiveness is also characterized by a third hermeneutic dilemma that requires one to broaden their perspective beyond both the confines of one’s own horizon.  This hermeneutic dilemma is that of reflective judgment, or as Arendt would say the act of “forming an opinion by considering a given issue from different viewpoints, by making present to my mind the standpoints of those who are absent.”[37]  This ability to think outside oneself and from an alternative viewpoint is critical to the forgiveness process because forgiving requires “transgressors and victims to cultivate empathy and compassion toward the ‘other,’ viewing each as human beings worthy of respect.”[38]  Although empathy and compassion are not typically associated with narratology or hermeneutics, they nevertheless contribute to the hermeneutic gap within the forgiveness process because victims must step beyond their own horizon in order to view the narrative, as well as the transgressor, in a new light.  Empathy requires an interpretation not from the perspective of one’s own horizon, which could be clouded by painful memories and emotions, but rather from a place of compassion for other human beings.  St. Augustine described this as acting “with due love for the person and hatred of the sin.”[39]  Since hating the sin and not the sinner is rarely the typical response to an injustice, forgiveness requires a level of reflective judgment in order to elevate one’s perspective beyond the confines of one’s own horizon.

The difficulty of altering one’s viewpoint and subsequently one’s interpretation is that this requires an “understanding stemming from the creative.”[40]  Entering the interpretation process from a view of empathy and compassion requires “enlarged thinking” (to borrow Kant’s phrase), and it means having the reflective judgment to step outside one’s own horizon.  Since retribution is a natural response in an attack or when an injustice has been committed, it takes an act of enlarged thinking and reflective judgment to overcome retaliatory temptations and to move to a place of compassion.  Naomi Head describes enlarged thinking and reflective judgment together as the ability to “imagine what it would be like to be somewhere else … in other words, ‘the liberation from one’s own private interests,’ or ‘self-interest.’  For Arendt, to think with an enlarged mentality means ‘that one trains one’s imagination to go visiting.”[41]  If victims can “go visiting” and view their perpetrators from an empathetic vantage point, there is a much greater chance that they will have the ability to forgive.  In the process of changing one’s view of an offender’s narrative, it becomes possible to recognize their humanity and consequently understand their fallibility.  In the case of the Qur’an burning incident, the Afghan people did not enlarge their thinking and they were unable to empathize with the offending American party.  The Afghans remained locked within the confines of a horizon limited by Islamic religious law and the emotions of the moment.  As the Afghan/American example demonstrates, cultivating reflective judgment and enlarged thinking is not easy, and one’s personal narrative, which may be filled with bad memories and painful emotions, can serve to prevent parties from viewing others with greater compassion.  With an inability to shift the perspective away from one’s own horizon, there will be no forgiveness, and self-interested notions of retributive justice will guide people to continue hurting and hating one another.  In short, realpolitik will continue to reign supreme.

Conclusion

Although the continued “War on Terror” has undoubtedly perpetuated hostilities between Americans and Afghans, there will be relentless enmity if the hermeneutic gap is not minimized.  At the moment, one can clearly see that the United States and Afghan people are failing on all three hermeneutic levels, and they are not meeting in the mode of the imaginary (within the same narrative), neither party is correctly interpreting the other’s symbols, and reflective judgment is lacking.  This gap is not a recent development, and divisions between secular countries from the West and non-secular nations from the Middle East and North Africa have roots deep in history.  Reaching back to the Crusades, western societies have clashed with Islamic ones, and enmity between the secular and non-secular is common.  In his book, The West and the Rest, Roger Scruton maintains that this tension are the result of the incommensurability between Western societies that are based on the “social contract” and the “rest” (countries with Islamic roots and predominately Islamic populations) that are founded on the word of God.  From the view of the Islamic “rest,” the Koran alone gives legitimacy to the political order and all those sociopolitical organizations that are not derivatives of God’s word are inherently illegitimate.”[42]   Thus, the US’s presence in the Middle East feeds this tension, and the American foreign policy of promoting democracy, the free market and abstract human rights is “a secular mentality separate from religiously based ethics; and thus it is something many Muslim societies view as alien ideology that competes directly with Islamic moral and religious values. Democracy and the promotion of secular human rights have become for many Muslims an anti-religious ‘other.”[43]  Since secularism bunds heads with non-secularism, differences will continue to pose problems for the United States, and issues such as the Qur’an burning will continue to cause outrage.  Consequently, the need to overcome the hermeneutic dilemmas inherent to the forgiveness process is an important part of building a more peaceful world and less hostile international environment.  People are dying and cultural boundaries are being broken everyday; thus, it will require a forgiving mindset to chose compassion over retribution and a movement to a higher ethical plane in order to curtail a realist tradition that is characterized by self-interested acts of vengeance.  Rather than perpetuate the destructive cycle of realpolitik, it is time that forgiveness, compassion and reconciliation move more fully out of the religious sphere and come to be permanent and lasting tenets within the realm of international politics.

Citations

Tagged Afghanistan, forgiveness, hermeneutics, narrative, Politics, USA