We so easily fall into an unwitting complacency of perspective; without realizing it, we group situations into categories – right or wrong, black or white. Simple. “Green on Blue” is a novel that challenges this worldview by telling the story of Ali, an Afghani orphan-turned-soldier, and Aziz, who becomes embroiled in his country’s decades-long conflict.
After Aziz’s parents are killed in a massacre of their village, he and his brother Ali migrate to a nearby city, Orgun, and beg to get by. They gradually find jobs making deliveries for area merchants, though Ali insists on working two jobs so that Aziz can attend school. When a Taliban mortar attack ripples through the market, Ali is gravely injured right in front of Aziz; in order to provide for his treatment, Aziz is persuaded to join the Special Lashkar, a U.S.-funded militia. Joining the Special Lashkar will also allow Aziz to seek badal (revenge) from Gazan, the Taliban leader responsible for the mortar attack in order to preserve his nang (honor). Here, badal and nang are Pashto terms; many such words are woven effectively throughout the novel without exact translation. One gets the sense, from the omnipresence of Pashtun words and ideals, that the Pashtunwalli ethic system is entrenched in all of the Afghani characters’ lives.
After a rough training period, Aziz becomes trapped in a three-way conflict between the local village, Gazan’s Taliban group and the Special Lashkar, headed by Commander Sabir. The Commander has a strangely close relationship with Mr. Jack, the only American and a cunningly flat character. Somehow, the Taliban, the village and the Special Lashkar all end up with American funding and supplies flowing through Mr. Jack. By the novel’s conclusion, Aziz’s view of Mr. Jack is made clear; as a hint, the book’s title is a euphemism for Afghani attacks on the United States’ forces.
Many confounding events occur, such as the Commander’s order to his troops to drive down a road he knows has been mined. In another instance, Aziz sees militants assembling on a hill only to watch them intentionally miss shelling the village. The battle’s lines are not clearly drawn, and Aziz struggles to decipher who is on the right side. Eventually, he comes to this conclusion: “It had no sides.”
This novel is not just a meditation on war itself, but an exploration of the evil involved in a war where it seems as though the only end goal is to continue the fighting and thus the funding. As this conflict lingers, the people internalize the war, which has adopted its own uses for Pashtun obligations and asserted itself as a way of life and an occupational path.
Ackerman’s prose in “Green on Blue” is sharp but sparse. Aziz’s perspective is an extremely effective vehicle for the narrative Ackerman spins; Aziz is observant and keen, but he is never introspective. His reliance as a narrator allows the reader to immerse himself in the novel’s events, further contributing to the intensity of the novel’s stunning descriptions of war and associated repercussions.
This is an excellently written novel that explores the nature of the Afghani war, if you can call it that. Through Aziz’s eyes, the tale that Ackerman creates climaxes with Aziz’s stunning response to his understanding of the war in an unforgettable act of “Green on Blue.”
