Increasingly, we live in a world where nothing makes any sense.
Events come and go like waves of a fever,
leaving us confused and uncertain.
Those in power tell stories to help us make sense
of the complexity of reality.
But those stories are increasingly unconvincing and hollow.
# Excuse me, I'm lost... #
This is a film about why those stories have stopped making sense.
And how that led us in the West to become a dangerous and destructive
force in the world.
It is told through the prism of a country
at the centre of the world. Afghanistan.
# Who are you? #
MUSIC: Come Down To Us by Burial
# Here we are
# I'm tired
# 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... #
In 1946, American engineers, along with their wives and families,
began to arrive at a dusty airstrip in Helmand
in southern Afghanistan.
They worked for the biggest construction company
in the world - called Morrison Knudsen -
and the King of Afghanistan had brought them there
to build a giant planned new world -
a complex of dams, canals, roads, and even a new model city.
The king's aim was to harness the power of the giant Helmand river
and turn his country into a modern society - just like in the West.
ARCHIVE: 'The Asiatic kingdom of Afghanistan is located
'roughly 10,000 miles from either coastline of the United States.
'Almost directly on the opposite side of the globe, westward from China,
'beyond the Himalayas.
'It is a landlocked country, bordered on the north by the Soviet Union,
'and on the east by Pakistan, and on the west by Iran.'
The King was called Zahir Shah, and he often came to visit the project.
Afghanistan was a deeply conservative country and he was
determined to modernise it.
What the King was trying to create in Helmand was a copy of what
President Roosevelt had done in America in the 1930s.
And the company he had hired - Morrison Knudsen -
had worked back then for Roosevelt,
building a new world of dams and power stations across America.
Now they were going to do the same for Afghanistan.
The engineers and their families lived in a complex of houses
around the King's country palace in Helmand.
It became known as Little America.
INDISTINCT VOICES
You got everything you need?
Quite a lot of stuff lying around. There is a dead insurgent lying here.
A man in his early 20s.
Come on, let's go. Let's go.
DIALOGUE IN THEIR OWN LANGUAGE
ALL SHOUTING AT ONCE
OK, I'll follow you in. Off you go.
OK.
Good morning.
Stand up.
How are you? WOMEN: I'm fine, thanks.
You are very good.
How are your families?
What will it take to stop the fighting?
TRANSLATOR REPEATS
HE ANSWERS IN HIS OWN LANGUAGE
MOBILE PHONE PLAYS SONG AS RINGTONE
RINGTONE STOPS
INDISTINCT VOICES MIX WITH MUSIC
How long have you been with the Taliban, if you don't mind me asking?
Chris, what's going on?
All right, wow!
LAUGHTER
Wow. You look creepy up close.
A little creepy from far away too!
Yeah, that's true.
What's going on? How are you feeling?
I'm feeling pretty good right now.
It's been a pretty exciting day.
Yeah, getting kills out here.
Today, just for documentation,
today was the day we went against order and we shot anyway.
We killed, like, a whole bunch of people.
24 unapproved rounds.
24 unapproved high-explosive mortar rounds.
That's about 40,000 pounds of death right there.
Yo. Yo.
Fuck it, looks like a rave in here, almost.
All I got to say... Actually, I do have something to say.
Let's hear it.
I love the fucking Marine Corp. LAUGHTER
- I know many of you... - We got you on camera saying it!
I know, I know many of you don't, but what we did today...
Yeah, we need born killers, like you.
Oh, we're all born killers.
INDISTINCT VOICES
At the end of the Second World War, President Roosevelt travelled to
the Great Bitter Lake in the middle of the Suez Canal.
At the same time, he sent another American warship
to pick up the King of Saudi Arabia, King Abdulaziz.
The meeting of King and President was to have powerful - and disastrous -
consequences both for the West and, in a strange way, for Afghanistan.
Roosevelt was dying, but over the last 13 years
he had used his power on an epic scale to transform the world.
After the Wall Street crash and the terrible depression that followed,
Roosevelt had taken charge.
He had passed laws that broke up the banks
so they would never run out of control again.
And he had rebuilt America with a series of giant dams
that brought electrical power and employment to millions of people.
And he had planned and fought a world war against Germany and Japan.
Now, as Roosevelt sat waiting for Abdulaziz,
no-one could possibly have imagined the consequences of this meeting.
For it was going to unleash forces that in the future
would undermine everything that Roosevelt had worked for -
his belief that politicians should use their power in a planned way
to reshape the world.
But Roosevelt knew that to keep that power, America needed oil.
And he wanted to forge an alliance with the King to make sure
the vast Saudi oilfields remained under American control.
In their conversation, the two men laid the foundations for an alliance
that continues to the present day.
America would get its oil - and in return, Saudi Arabia would receive
wealth and security from America.
But the King was well aware of the dangers of opening up his country
to the influence of the modern West.
And in the negotiations that followed, he laid down a condition.
We will take your technology and your money, he said -
but you must leave our faith alone.
The Saudi faith was called Wahhabism.
It was a radical, violent and extremely puritanical form of Islam,
and its followers among the Bedouin tribes hated the modern world.
Wahhabism was part of a wider movement in Islam
that had risen up in reaction to the European empires.
Another was the Deobandi movement in India.
They all believed that modern imperialism was corrupting
the true nature of Islam, and wanted to go back to a world
based on the original teachings of the Islamic texts.
Abdulaziz had harnessed this force in the 1920s to seize power.
But he had unleashed something that didn't want to stop.
The Wahhabists wanted to go on and create a caliphate
across the whole of the Arab world -
and to stop them, in 1929, Abdulaziz machine-gunned them.
He ruthlessly killed the warriors who had made him King.
But their belief - a violent, intolerant and, above all,
backward-looking version of Islam -
remained at the heart of Saudi Arabian society.
And the deal made that day on the Great Bitter Lake
meant that America would get its oil
but it would also be protecting Wahhabism -
a force that had its own global ambitions.
Ambitions that were very different from America's.
HARP PLAYS
Who's the turban job on the throne?
You mean the Khasi.
That's Randy Lal.
Who?
Randy Lal, the Khasi of Kalabar.
Ooh!
How do you know he is, then?
- How do I know he's what? - Randy.
- That's his name! - Ooh!
He's very good looking, isn't he?
Yes, only the most richest and powerful rajah in northern India,
that's all.
- He's smiling at us. - Smile back.
Coo-ee!
You don't have to go raving mad.
My father, who are those people?
That, light of my darkness, is Sir Sidney Rough Diamond,
a British governor whose benevolent rule
and wise guidance we could well do without.
By the mid-1950s, the American engineers had built
the giant dams that were going to create what they called
"a new wonderland of vegetation and power" in Helmand.
But the project was running into problems
and it was beginning to lose its innocence.
As the giant dams were completed, they had an unexpected effect.
They raised the level of the water table
and started to bring salt to the surface.
And one of the plants that thrived in this new soil were poppies.
Some of those leading the project said they should stop.
But the American government stepped in and insisted that they should
continue because by now the dams had become a central part
of the struggle with the Soviet Union.
All sides in the Cold War began to compete to offer Afghanistan
bigger and better schemes to modernise the country.
Afghan politicians exploited this ruthlessly.
The Prime Minister, Mohammed Daoud, spent his time travelling the world
playing the countries - Russia, America and China -
off against each other.
Daoud wanted to use the modernization as a way of consolidating his power.
Afghanistan was a fragmented country.
Power was divided between ethnic groups and tribes.
Daoud was a Pashtun and he saw how the dam project in Helmand
could be used to consolidate the Pashtun grip on the whole country.
He persuaded the Americans to make the project even bigger,
to turn it into a giant piece of social engineering.
Thousands of Pashtun nomads,
who spent their time roaming the border area with Pakistan,
would be settled in the new farmland created by the dams.
Daoud presented it as just another innocent piece of modernisation -
and the Americans happily agreed.
What they didn't realise was that they were unwittingly being sucked
into Afghan power politics.
Not only was Daoud increasing Pashtun power, but he
was sowing the seeds of bitter rivalries
over the division and ownership of land in Helmand.
UPBEAT DANCE MUSIC PLAYS
TRUMPET PLAYS AFGHAN FOLK MUSIC
CROWD CLAPS ALONG
FOLK DANCE MUSIC PLAYS
BOYS CALL IN THEIR OWN LANGUAGE
GUNSHOTS
BARRAGE OF GUNFIRE
SHOUTING
CAR HORN BEEPS
MAN SHOUTS IN HIS OWN LANGUAGE
ALARM BLARES
MEN TALK QUIETLY
SHIP'S HORN BLARES
CAMEL GRUNTS
The British Board of Trade,
in the booklet it gives out to visiting British businessmen,
does try to be helpful, but this is what it says about Arabic time,
and that's only one of them.
"Sunset is taken as zero, when watches are set to 12.
"A business appointment given for, say, two o'clock in the evening
"will therefore be for two hours after sunset
"and for five o'clock in the morning, seven hours before sunset.
"It's important to remember that sunset should be regarded
"as midnight. The time of sunrise is irrelevant."
I don't know about you but I know sun time is roughly six hours, uh...
plus five, in other words it's either 11 o'clock, morning or evening.
- But which? - Well, it's 11 o'clock.
But it must have some relevance to the time of day.
- Yes. - How do you, as a businessman,
make appointments?
Um... I normally make them by my watch.
I ask them personally whether they are conforming to either Arabic time,
sun time or GMT plus three. They normally say the other two.
I ask them to give me a time at GMT plus three.
Now, sun time is six hours after this, roughly.
Six hours after that?
Six hours plus five, give or take an hour.
Do you know what time it is now?
Not really!
In 1964, King Faisal became the new leader of Saudi Arabia.
Faisal set out to modernise the country.
He created western-style bureaucracies and a welfare system.
He even allowed television for the first time.
But he faced two threats.
One was from the religious leaders inside Saudi Arabia.
They were the Wahhabists, who had brought his family to power
and gave his rule legitimacy.
They distrusted any idea of modernising Saudi society.
Faisal was also facing a dangerous situation abroad,
from communism, that was spreading through the Arab world.
His solution was simple.
Faisal decided to use the religious leaders and their conservative
beliefs as a force to counter the international threat of communism.
But he knew that this would also divert their attention
away from his domestic policies.
Faisal used the growing oil money
to set up hundreds of schools and institutes across the Islamic world -
some as far away as Pakistan.
Their job was to spread Wahhabist ideas and help to turn Islam into
a unified international force strong enough to stand up to communism.
What Faisal was doing was taking the dangerous
and unstable fanaticism at the heart of Saudi society
and directing it outwards, beyond its borders.
It was a ruthless way of creating stability in his own country.
America gave this tacit approval
because it was part of the global struggle against communism.
But in 1966, Faisal gave America
a glimpse of how uncontrollable an ally Saudi Arabia could be.
He went to New York
and publicly attacked America's support for Israel.
It caused an outrage.
HE SPEAKS IN ARABIC
The reasons are that unfortunately,
the Jews throughout the world support Israel.
They provide assistance to Israel and in our present situation,
we consider those who provide assistance to our enemy
as our own enemy.
HE SPEAKS ARABIC
I'd like to hire a photocopy machine.
- OK. - For three months.
That's OK.
- Possibly for six months. - Yes, why not?
Um...
If you like it for one year, one for...
What I need from you is, how many conditions and how much it will be.
MAN SPEAKS HIS OWN LANGUAGE
Ho, ho, ho, ho.
Do you have a lot of... all that toner and the developer?
Yeah, we want you to maintain it and service it. OK?
MEN SPEAK IN THEIR OWN LANGUAGE
Sir, we buy paper from them, the colour from them, that's OK?
Yeah. Can you give me a price for three months,
possibly for six months?
The contract must last for three months.
OK.
THEY SPEAK IN THEIR OWN LANGUAGE
500 dollar per month.
- 500 dollar per month. - Per month?
- It's very expensive. - That is very expensive.
What you have, if you're bringing in here,
you can set them here, I will copy for you.
No, no, we want to take the copier away.
MUSIC: The Bewlay Brothers by 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... #
Your Excellency, your presence enriches my humble home.
May the benevolence of the god Shivu bring blessings on your house.
And on yours.
And may his wisdom bring success in all your undertakings.
And in yours.
And may his radiance light up your life.
And up yours.
- Do you ever... - It really angers me.
Do you ever feel frustrated at perhaps, I mean,
you've spoken about corruption and certainly in the past
you've made very strong views against officials, for example,
who are corrupt, but many of those officials haven't left their jobs,
they haven't obeyed your orders.
No, they have all left their jobs.
Certainly.
In the past few days, the 28 that you have sacked,
19, our information is that 19 of them are still in their positions.
No, that's not true. They have all gone.
- OK. - Definitely. Definitely.
So you're confident, then, that your power is building
in terms of being able to enact,
to make sure that your orders are obeyed.
I'm... I'm building a new administration for Afghanistan.
I'm working on a clean, efficient administration.
Back! Back off! Back the fuck off!
Get the fuck out of the way. Get the fuck out!
MUSIC RESUMES: The Bewlay Brothers by 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... #
MUSIC DISTORTS, FADES
# You thought we were fakers... #
DOG BARKS
The other day, a friend of Blue Peter's, Angela Mulliner,
invited me to help her groom some dogs with very shaggy coats indeed,
a pair of Afghan hounds.
This should be a good spot.
'You need plenty of space to groom dogs this size,
'so we picked the park.
'Their names were Kingsley and Cleo and I said I'd do Cleo.'
How often is one supposed to do this?
- Very frequently. - Oh, gosh.
Don't sit down, Cleo, there's a good girl.
'Angela and I wanted the dogs to look their very best
'because we were taking them out on a special assignment.
'We were all going off to The Mall
'and we had to be there by 12 o'clock.'
- Come on, then, dogs. - Come on.
'We felt very proud of Kingsley and Cleo because they had been invited
'to join a guard of honour.'
'Afghan hounds were going to salute their king, because
'for the first time ever, the King of Afghanistan was coming to London.'
MARCHING BAND PLAYS
'About 20 members of the Southern Afghan Hound Society
'had brought their dogs along to line the route
'and there were Afghans of all colours and sizes.'
'And when the Queen pointed us out,
'the King of Afghanistan seemed delighted to see us.
CHEERING
'For the first time in their lives,
'British Afghan hounds were seeing people from their own country
'because in the carriages that followed the Queen,
'there were more people from the Royal Court of Afghanistan.'
ADAM CURTIS: But the ordered world, where kings and queens ruled
and dogs behaved obediently, was about to collapse.
In 1971, the King of Afghanistan
had come on his first ever state visit to Britain
but it was also his last,
because his ambitious Prime Minister, Mohammed Daoud,
was already plotting against him.
And in 1973, Daoud took power in a coup.
He declared Afghanistan a republic, and sent the King into exile.
DOGS BARK
Two months later, Egypt attacked Israel
and a Middle East war started.
To begin with, it looked as though Israel would be defeated.
But the American government came to its rescue, airlifting arms
on a massive scale to prevent the Israelis from being overwhelmed.
The Israelis counterattacked and the Arabs faced a disaster.
But then Saudi Arabia came to the rescue
because King Faisal realised
that his country had a weapon that could stop Israel.
Overnight, Faisal raised the price of oil five times
and threatened a complete embargo
unless America forced Israel to pull back.
It worked. A ceasefire was agreed.
And everyone realised that the balance of power in the world
had suddenly changed.
What we want is the complete withdrawal of the Israeli forces
from the occupied Arab territories
and then you will have the oil
at the same level of September '73.
Is this demand absolute and rigid or is this just a negotiating position?
Definitely. Definitely.
We won't give up any inch of these lands.
Doesn't this new massive increase in the price of oil
mean a change in the world balance of power
between the developing nations like you, the producers,
and us, the developed industrialised nations?
Yes, it will.
And what do you think arises from that?
Well, a new type of relationship.
You have to adjust yourself to the new circumstances
and I think you have to sit down and talk seriously with us
about this new era.
When Saudi Arabia raised the price of oil,
they did it to change the political balance of power in the world.
But it also had another, unexpected, effect
because it allowed the men who ran the banks and the financial system
in America and Britain to begin to break free of political control.
Billions of dollars flooded from the West into Saudi Arabia -
most of which the Saudis didn't know what to do with.
So they gave them to the Western banks to invest.
The banks then made a crucial decision - they kept many
of those dollars free from control by the American government
and they became a vast pool of wealth, known as petrodollars,
that could be lent and traded anywhere around the world
without political control.
As western politicians struggled to deal with the economic
and social chaos that had been created by the oil price rise,
their bankers were building a new global financial system
based on recycling the Saudi billions.
And the banks began to become rich and powerful again.
DISTANT MUFFLED SHOUTING
Does he know where the Taliban are?
The biggest Taliban shelter... Taliban...
THEY SPEAK IN THEIR OWN LANGUAGE
- Marjah? - Marjah.
He said Taliban is in Marjah.
LAUGHING: Uh-huh, Marjah. Marjah.
THEY SPEAK THEIR OWN LANGUAGE
They use his compound as... MAN SPEAKS HIS OWN LANGUAGE
- Assalamu alaikum. - Assalamu alaikum.
Right. Are we in Kushal Kalay just now?
Is this Kushal Kalay? What is the name of this village?
MAN TRANSLATES
This is the edge of Kushal Kalay.
Have the Taliban gone now or are they still in Kushal Kalay?
HE TRANSLATES
OK. Where... Sh, sh, sh.
Where has he seen Taliban? Where?
THEY SPEAK OWN LANGUAGE
Sure, sure.
HE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE
How far?
HE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE
Here, the Taliban?
HE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE
There, there, there! Right, sir - sir!
THEY SPEAK OWN LANGUAGE
This guy's ID-ing these here and saying they're Taliban.
HE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE Yeah. Two men.
HE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE Yeah, there.
Taliban, yeah?
HE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE
KIDS SHOUT
THEY SPEAK OWN LANGUAGE
WIND HOWLS
As western countries collapsed economically in the 1970s,
students from Europe and America fled from the chaos.
They came to Afghanistan as a land of dreams.
A different, innocent world,
free of the corruption of politics and money in the West.
MAN: Then you see some Afghan come dozing out of the sand,
hardly give you a look, and carry on past.
You long to ask, "Where are you going? Where have you come from?"
But he just disappears into the murk,
going about his everyday business.
A traveller is someone
who proceeds through a country
under his own initiative,
with a certain internal drive to learn,
to find out something more than the superficial.
To me, an Afghan was some figure from a woodblock print
in a book about India.
The reality of an Afghan was so beyond that,
their strength of character which comes through
in their most simple action.
This is a long jacket. For men.
For generation. It goes from mother to daughter.
A possum.
This is antelope.
Look at this coat.
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? - Yes.
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.