The Pokemon we left behind

July 5, 2021 9:25 AM

Stars and Stripes takes an unusual look at the withdrawl from Bagram Airfield. As America pulls out of Afghanistan, their influence is visible not only in the war-torn country and a complicated legacy from nearly two decades of occupation, but also in a number of low-level Pokemon guarding gyms at on-base locations.
posted by jackbishop (50 comments total)

We have a moral responsibility to evacuate the Afghani Pokemon before the Taliban takes over.

Also the Afghani humans who allied with the U.S.
posted by LarryC at 11:04 AM on July 5, 2021 [6 favorites]

For purposes of the historical record I want to note my personal objection to the decision by my country to pull out. From a utilitarian perspective this seems likely to cause more human misery that the continued presence of US forces would. I suspect that we are opening a new more horrible chapter in the history of Afghanistan.
posted by interogative mood at 11:38 AM on July 5, 2021 [1 favorite]

Reminds me of the stories about strava heat maps revealing the troop movements.
posted by jacquilynne at 11:38 AM on July 5, 2021 [3 favorites]

A couple years ago while visiting Joshua Tree National Park I found a pokemon gym way out on a trail and I defeated its defenders before leaving a Machamp in charge of guarding it. I expected I'd be pushed out in a day or two but I guess the trail wasn't used all that often; no one pushed me out and no one from my team joined me as the days turned into weeks. The rewards you receive for holding a gym max out after (I think) a week so Machamp just sat out there in the desert doing nothing for me. I wondered if he would ever return.

Machamp came back to me one month to the day I installed him in the gym, so I suspect (but have not bothered to investigate) there is a time limit after which your pokemon vacate the gym voluntarily.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 11:42 AM on July 5, 2021 [9 favorites]

People who spend time in a country are presumed to have special insight into it, but that one guy: “Maybe in 20 years I can ride a motorcycle south and reclaim that Pokemon gym again,” he said. Oh, dude.
posted by Halloween Jack at 12:13 PM on July 5, 2021

The updated version of Miss Saigon with left behind low level Pokemon is going to be super weird.
posted by allegedly at 12:19 PM on July 5, 2021 [14 favorites]

Especially when they get Jonathan Pryce to put on yellowface to play Raichu.
posted by hippybear at 12:28 PM on July 5, 2021 [10 favorites]

Afghani humans

(the correct demonym is "Afghan")
posted by BungaDunga at 12:32 PM on July 5, 2021 [10 favorites]

Parasite Unseen: I had a similar experience with a gym at an overlook near Lake Sonoma. Of course, I got the gold gym badge after 30+ days of being in there, and didn't dare put anything new in there during my next visit, over a year later. By contrast, the longest I've lasted in the nearby fish hatchery's gym was a little under eight hours.
posted by May Kasahara at 12:36 PM on July 5, 2021 [1 favorite]

By contrast, the longest I've lasted in the nearby fish hatchery was a little under eight hours.

And no wonder. I have to imagine the spawn rate there is pretty high.
posted by notoriety public at 12:38 PM on July 5, 2021 [53 favorites]

From a utilitarian perspective this seems likely to cause more human misery that the continued presence of US forces would. I suspect that we are opening a new more horrible chapter in the history of Afghanistan.

I agree. Sadly, though, there really is no good decision to be made here. Staying would simply mean a forever war propping-up an impotent government, and the attendant bloodshed. Leaving means the probable fall of an impotent government and the attendant bloodshed. The cold calculation is to take any further US military lives out of the mix.

The proper decision, of course, would have been to not go into Afghanistan in the first place, but that decision wouldn’t have flown at the time.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:44 PM on July 5, 2021 [12 favorites]

Afghani humans
(the correct demonym is "Afghan")

As punishment, the demonym for people from the United States is now Americani
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 1:52 PM on July 5, 2021 [16 favorites]

I'm waiting for Bagram Airbase to post an ask about whether they should try and get back in touch with the US military after being suddenly ghosted so I can drop in with a DTMFA.
posted by srboisvert at 1:56 PM on July 5, 2021 [2 favorites]

To be fair there is no unique word for people from the United States of America ("American" is claimed by others in the Americas much as "European" is claimed by those living in Europe, see also "African", "Asian" etc)
posted by mbo at 2:21 PM on July 5, 2021

To be fair there is no unique word for people from the United States of America

There is, but it's widely hated and rejected by pretty much everyone. Because you can't actually pronounce it.
posted by GuyZero at 2:41 PM on July 5, 2021

The updated version of Miss Saigon with left behind low level Pokemon is going to be super weird.

Madame Squirtle
posted by geoff. at 2:51 PM on July 5, 2021 [3 favorites]

geoff.: "The updated version of Miss Saigon with left behind low level Pokemon is going to be super weird.

Madame Squirtle"

Madame Butterfree, surely

O-or Miss Psyduck
posted by chavenet at 3:10 PM on July 5, 2021 [12 favorites]

We’ll be back. Can’t you see this forever war belongs to thee. We’ll be back, time will tell we’ll remember that we made this hell. Oceans rise, towers fell; we created the mujahideen after all. And when push comes to shove we will send another fully armed battalion to try and fix it all.

Da da da dat da dat da da da da ya da
Da da dat dat da ya da!
Da da da dat da dat da da da da ya da
Da da dat dat da…
posted by interogative mood at 3:13 PM on July 5, 2021 [6 favorites]

The US had the support of the world after the 9/11 attacks. Many other countries lost people when the Twin Towers fell. We could have lead a multinational Marshall Plan-style effort to rebuild and stabilize the country, with the evidence that a failed state led to terrorist attacks.

Instead we had Republicans.
posted by kirkaracha at 3:50 PM on July 5, 2021 [23 favorites]

Machamp came back to me one month to the day I installed him in the gym, so I suspect (but have not bothered to investigate) there is a time limit after which your pokemon vacate the gym voluntarily.

Apparently not; I shared this story with an extremely Pokémon Go! friend, and they said a) it was one of the better articles on the game and b) they have had Pokémon in rural gyms for months.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:05 PM on July 5, 2021 [2 favorites]

Could someone explain in nongamereese the pokeman stuff, are you really camping in the wilderness for a full month to get some iphone app tokens?

As for Afghanistan, in a couple years air drop disguised Starlink transceivers to inject contemporary ideas long term.
posted by sammyo at 4:12 PM on July 5, 2021

For purposes of the historical record I want to note my personal objection to the decision by my country to pull out. From a utilitarian perspective this seems likely to cause more human misery that the continued presence of US forces would. I suspect that we are opening a new more horrible chapter in the history of Afghanistan.

There’s an interesting alternate history where the U.S. made a serious effort to improve Afghanistan — Balkan-style peacekeeper presence, massive investment in infrastructure, serious focus on stamping out corruption, etc. — instead of invading Iraq on trumped up grounds, burning resources and goodwill.

Since the Bush-era war criminals did the opposite, I don’t see any way to undo that short of some kind of massive reversal in the amount of money and lives we’re willing to commit. Two decades in, I just don’t see how you’d get public support for a couple more – especially with racism ensuring that the Afghan people are widely seen as Other.
posted by adamsc at 4:18 PM on July 5, 2021 [3 favorites]

sammyo > could someone explain in nongamereese the pokeman stuff

You go to a location marked as having a “gym”. Or provide fake input to the game that makes you think you’re at a location marked as having a “gym”.

If the game’s servers have another player’s pokeyman marked as being in the “gym”, then you can make one of your imaginary enslaved beasts fight it. If your creature wins then it is now in the “gym”, and will stay there when you leave, until you come in and remove it or someone else fights it and wins.
posted by egypturnash at 5:02 PM on July 5, 2021 [1 favorite]

Almost 20 years ago when Iraq was invaded, Afghanistan had been in civil war for 30 years and had been unstable for most of the prior century. The rural majority has always been against the “modernization” desired by the capital, and even tribes and factions that largely agreed couldn’t coalesce. Pakistan has been supplying fighters and materials to the Taliban since its emergence, making the conflict unresolvable without confronting them (vastly more costly than letting Afghanistan burn). Things might have gone better with a larger nation building exercise, but it isn’t very clear.

I doubt China is foolish enough to waste their effort on it, but they would be happy to show off their new methods of controlling “extremism” if Kabul was desperate enough.
posted by a robot made out of meat at 5:04 PM on July 5, 2021 [5 favorites]

In Pokemon Go there are Gyms where players can leave a Pokemon to guard them. You need to be near the gym to leave your Pokemon there but once it is guarding it your presence is no longer required. You get 1 coin for every 6 minutes your Pokemon is guarding a gym but you have a daily max of 50 coins you can receive from all of your Pokemon in all of their gyms and you also have a per Pokemon max of 50 coins that they can earn per guarding assignment. So if it takes roughly 8 hours to get the maximum 50 coins, all time spent after that is in essence wasted because your Pokemon won't get any more coins for you and you can't take it out and leave it in some other gym where it could earn more coins for you.

2 years ago I went up to Algonquin Park in the winter and happened upon a relatively remote gym. I was able to leave a Pokemon there and had dreams of all the coins I would be getting (being unaware of how there were caps). When my balance didn't increase every day even though my Pokemon was still guarding I actually did some research on the matter and my dreams were dashed.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 5:14 PM on July 5, 2021 [7 favorites]

Americani

Not 'dollar'?
posted by pompomtom at 5:25 PM on July 5, 2021 [1 favorite]

As punishment, the demonym for people from the United States is now Americani

This is just going to make placing an order in a coffee shop that much more difficult.
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:53 PM on July 5, 2021

China seeks to expand belt and road to Afghanistan in name of security as US withdraws troops [scmp.com]
posted by porpoise at 6:44 PM on July 5, 2021

Transistor Americani Ka!

I haven't thought of that song since I was seven years old.
posted by vrakatar at 6:44 PM on July 5, 2021

Afghanistan had been in civil war for 30 years and had been unstable for most of the prior century. The rural majority has always been against the “modernization” desired by the capital, and even tribes and factions that largely agreed couldn’t coalesce.

Afghanistan was a poor but fairly functional place until the mid 1960S/1970s when USA started murdering the shit out of local officials who in our view were overly accommodating of the USSR. This caused the government to collapse by the end of the 1970s and drew the Soviets to invade the country. Carter’s NSC director at the time, Brzezinski, boasted that America had succeeded in giving the Soviets their Vietnam. The US then provided weapons and support to violent extremists who we recruited from refugee camps in Pakistan and sent back into Afghanistan. Many of these people were not Afghan but Saudi religious fanatics who that regime were more than happy to send off on jihad.

America’s plan worked Afghanistan became a huge disaster for the Soviets and they collapsed. America won the Cold War and decided history ended. We decided to just forget about Afghanistan and fortunately there was never any consequences of destroying the entire professional and governing class of a country with a couple decades of intensity conflict……
posted by interogative mood at 7:38 PM on July 5, 2021 [15 favorites]

"For purposes of the historical record I want to note my personal objection to the decision by my country to pull out. From a utilitarian perspective this seems likely to cause more human misery that the continued presence of US forces would. I suspect that we are opening a new more horrible chapter in the history of Afghanistan."

Yeah. If we wanted to commit to war in Afghanistan we needed to be prepared to be there for 100+ years. Then we might get the local change we wanted. However no one was prepared to make that multi generational commitment to the cause. Except for the Afghans.
posted by lester's sock puppet at 8:15 PM on July 5, 2021 [1 favorite]

Willard:
"Charlie didn't get much USO. He was dug in too deep or moving too fast. His idea of great R&R was cold rice and a little rat meat. He had only two ways home: death, or victory."

“School and video games got me through my deployment,” said Air Force Staff Sgt. Naomi Sosa, who played there in late 2019 and early 2020.
posted by cameldrv at 11:09 PM on July 5, 2021

Ten years ago, this very month, in the Onion:

U.S. Quietly Slips Out Of Afghanistan In Dead Of Night
posted by DreamerFi at 1:59 AM on July 6, 2021 [4 favorites]

I always liked the focused Spanish (and Portuguese) word estadounidense for our vague and narcissistically inaccurate 'American'. Maybe we could use and promote a parallel construction, like 'Unitedstateser'. Or 'Unitedstatesman' and 'Unitedstateswoman.'
posted by bertran at 2:22 AM on July 6, 2021 [1 favorite]

just for the record, Portuguese has the "estadounidense" construction but nobody uses it; it's just "americano/a" or "norteamericano/a". Since there's a word for Canadian (canadiano/a) anyone using "norteamericano/a" is pretty surely talking about someone from the U.S. of A.

the affectionate slangy term is "camones" because the U.S. tourists seem to say "come on" a lot, and loudly.

(in re the Spanish, I've always liked the way the rule for plural abbreviations in Spanish turns the "Estados Unidos" into EE. UU.)
posted by chavenet at 2:40 AM on July 6, 2021 [2 favorites]

Thanks, chavenet for the clarification. I ought to have been more careful; I don't speak Portuguese, but do speak Spanish. 'Estadounidense' is definitely in common use in the Hispanosphere, though there are likely regional variations in degree I'm not aware of. 'Norteamericano' is also plenty used but strikes me as sharing the problem of vagueness, if to a lesser degree, that 'American' has.
posted by bertran at 3:22 AM on July 6, 2021

Seems to me the best outcome at this point is a quick Taliban victory. Not saying that it is good, especially for women and free thinkers, but at least it would allow for stability, end fighting, end terrorist attacks. I have a few friends there, hope to go back someday.
posted by Meatbomb at 4:41 AM on July 6, 2021

Also, let me be the party pooper and say that the Pokemon aren't left IN Afghanistan. They're on and have always been on some American server, with a column in the database table labeled "GPS coordinates" pointing to the military base.
posted by ymgve at 5:00 AM on July 6, 2021

Feels a bit weird to chip in on the Pokemon front, given all the political conversation, but Parasite Unseen I had a Vaporeon in a gym at an observatory at the top of a mountain in the Canary Islands for 11 months and 23 days. Genuinely gutted not to make it to a full year.

Guess the telescope operators weren't big Pokemon fans.
posted by offmessage at 5:38 AM on July 6, 2021 [3 favorites]

Guardian: Afghan anger over US’s sudden, silent Bagram departure

The airfield’s new commander, Gen Mir Asadullah Kohistani, only discovered the Americans’ departure more than two hours after they left, he said on Monday.

The fresh details of the American forces’ stealthy nighttime withdrawal from the sprawling base near Kabul, where they had spent two decades, underlined the uneasiness with which US forces sometimes regarded their Afghan partners.

“We [heard] some rumour that the Americans had left Bagram … and finally by 7am we understood that it was confirmed that they had already left” Kohistani told Associated Press.

“We did not know of their timeline for departure. They did not tell us when they left,” added the commander during a tour of the evacuated and now-looted base for journalists...

Within 20 minutes of the US’s silent departure on Friday, the electricity was shut down and the base was plunged into darkness, said Abdul Raouf, a soldier of 10 years who has also served in Taliban strongholds of Helmand and Kandahar provinces.

The sudden darkness was like a signal to the looters, he said. They entered from the north, smashing through the first barrier, ransacking buildings, loading anything that was not nailed down into trucks.

“In one night they lost all the goodwill of 20 years by leaving the way they did, in the night, without telling the Afghan soldiers who were outside patrolling the area,” another Afghan soldier told AP.

posted by TheophileEscargot at 5:52 AM on July 6, 2021 [6 favorites]

U.S. Quietly Slips Out Of Afghanistan In Dead Of Night
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 6:05 AM on July 6, 2021

Good lord. The article about the Pokemon itself reads like something out of the Onion... seriously I’m sorry to state the obvious but who gives a shit about the Pokemon?! Or are we supposed to read the story about the left-behind Pokemon as some kind of poetic metaphor for the US policy about Afghanistan...? I don’t think that came across very well in the article and there is no need for metaphors anyway but maybe I’m not in a poetic enough mindset when reading about this
posted by bitteschoen at 7:12 AM on July 6, 2021 [1 favorite]

at least it would allow for stability, end fighting, end terrorist attacks

That seems really unlikely given the religious, ethnic and political divisions in the country and the geopolitics of nearby counties like Pakistan, China, India, Iran and Russia. You’ll hear less about it in western media but the country appears to be headed towards a situation like Somalia, Syria and Libya. The Taliban and the central government are going to have to make peace. That’s the best outcome.
posted by interogative mood at 8:18 AM on July 6, 2021 [1 favorite]

seriously I’m sorry to state the obvious but who gives a shit about the Pokemon?!

It definitely isn't more important than the withdrawal itself but it is sort of interesting in a "yep, still living in a dystopian cyberpunk novel" sort of way.
posted by Glenn Grothman at 8:30 AM on July 6, 2021 [3 favorites]

We all know that Star and Stripes is literally a propaganda outlet based in the US Department of Defense right? It would be nice to think they're doing a subversive critique of US foreign policy, but I think it's just a stretched attempt to get something positive and wacky to feed the troops out of a not very positive event.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 9:09 AM on July 6, 2021 [4 favorites]

I don't know the status post-theformerguy, but Stars and Stripes for years had a surprising amount of journalistic independence and occasionally made military higher ups quite unhappy.
posted by tavella at 9:15 AM on July 6, 2021 [2 favorites]

Point of fact, theformerguy tried to close SnS down completely.
posted by Thorzdad at 9:20 AM on July 6, 2021 [1 favorite]

I think it’s standard practice to keep the final withdrawal date a closely guarded secret for obvious security reasons
posted by interogative mood at 9:52 AM on July 6, 2021

You'd think the new commander of the base would be on the need to know list though. At a minimum sometime before the electricity was shut off.
posted by Mitheral at 2:04 PM on July 7, 2021 [1 favorite]

I always liked the focused Spanish (and Portuguese) word estadounidense for our vague and narcissistically inaccurate 'American'. Maybe we could use and promote a parallel construction, like 'Unitedstateser'.

Australian English has a rhyming-slang construction that specifically refers to the people of the USA, if that's any help - and it's only two syllables.

It's problematic for two reasons I can think of.
posted by pompomtom at 4:22 AM on July 9, 2021 [1 favorite]