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NEDERLANDS | ENGLISH
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11 December 2006 |
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|  | Channel 4
Afghanistan: Never Mind The Taliban
Watch the video
Watch the video.
Unreported World comes from northern Afghanistan and finds that, five years after the fall of the Taliban, western intervention has produced a mafia-style state.  Reporter Kate Clark and director Tom Porter discover a fractured country and an economy dominated by the drugs trade. Commanders from the old Northern Alliance, some of whom have been accused of human rights abuses, are in positions of power everywhere – in the police, the parliament and controlling districts and provinces. This is the country that British soldiers are now dying to defend against the Taliban.
Unreported World travels to northern Afghanistan where there is no threat from insurgents and where the post-2001 democratic state is supposed to be safe and flourishing. Yet Clark has to wear a burqa to get through areas where it is too dangerous to travel openly as a foreigner. The team finds a recently burned down school. The culprits, claim local people, aren’t Taliban but local commanders angry with the NATO forces stationed in the province. The father of a child killed in an attack on NATO Peace-keeping forces says civilians have no-one to turn to – commanders are powerful in the local administration and foreign peace-keepers are seen to be working with them. The team accompanies a police raid to an area which aid agencies deem too dangerous to visit. Two hundred police loyal to police chiefs who have been accused publicly of serious abuses by the UN have been sent to arrest two rogue commanders. They have started to fight each other in a local vendetta. Later, Clark and Porter manage to interview one of the commanders in custody. He says he was arrested because he’s just a bit player in the drugs’ market. Those controlling the trade, he claims, are senior members of the police force with links going up to the heart of the Kabul government. Allegations of corruption are rife- a farmer growing opium poppy claims he has to pay 10-20% of the sale price to the local commander – who’s also the district governor. An arms dealer says commanders from the old Northern Alliance are importing weapons, re-arming themselves and selling weapons to their old enemies, the Taliban. The market, he says, is buoyant because of the insurgency in the south and there is serious money to be made. The team returns to Kabul to try to find answers about the parlous state of the provinces, but the rot appears to be at the heart of the new state. A disgruntled policeman and former foot soldier with the Northern Alliance shows the palaces which commanders and cabinet ministers have built on government land. Another man, who survived a massacre carried out by factional forces during the civil war, warns us not to broadcast his interview on Afghan television. “I’d be killed for talking to you,” he says. The team meets a woman MP in her 20s who almost alone has publicly criticised the warlords. Her bravery has made her a magnet for those wanting to complain about abuses, but has meant she is subject to constant death threats. To Afghan civilians it looks like the Northern Alliance did well out of the 2001 US invasion. However, one of the old factional leaders said they were unhappy with the level of foreign aid and the way they had been disarmed. He warned they could re-mobilise swiftly and were fully capable of kicking out the foreign forces, as they had kicked out the British and the Soviets.
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