Dutch Special Forces Grow Beards in Uruzgan · 21 November 2006, 06:29 CET by Charles Vermeulen
Yesterday night I watched ‘09.11 Zulu. Onze commando’s aan het werk in Uruzgan’ (‘09.11 Zulu. Our commando’s at work in Uruzgan’) a documentary by Vik Franke on the (fighting) missions of Dutch commando’s in Uruzgan, Afghanistan. Franke joined them as an ‘embedded’ journalist on some of these missions. What caught the eye was that image of the well-groomed western soldier didn’t quite apply. Many of the Dutch commando’s wore big ferocious beards. At first I thought: no wonder, these guys stay out of their camps in the Afghan dessert for days, maybe for weeks and because of that they simply lack the possibility to shave. But on second thoughts that couldn’t be the explanation, because some of them combined their beards with perfectly cropped haircuts, while others had no beard at all and their interpreter had a neatly groomed whisker. Then I remembered Robert D. Kaplan’s ‘Soldiers of God: With Islamic Warriors in Afghanistan and Pakistan’ (1990). In this book Kaplan described how even journalists transformed after entering the martial world of the Afghan mujahideen. Adapting to local customs they grow wild beards as a sign of masculinity and start to despice their newly arrived fellow reporters with their smoothly shaved, effeminate faces.
Update – Click here to watch the documentary (in Dutch).
09.11 zulu,
afghanistan,
commando's,
dutch special forces,
masculinity,
robert d. kaplan,
special forces,
uruzgan,
vik franke
On InfoVlad.Net Clearinghouse an interesting comment on my observation by a member of the site, Azog:
'Special forces are usually exempt from the strict codes of the regular armed forces. US Special Forces are allowed to wear local clothes and to choose weapons as they please, you can see SEALs with AKs, keffiyehs and sporting beards just like locals do. The idea is that since they operate far away from the main forces that they should blend in with the populace as much as possible while maintaining the insignia and symbols of the US forces. Since most of the western countries armies are molded after Anglo-American model, it is no wonder that Dutch and Germans do the same.'
This sounds like a reasonable explanation. On the other hand: why didn't all the commando's in the documentary wore beards?
Little comment on what you said about the beards the commando’s wore. They wear them just because they are allowed to do so. Normal soldiers aren’t allowed to wear them. It hasn’t got anything to do with masculinity. The documentary is really impressive, by the way. It has given people a lot to think about and it has also created a lot of political talk about the military operations in Uruzgan, because of the statements the commando’s make. “Kees” for example states that a lot of the intel that is given to the Dutch, is being manipulated so that the government doesn’t get in any trouble. In this way they get to tell the people it’s a reconstruction mission, while it actually is a fighting mission. During the making of this film, Vik found out that there are a lot of things going on they don’t want the people knowing about.
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