Świat w którym żyjemy staje się coraz bardziej bezsensowny.
Wydarzenia przychodzą i odchodzą jak fale gorączki,
pozostawiając nas zdezorientowanych i pogrążonych w niepewności.
Ci u władzy, prowadzą narracje które mają nam pomóc nadać sens
złożoności rzeczywistości.
Ale te narracje stają się coraz mniej przekonywujące i coraz płytsze.
# Excuse me, I'm lost... (Przepraszam, zgubiłam się) #
Jest to film o tym dla czego te narracje przestały mieć sens.
I jak doprowadziło to nas na Zachodzie, do bycia niebezpieczną i destrukcyjną siłą
wobec świata.
Opowiada to przez pryzmat kraju
w samym centrum świata. Afganistan.
#Kim jesteś? #
MUZYKA: Come Down To Us - Burial
# Jesteśmy tu
# Jestem zmęczona
# Break it down
# Break it down, to my eyes
# Baby, come on, come on
# And, girl, I know
# I know you want it
# I'm trusting you, I'm going
# Going
# Tonight, do you feel alive?
# Come down to us
# Come down
# Down... #
W 1946, amerykańscy inżynierowie, wraz z żonami i rodzinami,
zaczęli lądować na zakurzonym lądowisku w Helmand
w południowym Afganistanie.
Pracowali dla największej firmy budowlanej na świecie
- nazywającej się Morrison Knudsen -
i zostali tam sprowadzeni przez króla Afganistanu
by budować gigantyczny zaplanowany nowy świat -
kompleks tam, kanałów, dróg a nawet nowe modelowe miasto
Celem króla było ujarzmienie potężnej rzeki Helmand
i przemiana jego kraju w nowoczesne społeczeństwo - dokładnie jak na Zachodzie.
ARCHIWUM: "Azjatyckie królestwo Afganistanu jest zlokalizowane
około 10.000 mil od któregokolwiek z wybrzeży Stanów Zjednoczonych.
Niemal dokładnie po przeciwnej stronie ziemi, na zachód od Chin,
poza Himalajami.
'pozbawiony linii brzegowej, graniczy z Związkiem Sowieckim od północy,
na wschodzie z Pakistanem a na zachodzie z Iranem."
Król nazywa się Zahir Shah, i często przybywał żeby wizytować projekt.
Afganistan był głęboko konserwatywnym krajem, a on był zdeterminowany
aby go zmodernizować.
To co król próbował stworzyć w Helmand było kopią tego
co prezydent Roosevelt stworzył w Ameryce w latach 30 dwudziestego wieku.
A firma którą wynajął - Morrison Knudsen -
pracowała wtedy na zlecenie Roosevelta,
budując nowy świat tam i elektrowni w całej Ameryce.
Teraz mieli zrobić to samo dla Afganistanu.
Inżynierowi i ich rodziny żyli w kompleksie domów
wokół wiejskiej posiadłości króla w Helmand.
Miejsce to stało się znane jako Mała Ameryka.
NIEWYRAŹNE GŁOSY
Masz wszystko czego potrzebujesz?
Sporo rzeczy tu leży. Jest tu ciało martwego powstańca.
Mężczyzna zaraz pod 20stce.
Chodź, idziemy. Idziemy.
DIALOG W ICH WŁASNYM JĘZYKU
KRZYCZĄ JEDNOCZEŚNIE
OK, pójdę za tobą. Ruszaj.
OK.
Dzień dobry.
Wstańcie.
Jak się macie? KOBIETY: Dobrze, dziękuję.
Jesteście bardzo dobre.
Jak wasze rodziny?
Czego potrzeba żeby powstrzymać walki?
TŁUMACZ POWTARZA
ODPOWIADA WE WŁASNYM JĘZYKU
KOMÓRKA ODTWARZA PIOSENKĘ JAKO DZWONEK
DZWONEK USTAJE
NIEWYRAŹNE GŁOSY MIESZAJĄ SIĘ Z MUZYKĄ
Jak długo jesteś z Talibami, jeśli mogę zapytać?
Chris, co się dzieje?
Dobra, wow!!
ŚMIECH
Wow. Wyglądasz strasznie na zbliżeniu.
Z odległości też trochę strasznie!
Taa, to prawda.
Co jest?? Jak się czujesz?
Czuję się teraz nieźle.
To był dość ekscytujący dzień.
Ta, zaliczamy tu zabicia.
Dzisiaj, dla celów dokumentacji,
dziś było dniem w którym poszliśmy na wskroś rozkazom i mimo wszystko strzelaliśmy.
Zabiliśmy jakoś sporo ludzi.
24 niezatwierdzone strzały.
24 niezatwierdzone wysoce wybuchowe pociski z moździerza.
To około 40,000 funtów śmierci, prosto.
Yo. Yo.
Jebać to, wygląda tu prawie jak na ravie.
Wszystko co mam do powiedzenia... W zasadzie, mam coś do powiedzenia.
Posłuchajmy.
Kocham jebany korpus piechoty morskiej. ŚMIECH
- Wiem że wielu z was... - Mamy cie na kamerze jak to mówisz!
Wiem, wiem, że wielu z was nie, ale to co zrobiliśmy dzisiaj...
Ta, potrzebujemy urodzonych morderów, takich jak ty.
Och, wszyscy jesteśmy urodzonymi mordercami.
NIEWYRAŹNE GŁOSY
Pod koniec drugiej wojny światowej, prezydent Roosevelt wyruszył do
Wielkiego Jeziora Gorzkiego, mieszczącego się w połowie Kanału Sueskiego.
W tym samym czasie, wysłał kolejny okręt amerykańskiej marynarki
by podjąć króla Arabii Saudyjskiej, króla Abdulaziza.
Spotkanie króla i prezydenta miało mieć potężne - i katastroficzne -
konsekwencje tak dla Zachodu, jak i w dziwny sposób, dla Afganistanu.
Roosevelt umierał, ale przez ostatnie 13 lat
używał swojej władzy na epicką skalę, by zmieniać świat.
Po krachu Wall Street i okropnym kryzysie który po nim nastąpił.
Roosevelt chwycił za ster.
Przyjął ustawy które rozbijały banki
tak by nigdy więcej nie wymknęły się z pod kontroli.
I odbudowywał Amerykę serią gigantycznych tam
które dały milionom energię elektryczną i zatrudnienie.
A także zaplanował i poprowadził wojnę światową przeciw Niemcom i Japonii.
Teraz, kiedy Roosevelt siedział oczekując Abdulaziza,
nikt nie mógł sobie wyobrażać konsekwencji tego spotkania.
Albowiem miało ono uwolnić siły które w przyszłości
podważyły wszystko na co pracował Roosevelt -
jego wiarę że politycy powinni wykorzystywać swoją władzę by
planowo zmieniać świat.
Ale Roosevelt wiedział że aby utrzymać tą władzę, Ameryka potrzebuje ropy.
Chciał ukuć z królem alians aby być pewnym
że zasobne pola roponośne Saudów pozostaną pod Amerykańską kontrolą.
W swojej rozmowie, tych dwóch mężczyzn wyłożyło podstawy pod przymierze
które trwa po dziś dzień.
Ameryka miała dostać swoją ropę - a w zamian, Arabia Saudyjska
bogactwo i bezpieczeństwo zapewnione przez Amerykę.
Ale król był doskonale świadom niebezpieczeństw związanych z otwarciem swojego kraju
na wpływy nowoczesnego Zachodu.
Więc w negocjacjach które nastąpiły wysunął warunek.
Powiedział; weźmiemy waszą technologię i wasze pieniądze -
ale musicie zostawić w spokoju naszą wiarę.
Wiara Saudów nazywała się Wahabizm.
Była radykalną, agresywną i ekstremalnie purytańską formą Islamu,
a jej wyznawcy pośród Beduińskich plemion nienawidzili współczesnego świata.
Wahabizm był częścią szerszego ruchu w Islamie
który zrodził się w reakcji na europejskie imperia.
Kolejnym przykładem był ruch Deobandi w Indiach.
Wszyscy wierzyli że współczesny imperializm korumpuje
prawdziwą istotę Islamu i chcieli wrócić do świata
opartego na oryginalnych nauczaniach islamskich tekstów.
Abdulaziz ujarzmi tą siłę aby przejąć władzę w latach 1920tych.
Ale uwolnił coś co nie chciało się zatrzymać.
Whabici chcieli kontynuować i stworzyć kalifat
poprzez cały Arabski świat -
aby ich powstrzymać, w 1929, Abdulaziz rozstrzelał ich z karabinów maszynowych.
Bezlitości zabił wojowników którzy uczynili go królem.
Ale ich wiara - pełna przemocy, pozbawiona tolerancji, ale ponad wszystko,
uwsteczniona wersja islamu -
pozostała w samym sercu społeczeństwa Arabii Saudyjskiej.
A umowa zawarta nad wodach Wielkiego Jeziora Gorzkiego
oznaczała że Ameryka dostanie swoją ropę
ale będzie też strzegła Wahabizmu -
siły, która miała swoje własne globalne ambicje.
Ambicje bardzo różne od Amerykańskich.
GRA NA HARFIE
Kim jest typ w turbanie na tronie?
Masz na myśli Khasi.
To Randy Lal.
Kto?
Randy Lal, khasi Kalabaru.
Och!
Skąd wiesz że nim jest?
- Skąd wiem ze jest czym? - Randym.
- To jego imię! - Och!
Wygląda bardzo przystojnie, nieprawdaż?
Tak, zaledwie najbogatszy i najpotężniejszy radża w północnych Indiach,
tylko tyle.
- Uśmiecha się do nas. - Odwzajemnij uśmiech.
Cooee! (australijskie zawołanie)
Nie musisz od razu szaleć.
Ojcze, kim sa ci ludzie?
To, światło mojej ciemności, Sir Sidney Rough Diamond, (Sir Sidney Twardy Diament)
Brytyjski gubernator, którego łaskawych rządów
i światłego kierownictwa, dobrze było by nie uświadczyć.
Do połowy lat 1950tych, amerykańscy inżynierowie zbudowali
potężne tamy które miały stworzyć to co nazwano
"nową cudowną krainą roślinności i prądu" w Helmand.
Ale projekt napotkał problemy
i zaczynał tracić swoją niewinność.
Wraz ze swoim ukończeniem, ogromne tamy miały nieprzewidziany efekt.
Podniosły poziom wód gruntowych
i zaczęły wyprowadzać na powierzchnie sole.
A jedną z roślin które kwitły w tych nowych glebach były maki.
Niektórzy prowadzący projekty stwierdzili że należy je zatrzymać.
Ale amerykański rząd wkroczył nalegając aby je kontynuować
ponieważ w tej chwili tamy stały się kluczową częścią
walki ze Związkiem Radzieckim.
Wszystkie strony w Zimnej Wojnie zaczęły konkurować aby zaoferować Afganistanowi
większe i lepsze wzory na modernizację kraju.
Afgańscy politycy wykorzystywali to bezlitośnie.
Premier, Mohammed Daoud, spędzał cały swój czas podróżując po świecie
rozgrywając kolejne kraje - Rosję, Amerykę i Chiny -
przeciw sobie na wzajem.
Daoud chciał użyć modernizacji jako sposobu na skonsolidowanie swojej władzy.
Afganistan był podzielonym krajem.
Władza była podzielona pomiędzy grupy etniczne i plemiona.
Daoud był Pasztunem i widział w jaki sposób projekt tam w Helmand
może zostać wykorzystany do mocniejszego pchnięcia kraju w pasztuńskie ręce.
Przekonał Amerykanów żeby jeszcze bardziej powiększych projekt,
aby obrócić go w potężne dzieło inżynierii społecznej.
Tysiące pasztuńskich nomadów,
którzy spędzali życie wędrując poprzez tereny graniczne z Pakistanem,
miało zostać osiedlonych na nowych ziemiach uprawnych, stworzonych przez tamy.
Daoud przedstawiał to jako po prostu kolejny niewinny element modernizacji -
a amerykanie beztrosko na niego przystali.
Z czego nie zdawali sobie sprawy to że nieświadomie byli wciągani
w afgańską politykę sił.
Daoud nie tylko powiększał pasztuńską władzę, ale też
zasiał nasiona zajadłych sporów
odnośnie podziału i własności ziemi w Helmand.
SZYBKA MUZYKA TANECZNA
TRĄBKA GRA AFGAŃSKĄ MUZYKĘ LUDOWĄ
TŁUM KLASZCZE W RYTM
gRA TRADYCYJNA MUZYKA
CHŁOPCY NAWOŁUJĄ SIĘ W SWOIM JĘZYKU
STRZAŁY
FALA WYSTRZAŁÓW
KRZYKI
KLAKSON
MĘŻCZYZNA KRZYCZY W SWOIM JĘZYKU
SYRENA ALARMOWA
MĘŻCZYŹNI ROZMAWIAJĄ PO CICHU
RYK SYRENY OKRĘTOWEJ
WIELBŁĄD CHRZĄKA
Brytyjska Rada Handlu,
w broszurze rozdawanej odwiedzającym brytyjskim biznesmenom,
stara się być pomocna, ale tak mówi o arabskim czasie,
a to tylko jeden z przykładów.
"Zachód brany jest za zero, kiedy zegarki nastawiane są na 12.
"Spotkanie biznesowe, wyznaczone, przykładowo, na drugą po południu
będzie oznaczało więc dwie godziny po zachodzie słońca
a piąta rano, siedem godzin przed zachodem słońca.
Ważne jest aby pamiętać że zachód słońca należy postrzegać
jako północ. Czas wschodu jest nieistotny."
Nie wiem jak dla was, ale wiem że czas słoneczny jest około sześć godzin, hm...
plus pięć, innymi słowy jest któraś godzina 11, wieczorem lub rano.
- Ale która? - No cóż jest 11.
Ale to musi mieć jakieś odniesienie do pory dnia.
- Tak. - Jak pan, jako biznesmen,
umawia spotkania?
Um... Normalnie robię to w oparciu o swój zegarek.
Osobiście pytam czy stosują czas arabski,
czas słoneczny czy czas GMT plus trzy. Zazwyczaj preferują jeden z dwóch wcześniejszych.
Proszę o podanie czasu w GMT plus trzy.
Teraz, czas słoneczny jest sześć godzin do tyłu, około.
Sześć godzin po tym?
Sześć godzin, plus pięć, plus minus godzina,
Czy wiesz którą teraz mamy godzinę?
Nie bardzo!
W 1964, król Faisal został nowym władcą Arabii Saudyjskiej.
Faisal zamierzał zmodernizować kraj.
Stworzył wzorowane na zachodzie biurokrację, oraz system socjalny.
Po raz pierwszy zezwolił nawet na telewizję.
Ale stał przed dwoma zagrożeniami.
Źródłem pierwszego byli przywódcy religijni wewnątrz Arabii Saudyjskiej.
Byli Wahabitami którzy dali władzę jego rodzinie
i legitymizowali jego władzę.
Nie ufali żadnej koncepcji modernizacji saudyjskiego społeczeństwa.
Faisal mierzył się również z niebezpieczną sytuacją za granicą,
ze strony komunizmu, który rozprzestrzeniał się poprzez arabski świat.
Jego rozwiązanie było proste.
Faisal zdecydował się wykorzystać religijnych przywódców i ich konserwatywne wierzenia
jako siłę mającą odeprzeć międzynarodowe zagrożenie komunizmu.
Ale wiedział też że to odwróci także ich uwagę
od jego polityki wewnętrznej.
Faisal użył coraz większych wpływów z ropy
by założyć setki szkół i instytutów w całym islamskim świecie -
niektóre nawet tak daleko jak w Pakistanie.
Ich zadaniem było rozprzestrzenianie wahabickich idei i pomoc w przemianie islamu w
zunifikowaną międzynarodową siłę, dostatecznie silną by zmierzyć się z komunizmem.
To co robił Faisal polegało na wzięciu niebezpiecznego
i niestabilnego fanatyzmu będącego sercem saudyjskiego społeczeństwa
i skierowaniu go na zewnątrz, poza granice.
Był to bezwzględny sposób na stabilizację w jego własnym kraju.
Ameryka dała na to milczące przyzwolenie
ponieważ był to element globalnej walki z komunizmem.
Ale w 1966, Faisal dał Ameryce
zobaczyć przebłysk tego jak niekontrolowalnym sojusznikiem mogła byś Arabia Saudyjska.
Wybrał się do Nowego Jorku
i publicznie zaatakował amerykańskie poparcie dla Izraela.
Wywołało to skandal.
MÓWI PO ARABSKU
Powody są takie że niestety,
Żydzi na całym świecie popierają Izrael.
Zapewniają wsparcie Izraelowi i, w naszej obecnej sytuacji,
uważamy tych którzy wspierają naszego wroga
jako naszych własnych wrogów.
MÓWI PO ARABSKU
Chciał bym wynająć ksero.
- OK. - Na trzy miesiące.
W porządku.
- Być może na sześć miesięcy. - Tak, czemu by nie?
Um...
Jeśli chcesz na rok, jedno za...
To czego od ciebie potrzebuje to jakie są warunki i ile będzie to kosztować.
MĘŻCZYZNA MÓWI WE WŁASNYM JĘZYKU
Ho, ho, ho, ho.
Czy macie zapas... tego tonera i wywoływacza?
Ta, chcemy żebyście wy je konserwowali i serwisowali. OK?
MĘŻCZYŹNI ROZMAWIAJĄ WE WŁASNYM JĘZYKU
Sir, będziemy kupować papier i kolor od nich, tak będzie OK?
Ta. Czy możecie podać mi cenę za trzy miesiące,
być może sześć miesięcy?
Umowa musi trwać trzy miesiące.
OK.
ROZMAWIAJĄ WE WŁASNYM JĘZYKU
500 dolarów za miesiąc.
- 500 dolarów za miesiąc. - Za miesiąc?
- To bardzo drogo. - To jest bardzo drogie.
Co możesz mieć, jeśli sprowadzisz je tutaj,
możesz ustawić je tutaj, ja będę dla was kopiował.
Nie, nie, chcemy zabrać kopiarki.
MUZYKA: The Bewlay Brothers - David Bowie
# And so the story goes, they wore the clothes
# They said the things to make it seem improbable
# Whale of a lie like they hope it was
# And the good men tomorrow had their feet in the wallow
# And their heads of brawn were nicer shorn
# And how they bought their positions with saccharin and trust
# And the world was asleep to our latent fuss
# Sighings swirl through the streets like the crust of the sun
# The Bewlay Brothers
# In our wings that bark
# Flashing teeth of brass
# Standing tall in the dark
# Oh, and we were gone... #
Wasza Ekscelencjo, wasza obecność wzbogaca mój skromny dom.
Niech wspaniołomyślność boga Shivu niesie błogosławieństwo dla twego domu.
I dla twego.
A jego mądrość niesie sukces wszystkim twoim przedsięwzięciom.
I twoim.
I niech jego blask rozpali twoje życie.
I ciebie też.
- Czy kiedykolwiek... - Bardzo mnie to gniewa.
Czy kiedykolwiek czuje pan frustrację z powodu, mam na myśli,
mówił pan o korupcji i z całą pewnością w przeszłości
przedstawiał bardzo mocne poglądy przeciw urzędnikom, na przykład,
którzy są skorumpowani, ale wielu z nich nie opuściło swoich miejsc pracy,
nie podporządkowali się pańskim rozkazom.
Nie, wszyscy opuścili swoje posady.
Z pewnością.
W ostatnich kilku dniach, 28 którzy zostali zwolnieni,
19, według naszych informacji 19 z nich wciąż zajmuje swoje stanowiska.
Nie, to nie prawda. Wszyscy odeszli.
- OK. - Zdecydowanie. Zdecydowanie.
Jest pan więc pewien że pańska władza jest rozbudowywana
w zakresie możliwości stanowienia,
pewności że podporządkowuje się pańskim rozkazom.
Ja... Ja buduję nową administrację dla Afganistanu.
Pracuję nad czystą, wydajną administracją.
Do tyłu! Cofnąć się! Cofnąć się, kurwa!
Spierdalać z drogi. Wypierdalajcie!
MUZYKA POWRACA: The Bewlay Brothers - David Bowie
# I was stone, he was wax
# So he could scream and still relax, unbelievable
# And we frightened the small children away
# And our talk was old and dust would flow through our veins
# And though it was midnight back at the kitchen door
# Like the grim face on the cathedral floor
# The solid book we wrote cannot be found today
# And it was stalking time for the moon boys, the Bewlay Brothers
# With our backs on the arch
# And the Devil may be here
# But he can't sing about that
# Oh, and we were gone
# Real cool traders
# We were so turned on... #
MUZYKA ZNIEKSZTAŁCA SIĘ, CICHNIE
# You thought we were fakers... #
PIES SZCZEKA
Niedawno, przyjaciel programu "Blue Peter", Angela Mulliner,
zaprosila mnie aby pomóc w przygotowaniu psów o bardzo kudłatej sierści,
parę chartów afgańskich
To powinno być dobre miejsce
'Potrzeba dużo przestrzeni aby wyczesać psy tej wielkości,
'więc udaliśmy się do parku.
'Ich imiona to Kingsley i Cleo i powiedziałam że ja zajmę się Cleo.'
Jak często powinno się to robić?
- Bardzo często. - O, rany.
Nie siadaj, Cleo, Dobra dziewczynka.
'Angela i ja chcemy aby psy wyglądały jak najlepiej
'ponieważ zabieramy je na specjalne wydarzenie.
'Udajemy się wszyscy na aleję The Mall
'i musimy tam być przed godziną 12.'
- Chodźcie, pieski. - Chodź.
'Byłyśmy bardzo dumne z Kingsley'a i Cleo ponieważ zostały zaproszone
'aby dołączyć do warty honorowej.'
'Charty afgańskie zostały wybrane aby pozdrowić ich króla, ponieważ
'po raz pierwszy, Król Afganistanu przybywa do Londynu.'
ORKIESTRA GRA MARSZA
'Około 20 członków Południowego Stowarzyszenia Chartów Afgańskich
'ustawiło swoje psy wzdłuż trasy
'i były afgańczyki wszystkich kolorów i rozmiarów.'
'A kiedy Królowa wskazała na nas,
'Król Afganistanu sprawiał wrażenie zachwyconego widząc nas.
RADOŚĆ
'Po raz pierwszy w ich życiach,
'Brytyjskie charty afgańskie oglądały ludzi ze swojego kraju
'ponieważ w karetach jadących za Królową,
'było więcej ludzi z Dworu Królewskiego Afganistanu.'
ADAM CURTIS: Ale uporządkowany świat, w którym rządzą królowie i królowe
a psy zachowują się posłusznie, miał się już zawalić.
W 1971, Król Afganistanu
odbył swoją pierwszą wizytę panstwową do Brytanii
ale była to równiej jego ostatnia,
ponieważ jego ambitny Premier, Mohammed Daoud,
już przeciwko niemu spiskował.
I w 1973, Daoud przejął władzę w wyniku zamachu stanu.
Ogłosił Afganistan republiką, i wysłał Króla na wygnanie.
PSY SZCZEKAJĄ
Dwa miesiące później, Egipt zaatakował Izrael
i wojna na Bliskim Wschodzie się rozpoczęła.
Na początku, wyglądało jakby Izrael był pokonany.
Ale rząd Amerykański przybył z pomocą, armią powietrzną
na masową skalę by zapobiec przed przytłoczeniem Izraelitów.
Izraelici kontratakowali i Arabowie ponieśli klęskę.
Ale wtedy Arabia Saudyjska przyszła na ratunek
ponieważ Król Faisal zdał sobie sprawę
że jego kraj miał broń która mogłaby powstrzymać Izrael.
W nocy, Faisal podwyższył cenę ropy pięciokrotnie
i zagroził całkowitym embargo
o ile Ameryka nie zmusi Izrael do odwrotu.
To zadziałało. Uzgodniono zawieszenie ognia.
I wszyscy zdali sobie sprawę że równowaga sił na świecie
nagle się zmieniła.
Czego chcemy to całkowite wycofanie sił Izraelskich
z okupowanych Arabskich terytoriów
a wtedy będziecie mieli ropę
na tym samym poziomie co we wrześniu '73.
Czy to rządanie jest ostateczne i sztywne czy jest to tylko pozycja do negocjacji?
Zdecydowanie. Zdecydowanie.
Nie oddamy ani cala tych ziemi.
Czy ten nowy potężny wzrost w cenie ropy
oznacza zmianę w światowej równowadze sił
pomiędzy rozwijającymi się państwami jak wy, producenci,
i nami, rozwiniętymi uprzemysłowionymi krajami?
Tak, oznacza.
I jak myślisz co z tego powstanie?
Coż, nowy rodzaj stosunków.
Musicie dostosować się do nowych okoliczności
i myślę że musicie usiąść i poważnie z porozmawiać z nami
o tej nowej erze.
Kiedy Arabia Saudyjska podwyższyła cenę ropy,
zrobiła to by zmienić polityczną równowagę sił na świecie.
Ale to również miało inny, nieoczekiwany efekt
ponieważ umożliwiło to ludziom którzy prowadzili banki i system finansowy
w Ameryce i Brytanii rozpoczęcie procesu oderwania od politycznej kontroli.
Miliardy dolarów popłynęły z Zachodu do Arabii Saudyjskiej -
z którymi w większości Saudowie nie wiedzieli co zrobić.
Więc przekazali je do Zachodnich banków na inwestycje.
Banki dokonały wtedy kluczowej decyzji - zatrzymały wiele
z tych dolarów z dala od kontroli Amerykańskiego rządu
i stały się one ogromnym zasobem bogactwa, znanym jako petro-dolary,
które może być pożyczane i obracane gdziekolwiek na świecie
bez politycznej kontroli.
W trakcie gdy zachodni politycy usiłowali poradzić sobie z ekonomią
i chaosem społecznym który został wywołany przez rosnącą cenę ropy,
ich bankierzy budowali nowy system finansowy
oparty na obrocie Saudyjskich miliardów.
I banki zaczęły stawać się ponownie bogate i wpływowe.
ODLEGŁE STŁUMIONE KRZYKI
Czy on wie gdzie są Talibowie?
Największe schronienie Talibów... Taliban...
ROZMAWIAJĄ WE WŁASNYM JĘZYKU
- Marjah? - Marjah.
Powiedział Talibowie są w Marjah.
ŚMIECH: Uh-huh, Marjah. Marjah.
ROZMAWIAJĄ WE WŁASNYM JĘZYKU
Oni używają jego części jako... MĘŻCZYZNA MÓWI WE WŁASNYM JĘZYKU
- Assalamu alaikum. - Assalamu alaikum.
Jasne. Czy jesteśmy w Kushal Kalay właśnie teraz?
Czy to Kushal Kalay? Jaka jest nazwa tej wioski?
MĘŻCZYZNA TŁUMACZY
To krańce Kushal Kalay.
Czy Talibowie już poszli czy wciąż są w Kushal Kalay?
TŁUMACZY
OK. Gdzie... Sh, sh, sh.
Gdzie on widział Talibów? Gdzie?
ROZMAWIAJĄ WE WŁASNYM JĘZYKU
Jasne, Jasne.
MÓWI WE WŁASNYM JĘZYKU
Jak daleko?
MÓWI WE WŁASNYM JĘZYKU
Tutaj, Talibowie?
MÓWI WE WŁASNYM JĘZYKU
Tam, tam! Dobra, sir - sir!
MÓWIĄ WE WŁASNYM JĘZYKU
Ten człowiek zidentyfikował tych tutaj i mówi że to Talibowie.
MÓWI WE WŁASNYM JĘZYKU Tak. Dwóch ludzi.
MÓWI WE WŁASNYM JĘZYKU Tak, tam.
Talibów, tak?
MÓWI WE WŁASNYM JĘZYKU
DZIECI KRZYCZĄ
MÓWIĄ WE WŁASNYM JĘZYKU
WIATR WIEJE
Gdy zachodnie kraje zapadły się ekonomicznie w latach 70tych,
studenci z Europy i Ameryki uciekli z chaosu.
Przybyli do Afganistanu jak krainy snów.
Inny, niewinny świat,
wolny od korupcji polityków i pieniędzy z Zachodu.
MĘŻCZYZNA: Wtem widzisz Afgańczyków wyłaniających się z piasku,
ledwie rzucają spojrzenie, i odchodzą w przeszłość.
Tęsknisz za pytaniem, "Dokąd zmierzasz? Skąd przychodzisz?"
Ale on tylko znika w mroku,
zajęty swoimi codziennymi sprawami.
Podróżnik to ktoś
kto porusza się po kraju
dzięki własnej przedsiębiorczości,
z pewną wewnętrzną potrzebą nauki,
aby znaleźć coś więcej niż powierzchowność.
Dla mnie, Afgańskość była pewną figurą z drzeworytu
w księdze o Indiach.
Rzeczywistość Afganistanu była dużo ponad to,
ich siła charakteru która przemawia przez
ich najprostsze działanie.
To jest długa kurtka. Dla mężczyzn.
Od pokoleń. Przechodzi z matki na córkę.
Opos.
To jest antylopa.
Spójrz na ten płaszcz.
But Afghan students still believed in the idea of revolution.
Back in the 1960s, many students from Kabul University had been sent
to universities in America.
It had been part of the modernisation project.
And they brought back with them radical ideas
from the American student left.
Back in Kabul,
those ideas then got mixed up with other left-wing theories
that the Afghan students found in badly-translated Russian books
about Marxism.
And in 1978 they decided to have a revolution.
One of the leaders was Hafizullah Amin,
and after the revolution he ordered a film to be made
about the role he had played.
Amin also starred in the film, playing himself.
It shows policemen coming to Amin's house to arrest him.
He tries to hide some secret papers.
But the policemen take him to jail, leaving his wife and daughter.
Amin is then shown directing the revolution from his prison cell.
And then riding on a tank to the president's palace.
REPORTER: Tanks loyal to young communist army officers
now guard the palace where President Daoud ruled.
Inside, he and his family, including his young grandchildren,
are shot dead when his palace guard lost their courageous battle
to defend him.
Men from the different tribes who live in this backward country
swarm all over tanks knocked out in the battle.
They seem pleased to see the end of the old, feudal regime.
ADAM CURTIS: The revolutionaries gave a press conference.
Amin, it was announced, would become Foreign Minister.
And the president of the revolutionary council
was another ex-student - Mohammed Taraki.
Our relationship with all the countries, including Soviet Union,
and all our neighbours and throughout the world will be peace,
will depend on the amount of their support to our government
in political, economical field.
Does this mean, Mr President,
that you will be following a strict policy of non-alignment?
This is quite correct.
The aim of the revolution was to create a new Afghanistan,
and parades were held in Kabul to celebrate the radical vision.
One of the main aims was to redistribute land fairly,
to get rid of a feudal system of landowners and peasants.
Every farmer was to be allowed to own their own land.
And young revolutionaries from Kabul
were filmed going out into the countryside
to measure out the new plots,
followed by the grateful farmers kissing their new land certificates.
But in reality, the land reforms set the seeds for a bitter conflict
in Helmand. It made the divisions
that had begun with President Daoud's reforms in the 1960s much worse.
As the land was parcelled out,
families accused each other of stealing the best bits.
And all sorts of hatreds and rivalries
were born in Afghan rural society,
rivalries that would set village against village, tribe against tribe.
And in Kabul, the revolutionaries started to hate each other, too.
Hafizullah Amin decided that he should be in charge,
and he arranged for his rival, Taraki, to be killed.
Taraki was smothered with a cushion.
Amin ordered that anyone who opposed the reforms
should be thrown in jail or killed.
In Helmand, 100 political prisoners were taken up in a plane
and thrown into the giant lake created by the American dam.
The Soviet leaders in Moscow became terrified that Afghanistan
was falling apart and they decided to intervene.
They rang Amin to tell him that they were sending Russian troops
to help his revolution.
And at the end of 1979, the troops began to arrive at Kabul Airport.
What the Russians didn't tell Amin
was that the troops were also coming to kill him.
The Russians put a sniper on one of the main roads in Kabul.
But Amin's convoy drove too fast and the sniper missed.
GUNSHOT
THEY SPEAK OWN LANGUAGE
They tried again.
This time they put poison in Amin's can of Pepsi
in the presidential palace.
But his nephew drank it instead...
and died.
Amin gave a banquet in a palace outside Kabul.
The Soviets smuggled in a chef who poisoned the food.
This time it worked -
all the guests, and Amin, fell on the floor, writhing in agony.
But the Afghan servants rang for help
and two Russian doctors turned up who knew nothing of the plot.
They pumped Amin's stomach and he revived.
So the Russian troops attacked the palace, threw a grenade at Amin,
and shot him.
SHOUTING IN OWN LANGUAGE
INDISTINCT VOICES ON RADIO
Couldn't be happier. And I'm particularly happy today.
Why?
We had a very good election last night
and the people came out in huge numbers to vote.
And voted a new president, which is the people's choice,
and that's democracy in action.
And I'm very proud of the people of the United States.
Oh, I was thrilled.
I think the stock market will go up, everyone will be happy,
the economy is going to level off,
our international relations will become much more stable.
I've worked very, very hard on the election in some of the phone banks
and all of my friends did. Thrilled to pieces about it.
I, uh, always have voted, uh, Democrat.
So, you know, times have changed now so, I'm not a baby any more
so I had to make a change and I made a change.
And so the right man won.
President Reagan simplified everything for America.
For ten years, the country had been battered and torn apart
by waves of economic and social chaos.
Reagan set out to give the country a new sense of purpose.
He took all the problems, even the most complex,
and turned them into reassuring moral fables.
And abroad, the world he depicted was one where,
although good might struggle with evil for a while,
in the end, goodness and innocence would triumph.
We have it in our power
to begin the world over again.
APPLAUSE
It was a vision of the world that, over the next 20 years,
would rise up to possess all of us in the West, both left and right.
Conflicts that, in the past, would have been seen as political struggles
were redefined. They became instead battles against dark, demonic forces
that threatened innocent people.
And the role of we, the good people of the West,
was to intervene to save those innocents.
One of the places this dream began was Afghanistan.
America was already helping the rebels
who were fighting the Russians, but Reagan increased the aid massively
and made it the symbol of his new vision.
He even dedicated the space shuttle to the Afghan freedom fighters.
Just as the Columbia we think represents man's finest aspirations
in the field of science and technology,
so, too, does the struggle of the Afghan people represent man's
highest aspirations for freedom.
Accordingly, I am dedicating, on behalf of the American people,
the March 22nd launch of the Columbia
to the people of Afghanistan.
But right from the beginning there was a dangerous,
destructive force at the very heart of this project.
This was because Reagan's partner in the battle to bring freedom
to Afghanistan was Saudi Arabia.
The Saudi intelligence agencies worked with the CIA to ship arms
and money to the Afghan rebels.
On the surface, the Saudis did this because a fellow Muslim country
had been invaded by communists.
But it was also part of their attempt to export the dangerous
fundamentalism at the heart of their own society.
In 1979, a group of Saudi radicals
had taken over the Grand Mosque in Mecca.
For two weeks, the authorities had fought running battles
with the insurgents.
They discovered that a number of the attackers had been taught
by the most senior religious leader in the country.
It made the ruling family realise just how fragile
their grip on power was.
So as well as sending the money and the weapons,
they encouraged young radicals to go and fight in Afghanistan.
One of them was a young Osama bin Laden.
The aim was to divert their anger.
But it meant that with the arms would also come the pessimistic
and intolerant version of Islam - Wahhabism.
To begin with, these ideas would have little influence in Afghanistan.
But they would take hold there and mutate into a dark and violent force
that was completely at odds with Reagan's vision of freedom.
At the beginning, though, no-one knew who to give the weapons to,
and an odd group of adventurers went into Afghanistan to find out.
One of the first was a Texan socialite called Joanne Herring.
When I went in to Afghanistan - I don't even know how I got in -
the president of Pakistan flew me to the border, you know,
the no man's land that the British created - very wisely -
between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
And we boarded a truck - I put on men's clothing -
and we got on this truck and went somewhere.
And we went into these camps
and there would be these men
with beards and turbans... in rags, really.
They had nothing.
And with their 1918 Enfield rifles,
they would stand there and they'd say,
"To the last drop of blood!"
And your heart would just burst. But I thought,
"What will they do with an unveiled woman coming in here?"
And I thought, you know, they really may kill me
because they might not understand why I'm here. But they did.
They were so grateful. So grateful.
They said, "The world doesn't know. Thank you for coming."
PLANES PASS OVERHEAD
EXPLOSION
My...heart was given immediately to these people
who believed so much in their god,
and I think it's the same god...
..as I worship.
Just in another way.
And they would come back and, of course, completely exhausted
and almost dead - those who were still alive -
and then this new group would say,
"I can't wait to go out and kill Russians."
MAN: 'This is Radio Afghanistan calling Europe.'
This is Radio Afghanistan, Kabul, and here is the news.
43 cases of bullets for 300 3-bore guns,
an Egyptian Kalashnikov,
11,300 other bullets of various types,
including rocket launchers and mines,
and 170 various types of weapons,
45 mortar shells,
light and heavy machine guns, typewriters and cameras,
have recently been seized from the counter revolutionary bandits...
MALE REPORTER: Ask him to speak to the daughter.
MAN TRANSLATES
FEMALE REPORTER: Can he give her the flower? Give her the flower.
MEN SPEAK OWN LANGUAGE
MALE REPORTER: Karen, please.
It is better if he gives her flower than if Karen gives her the flower.
MEN TALK OWN LANGUAGE
Sorry. Can you do it? Ask him to do it while I'm filming.
Just ask him to put it down...
MAN SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE
Yeah, yeah, yeah, OK.
MAN SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE
EXPLOSION
MAN COUGHS
GUITAR PLAYS
MAN SINGS IN OWN LANGUAGE
In the early 1980s, the Soviet Union was falling apart.
The attempt to create a planned socialist society had failed.
It had become a stagnant world where the shops were half empty,
criminal gangs looted the factories,
and no-one believed in the system any longer.
The ageing Soviet leaders knew that Russian society was collapsing
but they had no idea what to do.
And in the face of this, Afghanistan became, for them, a last desperate
attempt to create a model version of their original communist ideal.
Faced with a growing rebellion in the countryside,
the Russians took over Afghanistan
and installed another student revolutionary as president.
He was called Babrak Karmal
and he did what he was told.
And as well as the Russian troops, thousands of teachers and doctors
came to set up programmes and hospitals that were going to
transform the lives of the Afghan people.
SHE SINGS IN OWN LANGUAGE
..it was 151...in the right arm in sitting position.
Why did you come to Afghanistan?
Was it compulsory posting or was it of your own free choice?
Why...I did come to Afghanistan?
OK, I will tell you.
I'm doctor.
I want to help people.
Patient. It is the main reason I come to Afghanistan.
Do you say this right?
But it was your free choice that you came here, you were not sent here?
Only free choice. Only free choice.
And Afghan women were taught to be independent
so they could free themselves from the repression
of what the Soviets saw as a backward religion.
You know, after the revolution,
the woman in Afghanistan will be same, like man, yes?
They're the same.
You know what I mean?
You know, in society
and also in economy and everything.
But outside the cities, the mujaheddin rebels
increased their attacks.
They were becoming more confident and powerful.
Using weapons supplied by the Americans and the Saudis,
they ambushed Russian convoys.
GUNFIRE AND EXPLOSIONS
The mujaheddin treatment of their Russian prisoners
was ruthless and cruel.
..and we captured two Russians alive.
Then we took them to our commander.
And then the commander told us to stone them into death.
And we took them and we stoned them into death.
- They stoned them to death? Yes.
Have many people here stoned Russians or Afghan communists to death?
MAN TRANSLATES
MURMURS OF AGREEMENT
In response, the Russians launched search and destroy missions,
often bombing whole villages,
massacring hundreds of civilians.
The war became a vicious struggle,
with the mujaheddin using equally brutal tactics.
And any idea of transforming Afghanistan began to slip away,
and the Russians retreated into the cities.
INDISTINCT RADIO CHATTER
Comrade General, what is the military situation in the country?
But the rebels came into the cities
and began to kill the Russian civilians.
They hid bombs in everyday objects
that exploded the moment anyone used them.
Everything around the Russians became frightening and unstable.
The forces that they had unleashed were pursuing them
and as they did so they began to eat away at the very foundations
of Soviet communism.
One of the bravest and most honest of the Russian journalists
in Afghanistan was Artyom Borovik.
He wrote, "We thought that we were civilising a backwards country
"by exposing it to television, to modern bombers, to schools,
"to the latest models of tanks,
"to books, to long-range artillery,
"to newspapers, to economic aid, to AK-47s.
"But we rarely stopped to think how Afghanistan would influence us,
"despite the hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers, diplomats,
"journalists and political advisers who passed through it.
"They were thrown into a country where bribery, corruption,
"profiteering and drugs were no less common
"than the long lines in Soviet stores.
"These diseases can be far more infectious and dangerous
"than hepatitis, particularly when they reach epidemic proportions."
HE LAUGHS
Borovik said the Russians resembled the astronauts
in a famous Soviet science fiction film called Solaris.
The astronauts find a planet covered with a giant ocean
that seems to be conscious.
And to try and influence the ocean,
they bombard it with X-rays.
What they don't realise is that the ocean is irradiating them.
It is playing back, in the astronauts' minds,
memories of the past,
but in such a vivid way that they begin not to trust anything
that they think or believe.
Afghanistan, Borovik said,
was doing the same to the Russians.
It had led them to distrust the very basis of everything they believed in.
And they were taking that distrust back with them
into the heart of Russia.
APPLAUSE ON TV
'Could Labour have managed a rally like this?'
AUDIENCE: 'No!'
'In the old days, perhaps, but not now.
'For they are the party of yesterday,
'and tomorrow is ours.'
APPLAUSE ON TV
The massive increase in the price of oil imposed by the Saudis
had caused economic and social chaos in the West.
Governments had struggled to deal with it, but they had failed.
And in the 1980s, right-wing governments came to power in Britain
and America who turned to radical new ways to create economic growth.
To begin with, the new policies seemed to work.
Inflation was squeezed out of the system
and the economies began to stabilise.
But then there were other unexpected consequences.
Interest rates had risen massively -
and this decimated manufacturing industry in both Britain and America.
Factory after factory closed.
High-paid skilled jobs were replaced by low-wage jobs
in the service industries,
and living standards began to fall.
But then the politicians found a solution.
If you couldn't make wages grow any longer,
instead you would get the banks to lend people money.
And in the mid-1980s, governments removed the restrictions
on the banks' lending,
and a wave of borrowing spread through Britain and America.
Even if their wages were static, people felt wealthier,
and had the money to buy things and keep the economy working.
And the power to manage society began to move even more from politics
to the financial system.
Weapons free, battle stations.
Weapons free, weapons free.
But there was one industry in Britain that had survived
and, in fact, was growing.
It was the arms industry and its vast trade with Saudi Arabia.
But rather than strengthening the politicians' power,
it undermined it further, through corruption.
REPORTER: The King's train was 20 minutes late
arriving at Victoria Station.
It was delayed while a suspicious box on a bridge over the track
was checked, and found to be harmless.
When he eventually stepped on to the platform,
it was to a full royal welcome.
ADAM CURTIS: Through the 1970s, British arms companies had signed
more and more contracts with the Saudis,
and they became a central part of a new industry
that was run from the very heart of the British government.
We're in the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall.
Behind these doors there's a room.
A room which few people apart from Arab Sheiks
and other potential foreign customers have ever set eyes on before.
This way, please.
This is it, the permanent Defence Equipment Exhibition,
the supermarket of the sales organisation which this year
will sell nearly £600 million worth of British military hardware
to foreign governments.
Week in, week out, overseas service chiefs come here discreetly
to shop for anything from guided missile destroyers and aircraft
to a pair of army boots.
And they've got quite a choice.
There are hundreds of individual British manufacturers
in this business. Glossy coloured brochures in every language,
including, of course, Arabic.
Everywhere in this amazing exhibition there are models showing
the hardware in action, showing what the hardware can do.
Big missiles, little missiles -
here's the short blowpipe surface-to-air missile with which
one soldier can bring an aircraft out of the sky,
straight from the shoulder.
More missiles here, the short Tigercat missile,
simple in operation, recommended for its high lethality at low cost.
Aircraft are very expensive these days
and so you don't want them to have just one...
ADAM CURTIS: By the 1980s, the giant orders from Saudi Arabia
had become essential to Britain.
While much of British industry had closed,
the arms business kept growing.
..from air to ground.
No, no, no, I'm the Prime Minister.
I have to see the super saleswomen do their job.
ADAM CURTIS: And in 1985 Mrs Thatcher announced what was going to be
the biggest arms deal in history.
The extraordinary arms deal,
which has impressed military experts throughout the world.
It emerged today that Britain and Saudi Arabia have signed
what's thought to be one of the biggest arms agreements.
The deal will mean Saudi Arabia will get many more combat planes,
training aircraft, new mine hunters, two new airbases,
and much training and support.
It means Britain is pulling level with, if not overtaking,
the United States as the biggest military supplier to the Saudis.
ADAM CURTIS: The Al-Yamamah deal was presented as a triumph
of British ingenuity and skill.
But ever since, there have been allegations that really it was
secured by vast bribes to key members of the Saudi establishment.
British Aerospace admit that there were payments,
but insist they were not bribes.
But then, in 1990,
it became clear that all the arms trade with Saudi Arabia
had been a complete charade.
Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait
and the leaders of Saudi Arabia realised that,
despite all this hardware - all the planes, the missiles,
the bombs and the radar systems -
that their country was incapable of using it properly to defend itself
against Saddam Hussein.
So they had to turn to America and its military might for help.
At my direction, elements of the 82nd Airborne Division,
as well as key units of the United States Air Force,
are arriving today to take up defensive positions in Saudi Arabia.
I took this action to assist the Saudi Arabian government
in the defence of its homeland.
Osama bin Laden had returned from Afghanistan
and he went to see the Saudi Defence Minister and pleaded with him
not to let the Americans come.
He offered to raise a force of mujaheddin fighters in Afghanistan
and bring them to defend Saudi Arabia instead.
But the Defence Minister turned him down.
And within weeks, over half a million American soldiers
had arrived in Saudi Arabia.
Bin Laden saw it as the corrupt takeover by the West
of the very heart of Islam.
Cameraman, please show them what's going on, if you could.
Show the street, if nothing else.
ADAM CURTIS: And he decided that America, although it had been
his ally in Afghanistan, was the real enemy.
Show them the sky, if you could.
GENTLE CLASSICAL MUSIC PLAYS
No, wait, what strange noise is that?
MUSIC CONTINUES
What trickery is this?
You, up there, what is this noise? Can you see what is happening?
Oh, yes, they are sitting down to dinner.
Sitting down to dinner? Are they stark raving bonkers?
These people, sometimes, they infuriate me!
Oh, they come out here with their starched uniforms
and their stiff upper lips and their dirty great flags hanging out.
- Think they own the place! - They do.
Well, they won't much longer. Start the attack!
By the time I've finished with them, their stiff upper lips will be
so limp they'll be hanging down to their navels.
I will kill the pigs! Fire!
GUNFIRE AND EXPLOSIONS
INDISTINCT SHOUTING
Fuckin' hell!
GUNFIRE
INDISTINCT SHOUTING
EXPLOSION
- Jesus, fucking target... - Right!
GUNFIRE CONTINUES
SHOUTING CONTINUES
I'm not denying that I'm not a mullah, I'm a mullah in a mosque.
- Not with the Taliban. - Right, yeah.
So, I mean, they arrest me and they brought me here...
Did he say they were... Did he say they beat him?
Beat him and electrocution, yeah.
Signed a false confession?
Does he say they forced him to sign a confession?
No, no, he didn't say that.
THEY SPEAK OWN LANGUAGE
TRANSLATOR: Yeah, I mean, they force me, they beat me
and they put my stamp,
saying that you are talib.
Does he know... Does he know - are there lots of Taliban here?
HE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE
TRANSLATOR: Well, I mean, as I have told you before,
it's 90% of the people who are here,
they came by the name of Taliban here but they are not actually Taliban.
They arrest them and they brought them here.
When the Russians left Afghanistan,
the different mujaheddin groups turned on each other
and began a vicious struggle for power.
Kabul was completely destroyed as the different groups fired
thousands of rockets indiscriminately into the heart of the city.
And Kabul became a living hell.
PEOPLE SHOUT
SHE SHOUTS IN OWN LANGUAGE
EXPLOSION
MAN: Jesus Christ.
The mujaheddin leaders transformed.
They became brutal warlords, tearing the country apart.
The Americans had stopped sending any money or arms,
so to fund themselves, the warlords turned to the heroin trade,
and they began to export more and more opium to the West.
The poppy fields of Helmand
became the centre of a multimillion-dollar business,
irrigated by the dams and canals
built 40 years before by the American government.
Out of the chaos came two extreme and violent reactions.
Both ruthlessly simplified the world
and both, although they were completely contradictory,
were rooted in Wahhabism,
the intolerant fundamentalism that came from Saudi Arabia.
One was the Taliban.
They started as a group of students in religious schools in Pakistan
called madrassas, where many Afghan children had gone to study.
They became the core of a revolution
that spread rapidly through Afghanistan.
Although they were in Pakistan, most of the madrassas had been created
over the previous 20 years by money from Saudi Arabia.
They were part of the massive effort that had been started by King Faisal
to spread fundamentalism throughout the Islamic world.
And the ideas that the madrassas taught
were very close to Saudi Wahhabism.
When the Taliban swept into Kabul, they went to the Presidential Palace
and tore out all painted images of living things,
even removing the faces off the stone lions.
The society the Taliban built was based on an imagined idea
of the past, a re-creation of how they thought Islamic society
had been run in the 7th century.
All modernization was swept away.
Women were not to be educated,
and all film and music was banned.
And even the bodies of dead communists were dug up and burnt -
to cleanse and purify the land.
The other reaction came from Osama bin Laden.
Bin Laden had come back to Afghanistan
determined to lead an Islamist revolution.
But his ideas were very different from the Taliban.
He wanted to use Islamic principles in a new way -
to make it a revolutionary force in the modern world,
to go forwards, not backwards.
But the problem was that these ideas
had failed to capture the public imagination,
not just in Afghanistan
but throughout most of the Islamic world.
Bin Laden was convinced that what was stopping this revolution
was America.
He had seen how American money had corrupted Saudi Arabia.
Now he believed that America was corrupting the minds of Muslim people
everywhere, and preventing them from rising up and liberating themselves.
HE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE
Bin Laden's Islamist ideas began to mutate
and become mixed with the intolerant
and anti-modern anger of Wahhabism.
Out of it came a dark and apocalyptic jihadism.
It said that the only way to create a revolution
would be to attack what he called "the far enemy" directly.
The dramatic shock would somehow liberate the masses,
but all discussion of what kind of society would result dropped away,
and was replaced by stark vision of the coming battle
between good and evil.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
CROWD CHANTS
America and the coalition forces invaded Afghanistan
not just to find those behind the attacks on America
but also to transform Afghanistan
into a modern democracy.
It was a grand plan
but the logic behind it was simple.
If the innocent people of Afghanistan could be liberated
from the evil forces that had terrorised them,
then they would become free individuals.
And out of that, a democracy,
like those in the West, would grow naturally.
Tens of thousands of Americans and Europeans would pass through
the country over the next ten years -
soldiers, diplomats, experts,
political advisers and journalists.
All of them trying to build this new society.
But few of them stopped to think whether what had happened
to the Russians 20 years before
might also happen to them.
That, in a strange way, Afghanistan has revealed to us the emptiness
and hypocrisy of many our beliefs.
And that we may be returning from there
also haunted by mujaheddin ghosts,
knowing that, underneath, we believe in nothing.
After the shock of the attacks in September 2001, the greatest fear
was that the American economy might collapse as well.
In response, the politicians, advised by their economic experts,
cut interest rates to almost zero.
This allowed cheap money to flood through the system
and avoid disaster.
The banks lent money to anyone and everyone.
It was the politicians looking to the financial system
to stabilise the country.
SHE TALKS IN OWN LANGUAGE
At the same time, thousands of experts and advisers
flooded into Afghanistan.
Their aim was to transform the country into a modern democracy.
This optimistic vision of a future Afghanistan
was celebrated in the Kabul Stadium.
It was the same stadium where the Russians had celebrated
their new model for Afghanistan 20 years before.
Last year we think that we can never can be alive again, we will die.
But now we are...we are thinking that we are alive again,
and we are too happy.
And also, from America, that they help a lot,
we are very appreciative of them. Thanks a lot.
I think now everything is normal.
The man and woman can work in one place
and no any different between them,
and I think everything is going to...good day by day.
- And this is our school... - That's your school board.
- Yeah. - OK.
Actually, can I just... Hello? Hello?
ADAM CURTIS: All kinds of groups came to Kabul to help the project.
It was like a snapshot of what those in power in America and Britain
believed made democracy work.
As well as the obvious lessons in how to organise elections
and conferences on how to stop the narcotics trade,
young Afghan students were also given lessons
in how to make conceptual art.
So, this is, in some ways,
often called the first piece of conceptual art.
MAN TRANSLATES
Does anyone know what it is?
MAN TRANSLATES
I don't expect the ladies to know.
MAN TRANSLATES
MAN: Toilets. - Exactly.
An artist called Marcel Duchamp,
who's very important in Western art,
put this toilet in an art gallery
about 100 years ago.
It was a huge revolution.
Are you ready to see how it is used?
Underlying it all was a belief that the battle
was to create a good society,
one that would be strong enough to stand against the bad,
anti-democratic forces that had overwhelmed Afghanistan.
But then it began to get confusing.
The Americans discovered that was it was very difficult to know exactly
who was good and who was bad.
When they had invaded, they had been helped by Afghans
who were already fighting the Taliban.
The Americans had assumed they would help to create the new democracy,
and appointed many of them to run the country.
But now it turned out that many of them were actually the very same
corrupt and violent warlords who the Taliban had overthrown.
And they were using their new power
to terrorise the country all over again.
Gul Agha Sherzai had been made Governor of Kandahar.
But he was also alleged to be making a million dollars a week
from running the opium trade,
while at the same time siphoning off millions from the Americans
in inflated contracts.
When President Karzai was persuaded to remove Sherzai,
he simply made him governor of another province.
But he was not alone.
Throughout much of Afghanistan, the warlords had returned to power.
But this time it was worse.
The massive influx of American money allowed them to extend their networks
of bribery and corruption to every corner of Afghan society.
But the money was not just corrupting individuals.
It was undermining the whole structure of society,
above all the police.
Rather than enforcing the law,
the police had become transformed into violent militias
who worked for the warlords.
They organised a massive expansion of the drug trade.
And they also terrorised the local people.
Ordinary Afghans came to hate the police
and they saw them as the enemy.
And the Americans also weren't as good as they appeared.
Jack Idema had been portrayed as a hero,
working with the US Special Forces to hunt down bin Laden.
He had arrived in Kabul three years before and become a legendary figure.
CBS television had made an hour-long special about the secret world
of terror that Idema had discovered in the mountains.
It showed a tape that he said he had found of the Al-Qaeda group training.
But then Idema was arrested.
The Americans said that he was a fake.
He had nothing to do with them, and had conned CBS.
They alleged that Idema had a dungeon,
hidden underneath his house in Kabul,
where he tortured innocent Afghans.
Tell him, basically I'm tired of the lies. Where's his village?
In three minutes...he'll be dead.
MAN SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE
Idema was put on trial in Kabul.
He insisted, though, he had been working with the highest levels
of the US military and government.
I know what's wrong with you...
Jack, who are you working for?
Uh, we were working for the US Counter-Terrorist Group
and working with the Pentagon and some other federal agencies.
So you were working with US knowledge,
with US government knowledge?
We were in touch with the Pentagon sometimes five times a day,
at the highest level, every day.
How do you feel about being sort of let go by the Americans?
Fucked.
You can't use that quote.
Well, there you go, that's the quote, my dear.
This government and our government
knew every single thing we were doing.
ADAM CURTIS: Jack Idema was found guilty and sent to jail.
But then it got even more confusing.
Because reports emerged that the real American military
had been doing exactly the same as Jack Idema.
They had set up a special torture centre in an old Soviet hangar
at Bagram Air Base.
Ordinary Afghans were shackled to the ceiling
and subjected to all kinds of violent abuse.
But they went further than Jack Idema.
The reports said that two of the victims had been tortured to death.
Of course, it was very provocative.
People were very angry, and I think it's important to understand
that when this kind of art emerged
it was partly political.
It was to fight against the system and say,
"What is art is what I think it is."
One of the biggest concerns we have is about the casualties
that took place because of the result of cluster bombs.
OK, that's fine.
- OK, is that fly going to...? - That fly.
- You can hear it, actually. - You can, can't you?
FLY BUZZES It's a blowie.
- It'll land. - It's a blowie. Fuck off.
It's a bug.
Ah...
THUMP!
LAUGHING: This is an interview about casualties.
There's going to be one more.
Ah! Jesus.
On the whole, I think everyone finds it a very important event
and even more so, the fact we're abroad
and not able to celebrate it at home.
Hence we're very happy to, uh,
do some small token towards the Queen's celebrations.
And why, why a beacon here in Kabul?
I have absolutely no idea.
By 2006, the British and the Americans realised that their project
to bring democracy to Afghanistan was failing,
and large parts of the country were descending into anarchy.
In Helmand, in Southern Afghanistan, armed groups had risen up
and there was constant fighting.
The coalition were convinced that this was the return of the Taliban,
and British troops were sent there to restore order
and to help protect the regional government.
But when the British commanders asked the Ministry of Defence
for information about what was happening in Helmand,
there was none.
There weren't even any satellites looking at it.
They had all been moved to look at Iraq.
The one thing they did know was that they were going to the very heartland
of the tribe that had decisively defeated the British
125 years before
at the Battle of Maiwand.
The British commander called a meeting with the local elders.
It was in the very same town that the American engineers had built,
50 years before, when they were constructing the dam
across the Helmand River.
All three of us, the security,
governance, and for development.
We are the three who work together as the British.
I know you've seen many foreigners arriving in your country.
ADAM CURTIS: The commander reassured the elders
that the British were there to defeat the Taliban
and support the regional government.
COMMANDER: ..my forefathers were even here before.
ADAM CURTIS: Next door, his officers were preparing to entertain
the elders with a showing of David Attenborough's series
The Blue Planet.
But the elders thought that the British had completely misunderstood
the problem.
The real enemy was not the Taliban,
but the corrupt and vicious government that President Karzai
had installed in Helmand and was doing nothing to stop.
HE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE
And tell Mr President Karzai
if he bring a good governance,
the security situation will be the same.
If you are here for 100 years, it will be not good.
Once he brought good governance,
good people to the government,
then we have hope that the security will be change.
The elders left without watching The Blue Planet.
Before they came to Helmand,
the British had forced President Karzai to get rid of its governor.
But they didn't realise that he had left behind him
a completely corrupted society.
And nothing was what it seemed.
When the British went into towns like Sangin,
they tried to support the police.
But the police were really the armed militia for the sacked governor.
To the locals, this meant that the western troops
were supporting their oppressors.
So they started to attack the British.
Get inside!
Shit the bed.
That's close, that one, out the back there.
It was.
Right, mate, get under it.
- Shit. - Shit.
- They're overshooting on us. - Stay down, lads, stay down.
- Is that incoming or outcoming? - Fucking incoming now.
ADAM CURTIS: The British thought that this must mean they were Taliban.
So in response they dropped giant bombs on them.
Fuckin' hell.
MAN LAUGHS
- Did you get that, did you? - Yes, I did. Fucking hell.
MAN LAUGHS
LAUGHING: Holy shit.
But this then devastated the town centres,
which made even more local people join in the attacks.
Seeing their chance,
the real ideological Taliban, who were now based in Pakistan,
flooded back in and they started attacking the British, too.
GUNFIRE
At the same time the corrupt militias who worked for the local government
also turned against the British.
Faced by the chaos, the British still clung to their simple narrative
of good and evil.
They - the Western forces - were good.
And all the different groups who were attacking them were Taliban,
and were bad.
But this extraordinary simplification had terrible consequences.
Because if you were an Afghan and wanted to kill a rival,
all you had to do was go to the British
and tell them that he was a Taliban
and the British would obediently wipe him out.
INCOMING ROCKET
- Fuck! - Fuckin' hell!
- Yeah! - Whoo!
The British were being used.
The terrible truth was that the British presence
did not contain the war.
It did the very opposite.
It escalated it so much that it ran out of control.
And the bodies - Afghan and British - piled up.
The dynamic was one of manipulation.
They understood how we saw the conflict.
They presented their local group conflict,
their civil war between groups that had been going on for 35 years.
They presented everything in that dynamic.
So they came to us and said, "Those people over there are Taliban."
And we went, "OK." And we went off and dealt with them.
But, actually, we were dealing with their previous enemies.
So we were just creating more enemies for ourselves.
And you ended up in a downward spiral where,
because everyone was manipulating us,
we ended up fighting everyone.
And then, in return, everyone who fought us immediately became Taliban.
The way that we decided whether you were Taliban or not
was whether you were firing at us.
SPORADIC GUNFIRE
Post 2001, whereas we've understood the conflict as good/bad,
black/white, government/Taliban,
they've understood it as a shifting mosaic of different groups
and leaders fighting each other, effectively over power.
And the currency of power in Helmand is opium.
That's largely what the conflict's about.
So what you're saying is that the...what we thought were
the Taliban was actually an allergic reaction to us turning up
into the middle of a complex civil war?
Correct.
- We made things worse? - Tak.
EXPLOSION
- Where was that? - That's over there on the left.
Oh, for fuck's sakes.
But then the British and the Americans had to face up to the fact
that they might not be as good and innocent as they thought they were.
HE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE
In 2009, the Presidential elections were held.
Hamid Karzai stood and allied himself
with some of the most powerful warlords.
But there were allegations that the warlords rigged the vote
on a massive scale.
This was backed up with videos that seemed to show
the warlords' followers stuffing the ballot boxes
with hundreds of fake voting papers.
The coalition tried to rerun the election.
But Karzai's main opponent refused
because he said it would be even more corrupt.
So the British and Americans had no choice
but to abandon their great dream of a real democracy in Afghanistan.
They gave in and allowed Karzai to become president again.
I still don't trust that fella.
Things look rather bad, sir. What are we going to do?
Do, Captain? We're British, we won't do anything.
- Till it's too late. - Precisely.
That's the first sensible thing you've said today.
- Thank you, sir. - No, gentlemen, as always,
we will carry on as if nothing was going to happen.
This morning...
the Federal Reserve, with support of the Treasury Department,
took additional actions to mitigate disruptions to our financial markets.
Today's events are fast moving.
But the chairman of the Federal Reserve and the secretary
of the Treasury are on top of them, and will take the appropriate steps
to promote stability in our markets.
ADAM CURTIS: And at the very same time
as their simple plan was falling apart in Afghanistan,
the politicians had to face a crisis at home.
They had given power to the banks
because the bankers and the financial technocrats had promised
that they could hold the economy stable.
But in 2008, the whole intricate system of credit and loans
that the banks had created collapsed,
and there was growing panic as giant financial institutions
faced bankruptcy.
The politicians in America and Britain stepped in
and rescued the banks.
As they did so, they began to discover that most of the major
financial institutions were also riddled with corruption.
But unlike President Roosevelt in the 1930s,
they didn't then try and reform the system.
Instead they simply propped it up
by literally pouring billions more pounds and dollars into the banks,
hoping that this would somehow spread through the economies.
They had no other idea.
GUNFIRE
CHILDREN CRY
And, faced by disaster in Afghanistan,
the politicians did exactly the same there, too.
The Americans knew that the idea of democracy was failing.
In desperation, they poured even more money into the Afghan economy.
The idea was that this would somehow create a simpler,
economic form of democracy
and that the free market would liberate people.
They would become model consumers
following their own rational self-interest,
just like in the economies of the west.
And in an odd way, it worked.
Many of those in charge of the money
did behave in their own rational self-interest.
They simply stole the money,
smuggled it out through Kabul Airport,
and used it to buy luxury properties in Dubai.
During this period it was estimated that 10 million a day
was being taken out of Afghanistan this way.
SHOUTING IN OWN LANGUAGE
The scandal seemed to confirm for many Afghans
that the United States had not brought democracy or free markets
to their country,
but instead a corrupt crony capitalism that had taken over
Afghanistan and its government.
Which was the very same allegation
that as being made against politicians at home,
in America and in Britain.
At the end of 2014,
British soldiers left Afghanistan.
All the bases were wiped out as if nothing had been there.
Even the war memorials were packed up and taken back to Staffordshire.
But they weren't the only fighters who had left Afghanistan.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had gone to Afghanistan
to fight the Soviets back in the 1980s.
Then he had stayed on to work with Osama bin Laden.
And in 2003 he went to Iraq
and set up a jihadist group called Al-Qaeda in Iraq
to fight the American invasion.
Allahu Akbar!
Al Zarqawi was powerfully influenced by bin Laden's ideas.
But he took them much further.
He and his group killed anyone who they decided did not believe
in their fundamentalist ideas and deserved to die.
Even the original founders of Al-Qaeda were shocked,
and they sent him a letter telling him to stop killing civilians.
But al-Zarqawi ignored them.
He was convinced that the insurgency in Iraq
could be used to spread an Islamist revolution throughout the Arab world.
HE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE
But before he could do this,
the Americans found al-Zarqawi and dropped a large bomb on him.
But it didn't stop the spread of the idea.
Despite al-Zarqarwi's death
his organisation survived,
and began to mutate into something even more ferocious and ambitious.
But as it did so, it was possessed by ghosts from the past.
What re-emerged was the fierce, intolerant vision of Wahhabism
that had survived from the 1920s.
It had spread outwards through Afghanistan in the 1980s and '90s
where it had become mixed with modern Islamist ideas.
But now, faced by the nihilistic horror in post-invasion Iraq,
any ideas of building a new revolutionary future disappeared,
and, instead, the conservative and backward-looking Wahhabism
became the dominating influence,
with its desire to retreat to an imagined past.
In 2013, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant was formed.
Known as ISIS in the West.
Its aim is to create a unified caliphate
throughout the Islamic world.
And although it uses the techniques of modern media
it is, at heart, the same violent dream that had driven the Bedouins
who had created the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the 1920s.
Back then, the King of Saudi Arabia had found it necessary
to try and exterminate them
because they, too, wanted to go on and conquer
the whole of the Islamic world.
He machine-gunned them in the bleak sands of the Arabian Peninsula.
And now the Saudis, along with the British and Americans,
are trying to do the same thing again -
to kill the jihadists and their ideas
in the sand dunes of Northern Iraq and Syria.
But it is an uncertain war.
Western politicians are having to accept that the simple division
between good and evil doesn't exist.
By bombing ISIS, they are helping the evil President Assad
to remain in power.
And those in charge don't even know how big a threat ISIS really is.
Is it a dark, existential threat?
Or is it really a front,
being used in an ongoing complex power struggle inside Iraq?
We just don't know.
At the end of the Soviet science fiction film Solaris,
the astronaut returns home.
Everything seems real and normal.
But somehow he doesn't trust in anything any longer.
Although we have the returned from Afghanistan,
our leaders also seem to have lost faith in anything.
And the simple stories they tell us don't make sense any longer.
The experience of Afghanistan
has made us begin to realise that there is something else out there
but we just don't have the apparatus to see it.
What is needed is a new story.
And one that we can believe in.