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Reflections of the Hindi Film Kabul Express

Kabul Express (2006) is a Hindi film surrounding the experiences of two Indian journalists, Jai Kapoor, a Hindu, and Suhel Khan, a Muslim, who undertake a 48-hour journey into rural Afghanistan, at the heels of the US invasion of the country, to capture a career-changing interview with the Taliban. Their escapades to the remote and anarchic hinterlands en route to the Taliban’s enclaves lead them to an Afghan guide, Khyber; an American Reuters journalist, Jessica Beckham; and Pakistani soldier Major Imran Mohammed, an ex-Taliban, attempting to clandestinely return to his homeland. 

Major Imran Mohammed kidnaps the journalist entourage in a Toyota SUV labeled Kabul Express. Throughout much of the journey, they confront their own anxieties over each other, the American empire, the obscure trilateral conflict, and their evolving multicultural bond. Despite incessant interruptions from revengeful, anti-Taliban Northern Alliance Mujhaideens, the unscrupulous Hazara outlaws with their pastoral roadblocks, and the untamable rugged outback, they remain undaunted in their attempts to achieve their individual objectives, until they must decide whether their desired ends are worth more than human life.

Kabul Express attends to notions of Indian nationality through the distinctive differences in the interests and philosophies of Jai and Suhel, by playing on stereotypical discourses of religious and cultural variances in Indian patriotism. When Jai, the Hindu, is reluctant, even at gunpoint, to concede that the Pakistani Imran Khan was a better cricket all-rounder than Indian Kapel Dev, he embodies the essence of the Indian spirit; after-all, the game of cricket is a powerful mediator of Indian nationalism.

Conversely, the Muslim Suhel’s indifference to Jai’s and Major Imran Mohammed’s cricket polemic, rooted in Pakistan/Indian tensions, registers as profoundly unpatriotic, if not traitorous. Suhel’s unfolding empathy with or perhaps admiration of Imran Mohammed towards the end of the film also plays on the historical suspicion of the predominance of Muslim loyalty over nationalism. Suhel even tells the Pakistani soldier and fellow Muslim, “If you were not Talib, we could be friends.”

The film reframes the narratives of the Afghan tensions from the metannarative of religious extremism so dominant in Western media, to a more complex one, conflated by regional and territorial nuances, religious differences, Western capitalism and imperialism, and human vices.  The film upends the popular extremist reference to the conflict, by applying it to its framing of America as less of a victim and more as purveyor of capitalist greed and imperialism, so powerfully demonstrated in the scene in which Jai opens the back of a bombed truck that pours out coca-cola cans in an environment devoid of much else.

It also supports this theme with its characterization of the American journalist, Jessica Beckham, who seems more interested in reselling the tragedy in the media than she is about reporting on the human suffering. Khan could not help but tell her, “You almost seem to enjoy those wars,” to which she predictably responds, “I am hoping that publishers will line up for my book when I write all this.”

Kabul Express is also unique in the way it portrays the Taliban, through its multidimensional depiction of Major Imran Mohammed, as affective and complex human beings, loaded with their own emotional inconsistencies and internal conflicts. Through Mohammed, we see the Taliban not as one-dimensional heartless fanatics, but as passionate human beings, and even opportunists, whose religious dogma undermines their value of humanity. When he cries from the abandonment of his estranged daughter, who rejects his alliance with the Taliban, we recognize that his complicity in the conflict is not quite simplistic; in fact, he tells us, “You all belong to a different world. You will never understand.”  

The film’s production aesthetics is unique in many ways. Its cinematography offers a rare, but pleasant expose of Afghanistan’s landscapes that is both breathtaking and refreshing. It also celebrates rather than subverts the pastoral cultures that contextualize the scenes, a respectful distancing of Hollywood’s runaway formulae, although I had some misgivings of its narrative scripting that often mimicked American cinema.

The film does present a pro-Indian narrative, laced almost apologetically with fleeting anti-Western images of the triangulated conflict involving Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United States, with the bull’s eye centered on the Taliban. Some of its subtexts may embarrass the West, but perhaps more critically may serve to injure Pakistani sentiments. Arguably, if a Pakistani audience does not find the arbitrary and underdeveloped characterization of the their country's military involvement in the conflict offensive, they are likely to find the film's ending insensitive.