Merhan Bozogonia – Afganistan From A Different Side

Narrator – At the bus station in the Afghan capital Kabul, Wali Jan is waiting to meet his brother. He’s brought his family north to Kabul to flee the fighting. They’ve just had enough.

Wali Jan - We’re fed up with the fighting and the loss of so many of our men. The women who’ve come here, they’re widows. Their husbands were killed. Their houses were hit by rockets and I brought them here. This is my uncle, I brought him here too. His wife and his son were also killed.

Narrator – How far is NATO from winning hearts and minds, when Afghans prefer living here, hundreds of miles north from their lush farms down in Helmand in the south. Our team set out from these refugee camps in the capital to go south and find out.

Narrator – This is what’s made life intolerable for so many Afghans. NATO forces responding to insurgent ambushes. The West said it invaded and occupied this land to bring peace but it’s failed. But it’s not simply that which makes so many Afghans feel cheated. The new army and police force which NATO’s created are out to stop them growing poppy – one of the few ways people have here of making money. A bizarre mass tractor rally in someone’s poppy field designed to ruin the crop. It’s a blow against global heroin of course, and it’s been struck by the Afghan anti-narcotics squad. But with a valuable cash crop destroyed, the locals are not pleased. The police say these men opened fire on them – there’s been a raid, and arrests.

Police Officer – This is a group who operated near the house owned by the Mayor of Nadeali. Most of them are his brothers. Anti-narcotics agents tried to persuade them to destroy their poppy, but they wouldn’t have it.

Narrator – They’ve got quite a haul, 5000 rounds of ammunition, Kalashnikovs, explosives, grenades and so on. The men make a variety of claims. First that they are also police. Then they used to be police. Finally they say they just need heavy personal protection.

Suspect 1 – I’m not hiding anything, I told you this is mine. These things are all mine. I’ve got all this stuff because I have many enemies.

Narrator – So it is that the family of the local mayor has now been arrested. Their poppy destroyed. You don’t sense hearts and minds being won around here like this. Now they’ve made an enemy of the Mayor’s clan.

Narrator – To have even a degree of safety, our team travelled to film all this with the Civilian Boss of Helmand Province – Governor Mangal. Paid by NATO, protected by NATO, on message with NATO.

Governor Mangal – Day by day and month by month, security in Helmand is being improved. Peace is spreading to a wider area; in the past year we’ve cleared the insurgents from three districts.

Narrator – It doesn’t look that way on the ground. It’s not just the fighting or having their poppy ripped out, but the endless insecurity. To move anywhere here is to risk being blown up by a homemade bomb in the road. You can’t move, work or trade. Moments after the arrests, the Governor’s protection team has to deal with the bomb buried in the road ahead. The Afghan soldiers have an almost cavalier approach to the lethal business of extracting pressure plate bombs from holes in roads. Not far away it’s a certainty British army bomb disposal teams will be out doing much the same thing, in a rather different way. All day long and into the evenings, day in and day out. 

Narrator – When people can not move around the economy is crippled. Yet another reason why many in Helmand won’t support the foreigners. The Bazaar in Lashgargah should be crowded but the economy here has slumped, it’s empty.

Shopkeeper 1 – The point is, in the Bazaar, people have no money. Our market relies on the villages but there’s no security in the villages. People are really scared and say there are bombs along the roads.

Shopkeeper 2 – It would be better for our own people to build the country and bring peace, if we could do it on our own. We don’t need foreigners to come here.

Narrator – As the years of war go on, people need a reason to believe that the foreign soldiers in their land will bring security. But the price for that is high. Empty bazaars, show how far the British and Americans are with this project. The Taliban bear responsibility for that of course, but to talk to them risks a kidnapping or worse. But our local team met them, just outside the capital of Helmand, with their Kalashnikovs, homemade bombs and grenades – they’ve held down the United States with the biggest arsenal this planet’s ever seen for years.

Taliban Member 1 – This fight didn’t just start recently you know, it’s been going on since the Americans invaded Afghanistan and we promised our God that we would protect our land from the Infadels.

Narrator – So what about NATO’s latest plan to buy off insurgents in return for peace?

Taliban Member 1 – No, we don’t fight for money. We fight for God. We have taken up arms for our country and we do it because the Americans have occupied our land and our poor people.

Narrator – As you might expect, these fighters claim to enjoy strong local support and said they fight to plant bombs almost every day alongside fighters from other Islamic countries.

Taliban Member 1- Our message to the international community is to get out of our country. We won’t stop fighting them unless they go.

Narrator – And so they pray, believing they have God on their side. The best part of a decade of fighting now, evidence enough that the Taliban mean what they say and few British soldiers would disagree. This is Babaji; it’s just a few miles from the meeting with the Taliban fighters. The British have lost at least a dozen soldiers here in recent years. Our team visits a village during a lull in the fighting, and find civilians, as ever, stuck in the middle. Those that remain here know the Taliban are near and watching, and speak accordingly.

Civilian 1 – We’re left with nothing. We don’t need these infadels, we don’t need their help.

Civilian 2 – They are hiding like mice, like dogs – we do not believe them. They lie, there is no security here, they hide away and they can not bring security. We don’t need foreigners.

Narrator – It is springtime here and the Nomadic Kuchi people are leaving the lowlands of Helmand – the fighting zone – taking their stock to the cooler summer pastures in the mountains. And they’re not alone. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of Helmandi villagers are also going. For the variety of reasons our team found here, they’ve given up hope and are leaving altogether.

END.