00.08 Mountains Afghanistan is defined by its rugged geography, its people weathered by physical hardship and poverty.
00.18 The country stands at the crossroads of the region’s most significant powers, and has never been left to deal with its hardships in peace.
00.34 Now it is the site of the world’s truest Islamic experiment, according to those who rule it. The Taliban, or ‘god’s students’, have recreated the time of the Prophet Mohammed.
00.50 TITLE STATE OF THE TALIB
01.04 Kabul The capital, Kabul - reduced to rubble by a decade of war with Russia and then a decade of civil war. It is hard to imagine a city which has suffered more.
01.26 Carts carrying dead and wounded Death has been Afghanistan's constant companion. Between 300,000 and 400,000 children alone lost their lives as various Islamic factions have struggled for power since the Russians pulled out in 1989. War has buried between 1.5 and two million people over the past twenty years. A small pocket of resistance to the Taliban still survives in the north. But Afghans pay a heavy price for resisting the Talib regime.
02.18 FADE TO BLACK
02.25 Taliban on streets When they took power in 1996, the Taliban enforced an Islamic year zero. They banned all forms of diversion, from chess to television, and life for women was to change dramatically under the new order.
02.42 women They were to be prevented from studying and working, reduced to shrouds. For the Taliban, it was an effortless leap from the 20th century to the 7th.
02.56 SYNC teacher We are very unhappy that they have arrived in this city. It’s not only me who feels that. A lot of others feel that. We hate them. I went to the city one day for shopping. They beat me with rifles even though I wore my veil like this, they told me to cover my face totally.
03.21 SYNC daughter They asked, why are you outside? You have to be at home! Why are you riding a bike. It is prohibited according to Islam!
03.30 SYNC teacher One day I bought meat in the butcher’s shop. It cost 15,000 Afghani a kilo. The good meat cost 16,000 Afghani and the bad meat 15,000 Afghani a kilo. We bought the good meat even though it cost 1,000 extra. There was a Taliban spy at the butcher’s. He asked what we had paid. I said 16,000, and he left. A little later a Taliban showed up and asked the butcher for the price of the meat. He answered 16,000 Afghani. The Taliban said ‘We have fixed the price at 15,000.’ And he went on: ‘Put your hand here’. Then he chopped off four of the butcher’s fingers.
04.16 Man smoking & kite flying In areas not under Taliban control, people reacted in horror to decrees banning smoking and music. They now knew even their children would be in breach of Taliban law… in Kabul kites had been banned for distracting children’s attention from the Koran.
04.38 Map & Mohammed Nabi Mohammadi walking into lobby The Taliban were formed in Kandahar in 1994 by Muslims who wanted to bring about an Islamic revolution. Their Leader, Mullah Omar, is rarely photographed, but if there’s a single powerbroker in Afghanistan today it’s Mohammed Nabi Mohammadi. Most of the Taliban leaders were his junior commanders during the anti-Soviet war. He says given time the Taliban would emerge as fair rulers.
05.09 SYNC Mohammed Nabi Mohammadi They must be given a chance - once peace and security is implemented and law and order is in place and the killing and anarchy is finished. I assure you that the rights of all women and men will be guaranteed.
05.30 Taliban When the Taliban rose to the fore, Afghanistan was a bloody and brutal society. Thievery and murder were rife, and corrupt Mujahedeen warlords vied for power. Many thought the Taliban and their conservative edicts would bring order to a lawless land.
05.56 SYNC peasant We too want Islamic Law, and to grow beards, as the prophet has ruled. Women shouldn’t leave home. It doesn’t look proper. This is the way we like it.
06.15 SYNC Judge In the name of god, I greet the prophet, and I curse Satan. You ask about the difference between the holy students and the Mujahedeen. There is a great difference. The Taliban fight for God and peace, and to remove all other parties.
06.40 At first the Taliban could only be filmed secretly.
06.45 SYNC Judge Our judgement is made according to the Islamic Shariah and according to the book.
06.55 SYNC Judge When someone steals something with their hand, that hand should be cut off. Crime is much less now. 90% has gone, only 10% remains.
07.15 Taliban Other Taliban deterrents are stoning, burial alive and execution by firing squad. The Taliban’s human rights abuses, sparing no sector of society, have brought them international isolation.
07.45 Execution crowd On a Sunday afternoon in Kandahar three alleged murderers are publicly shot. It’s a spectacle for young and old.
07.55 SYNC boy (ENGLISH) They are killing some people, three people.Are you going to watch it? No. I ‘ve come here to play football
08.14 FADE TO BLACK
08.19 Mujahedeen fighting and Massoud After the Soviet war, fighting continued between various factions of the Mujahedeen, and the Soviet backed regime of President Mohammed Najibullah. In 1992 the Mujahedeen seized power but split along ethnic lines, and in 1994 the Taliban movement, dominated by Pashtun, emerged. The Mujahedeen eventually formed the Northern Alliance, under the command of Ahmad Shah Massoud. But to the Taliban, the moderate Islamic state which Massoud stood for was simply not Islamic enough.
08.56 SYNC Ahmad Shah Massoud, former leader Northern Alliance The Taliban are narrow minded people. They know nothing of human Rights or democracy. They do not accept any rights for women. In the provinces where they have taken power, they have closed the girls’ schools, closed the cinemas and smashed television sets. They even stopped ordinary games like football and volleyball. They claim these things are not Islamic. Without any real court or hearing, they’ve started to cut off people’s hands and feet.
09.51 Massoud’s troops in snow 1996 was perhaps Kabul’s darkest hour. Massoud’s troops dug in to try and hold the city as the Taliban laid siege to it. These men were the front line troops in the west’s cold war with Russia. But here they stood alone. Temperatures of minus 20 had slowed the Taliban’s assault, but their rockets rained down on the city.
10.14 hospital In Kabul’s hospital the tale was one of terror and death.
10.29 SYNC Girl on bed It was nearly midnight when the rocket hit our house. My brother’s wife was injured, and he and his son were killed.
10.46 The rocket came from the Taliban – I don’t know why.
10.53 SYNC Babette Zaugg, Field Nurse, Red Cross (ENGLISH) And this is a shell injury.
10.56 SYNC Boy Went down the river on our bikes. There were three of us. I was sitting by the river when the shell landed.
11.06 SYNC Nurse(ENGLISH) Most of the roads are closed. No supplies are coming in. People have a very hard time so they send their kids to find whatever they can find to eat, to cook, maybe to sell, and there they step on mines.
11.23 Boy singing My God, why are they attacking Kabul? The shells and the rockets have left a city of ruins.
11.44 Jeeps and bicycle With nearly all roads into Kabul closed, food and fuel were running out. There was no electricity and no water. People began burning furniture, and to curse the relentlessness of the Taliban’s march to power.
11.59 VOX POP 1st man They didn’t keep their word. They said they’d target military area, but now they fire at civilians. The rockets have been falling in this area - one just here. They’re hitting a lot of houses.
12.16 VOX POP 2nd man We thought the Taliban were good people - real Muslims. They are not the people that they seem.
12.28 Blind couple Tens of thousands of families waited at home for help that never came. This couple are both blind, she by disease, he by landmine. One of their sons starved to death.
12.41 SYNC Husband A man can’t leave his home to search for food for his children. People are terrified and frightened. If they hear a door banging, they think it is a rocket attack. They have lost their nerve.
13.04 Crowds waiting for food to be distributed The end of the winter brought some relief to the poor of Kabul, as some food was airlifted in. But aid groups estimated that up to half a million people were on the starvation line.
13.16 VOX POP 1st woman I swear by God, I have nothing to eat.
13.20 VOX POP 2nd woman Our home is freezing. We have no fuel. My husband is very weak.
13.34 Ahmad Shah Massoud getting into car In Massoud’s factories, old pieces of equipment were being melted down in last ditch efforts to defeat the Taliban. Massoud was a hero from the anti-Soviet war, devastating the Russian army and paving the way for the creation of the Afghan republic.
13.49 But in September 1996 the Taliban captured Kabul from the Mujahedeen, hung President Najibullah and implemented Shariah Law. Massoud fled to the mountains, where he tried forging an alliance with another warlord, but they failed to stop the Taliban from taking control of 95% of the country.
14.12 Massoud was killed by a suicide? bomber in September 2001. During the siege of Kabul, he alleged that the Taliban were being directed by Pakistan.
14.25 SYNC Ahmad Shah Massoud, former leader Northern Alliance The blockade has been implemented to break the resistance of the people of Kabul. According to the information I have as the economic siege continues and the blockade tightens the Taliban will re-launch their attack as instructed by Pakistan.
14.58 Guns/ Pakistan State oil selling gas along Kabul route The Afghan civil war would not be sustainable without the support of the surrounding countries. Pakistan is the main supporter of the Taliban. Pakistan State Oil sells gasoline along the main route to Kabul, but Pakistan denies the depth of the links.
15.20 men praying The religious schools, or madrassas, where the Taliban receive their Islamic education, lie in Pakistan. This madrassa, near Peshawar - is the largest with two and a half thousand devotees, and is touted as the Taliban's Harvard.
15.36 Starting as young as six, they are recruited from both the Afghan refugee camps here and the poor of Pakistan, and spend eight years learning the ways of fundamentalist Islam.
15.48 SYNC madrassa student Get lost deadbeat! Is this a madrassa or a film studio? Don't you have any shame?
15.56 doors close There could be as many as half a million madrassa students in Pakistan, living a Spartan existence, that forms a harsh, narrow world view, which doesn't welcome cameras.
16.15 Sami ul Haq's students do more than just read the Koran. A former Pakistan senator, he is according to leading investigators of the Taliban, the movement's chief recruiting officer.
16.29 SYNC Ahmed Rashid, Pakistani Author and Columnist(ENGLISH) Sami ul Haq has been one of the ideological founding fathers of the Taliban since 1994. Many of the Taliban central committee were actually students at his madrassa, so he knows them when they were kids. His madrassas have also supplied huge amounts of manpower to them so he's very very important and very much revered by the Taliban.
16.59 The Taliban’s military campaign began after Pakistan announced it wanted to open up trade routes through Afghanistan to the Central Asian Republics, and thousands of Taliban recruits came from Pakistan.
17.17 SYNC Sami-ul-Haq Only Afghans are going back to the Holy War. I'm not sure that Pakistanis are going. We don't permit it. But the borders are open and it's possible they might go to see their friends over there.
17.34 SYNC Ahmed Rashid, Pakistani Author and Columnist(ENGLISH) It's very difficult to put a percentage on it because the tendency has been that when the Taliban launch an offensive they normally ask religious leaders in Pakistan to send their Madrassa students to help them out, and you have spurts of maybe two, three thousand young men, boys - going across the border - helping the Taliban out for a specific offensive and then coming back.
18.00 Taliban In fact the Taliban have been armed and advised by Pakistan’s Secret Service, the ISI. The objective was the creation of an army that was to be an extension of the Pakistan army in all but name, based on the close ethnic links between Afghan Pashtuns and Pakistani Pashtuns.
18.18 SYNC Ahmed Rashid, Pakistani Author and Columnist(ENGLISH) Pakistan intelligence is very much part of the government and government policy has been to support the Taliban, give them backing, give them advice, give them help in various material fields where they may be lacking. So the ISI has been carrying out government policy as such. I mean, it has been doing that since the Benazir Bhutto government first started working with the Taliban in 1994.
18.49 SYNC Mohammed Nabi Mohammadi I do not know of it but I'm saying if Pakistan did offer military and economic help I pray to Allah that he will reward Pakistan with Paradise and give them rewards in this life because they would have helped the oppressed and a just cause.
19.16 The Taliban army is said to consist of up to 40% Pakistanis. This Taliban soldier, hit a mine during an attack and wounded his leg. He says there were many Pakistanis among the men in his force.
19.28 SYNC Doost Muhammad, Taliban soldier (Pashtu language) -Among them there are people from Kandahar and Punjab in Pakistan. I don´t know their language, they are speaking in other languages. There were everything. -No Arabs, but Punjabis. I know because I can speak urdu.
19.56 Faisal mosque Islamabad’s Faisal mosque - the largest in Pakistan.Attending prayers, the nation’s elite -- professionals, generals, bureaucrats, diplomats from Islamic countries.
20.18 Mujahedeen fundraising Outside, the fundraising stalls of Islamic fundamentalist groups waging a guerrilla war against India in Kashmir. Donations stream in, a sign of the huge popular support in Pakistan for Islamist causes. It’s this scene that sends the United States into a rage. Pakistan’s leader General Musharraf is powerless to stop such groups, although he distances himself publicly from Islamic terror.
20.56 Among the stalls, young fighters from a group called Harkut ul Mujahedeen, declared a terrorist organisation by the U.S. for its links to Osama bin Laden –
21.09 SYNC Bin Laden follower Q: Who is your leader?HARKAT MUJ: Osama bin Laden,
21.16 Q: Can you tell me what this says? HARKAT MUJ: Have faith in God - fight the Holy War alongside the prophet.
21.29 The UN placed sanctions on the Taliban for harbouring Osama bin Laden, freezing Taliban funds and flights. And the US bombed suspected bin Laden bases in Afghanistan in 1998. Incredible then that his groups have been operating so openly on Pakistani soil.
21.47 SYNC Ahmed Rashid, Pakistani Author and Columnist (ENGLISH) They really have an almost kind of different agenda. It’s a much more Islamic agenda rather than, if you like, a Kashmiri nationalist agenda. And I think a lot of these groups are out of hand. I don’t think they’re being controlled by anyone.
22.01 Guns, Pakistan’s North Western Frontier province Many of Pakistan’s tribesmen in the north western frontier province are heavily armed, thanks to drugs smuggling, and have a much greater kinship with the austere Taliban regime than the elite of Lahore. This is because the Pashtun tribe’s territory stretches for miles on both sides of the border, and for them the brutal but respected Pashtunwali code of honour is more important even than religion. Across a broad swathe of lawless western Pakistan, tribal leaders feel compelled to defend their Taliban allies in Afghanistan.
22.40 Taliban The notion of Muslim unity in the jihad against the western ‘infidels’ has great resonance throughout this deeply conservative region. In the hadith, sayings which were attributed to the Prophet Mohammed, it says that martyrs stand nearest the throne of God. The Taliban regime was recognized only by Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, but Osama bin Laden has praised it for being what he calls the only ‘real’ Islamic system in the world.
23.13 SYNC Taliban soldier If we force men to go to the mosque or ban women from walking on the street, or doing other bad things, these are the rules of Islam. We don’t care if people say we’re barbaric or not.
23.29 SYNC Taliban soldier We are honoured to be called ‘fundamentalist’ or be accused of dragging people to the mosque or forcing people to grow beards. These are Islamic rules.
Washing at river
23.54 SYNC Mullah Mohammed Musa Khan, Taliban Ministerial Secretary Islam has said when there is cruelty, when other people have taken your country, you have to join the war. Therefore I’m doing the war and I want to die in the war. When do you think the war will be over?When all the cruel people of Afghanistan have been punished and when they have been kicked out from the country, the war will be ended.
24.30 Taliban Elements of Islamic Shariah Law are applied in a dozen countries, but the strict Taliban system is based on the fact that God’s word is fixed and immutable. It is administered by the Department for Promoting Virtue and Defending Vice.
24.49 SYNC Mullah Mohammed Musa Khan, Taliban Ministerial Secretary It is the rule of Islam that the hand of a thief and the foot of a thief should be cut.
24.57 Execution footage This secretly recorded amateur video supposedly originated in Kandahar, immediately before an execution.
25.04 SYNC Taliban official Hurting another person is unlawful, no matter whether it is physically, psychologically, spiritually, or economically.
25.19 The condemned has his throat slit.
FADE TO BLACK
25.30 Boys’ school/ secretly filmed Taliban (ENGLISH) Q: What schools are open? Boy’s schools and girls’ schools are open?A: Boys’ schools.Q: Do you plan to open girl’s schools?A: Not now! Q: Do you have teachers, women teachers?A: Yes they are in their own houses and the girls are going to their own houses and they study there. In the houses.Q: That’s OK?A: Yes. That’s OK. There’s no need to come out, to the bazaars and to the schools, because they are getting their knowledge in the houses.
26.12 Girls school in house The Taliban tolerate these schools at home, as schooling is permitted for girls under 12. In the early days of their regime, they actually banned women from the streets and bazaars. After protests, they were allowed limited access, but Afghan women remain totally dominated by men.
Kites, children
27.08 School in north This school in the north is not under Taliban control, hence girls are permitted. It’s a rare privilege especially since so few Afghan children, about one child in a hundred, receive an education. Islam is so entrenched in Afghanistan that even in a secular school like this the Koran is revered. The teacher has asked his pupils to read from the holy scriptures.
27.35 'The Koran is the book of God'.We believe in the Holy Book'And we are in a secular school!
27.47 wedding Afghanistan is a deeply traditional country. Wedding celebrations are separate for men and women, even in the north.
28.04 Veiled women And even in Opposition controlled territory few women walk outside without what they consider "proper dress". Here in Masar-i-Sharif in the north, women wear the ‘burqa’, or veil. The campus of the one university in Afghanistan the Taliban couldn’t stop women attending is here. Some students wait until they reach it, before changing into casual clothes.
28.37 students But the Taliban clampdown on women shocked and saddened many who had placed their faith in a new Islamic order.
28.45 SYNC Isabelle Ahmadi, Undergraduate (ENGLISH) At first I thought the Taliban wanted to establish a strong central government in Afghanistan. It was good. But when we saw their treatments against women, that they don’t let them work or even go outside, we are very worried about our future, what happens with us, because we are studying at university now and we wish a good future for ourselves.
29.29 mosque Islam dictates that a woman’s testimony is worth only half that of a man, her inheritance rights are less, and her powers of sexual temptation are to be seen as Satanic. But the Koran also lays down rules for her kindly treatment.
29.46 SYNC Isabelle Ahmadi, Undergraduate (ENGLISH) According to holy Islam religion man and woman have the same rights, and man and woman can both work and study.
29.57 Female doctors Before the Taliban took power, 40% of Afghanistan’s doctors were female. But the Talibs banned women from working in the medical centres and prohibited male doctors from treating women, effectively giving women no access to health care.
30.15 SYNCDr. Wofi, surgeon As a general rule we didn’t have any particular problems after the Taliban arrived. But they did cause difficulties when it came to the women. This was because of their general policy. The Taliban consider the duty of women to be separate from that of men. Some of our doctors therefore couldn’t treat women as freely.
31.02 doctors Some foreign nurses were reluctantly permitted. Later, aid agencies persuaded the Taliban to allow a handful of female doctors to work in rural areas.
31.13 Veiled women But they continue to harass women found breaching even minor decrees.
31.21 SYNC Ross Everson, aid worker(ENGLISH) Just today we had a case where two women were beaten outside this office for wearing sandals.Campbell: Beaten by Taliban?Ross Everson: Beaten by Taliban. They have electric cord which they beat the women with.
31.47 VOX POP woman Women and girls want peace and security. The war is exhausting our children.
32.07 Babies And Afghanistan’s children suffer enough. A quarter of them die before they reach the age of five. Infant mortality here is almost the highest in the world, second only to Sierra Leone.
FADE TO BLACK
32.29 Poppies/ sheep After two decades of war Afghanistan’s shattered economy relied heavily on opium. In the devastated rural communities, with no money for irrigation - the only crop they can afford to grow is poppy, as generations have done. Even though Islam strictly prohibits all drug use, production under the Taliban increased spectacularly, and Afghanistan accounted for 80% of world production of raw opium, used to produce heroin.
Abdul lives at the edge of the poppy fields near Jallallabad.
33.04 SYNC Abdul Waheed What can we do? We are poor people and we cannot survive on other crops.
33.13 Islam-u-dine is only 12. But he has no doubt what he’ll do when he grows up.
33.20 SYNC Islam-u-dine I have to grow opium. There are no schools to go to. What else could I do?
33.33 Praying in poppy fields When they came to power the Taliban claimed to be as pure on drugs as they are on all other Islamic bans, but argued that farmers should be exempt from the ban until the war was over. They also believed the poppy trade was hurting the west. But they went even further. In each area they conquered, the Taliban imposed a ten percent tax on the proceeds of opium sales. Their tolerance of opium helped their military advance. Before the Taliban invaded this area, the local Mujahedeen tried to stop the poppy harvest. The community revolted and welcomed in the Taliban. But then the Taliban made a complete policy reversal.
34.21 In July 2000 they unilaterally banned all poppy cultivation in the areas under their control. Now just wheat is grown here.
34.32 SYNC poppy farmer Poppy, we used to plant poppy in on all this land last year.
34.42 fields Everything indicated that the ban was strictly observed by farmers. In fact in May 2001, the UN reported that poppy cultivation had almost been completely eradicated in the space of one season, with the world’s supply of heroin effectively shrinking by 75%. The Taliban ban on production was set to devastate rural areas which had come to rely on the drug trade.
35.08 SYNC poppy farmer They cannot plant poppy and if they do they will be punished. The Taliban were very tough with those who planted poppy, and even killed four or five of them
35.22 But then the Taliban reversed policy again, telling farmers they could start planting poppy in the event of a US military attack.
35.35 Taliban at prayer Religious fervour won’t feed a nation. Without the poppy, it’s a grim future. Most of Afghanistan’s public servants are already working for the public good, not a salary.
35.47 SYNCAini Dashdi, doctor (ENGLISH) If you want to know about our salary, we have been paid twice in the last two and a half years, and it´s about 10-15 dollars per month.
36.07 SYNC Bazil,Taliban District Governor The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and its offices can only ensure security of the area. But financially we’ve got no money to solve the main common problems of the people.
Sifting grain
FADE TO BLACK
36.44 Helicopter, Northern Alliance weapons Throughout the civil war Pakistan and Iran have been vying for influence in Afghanistan. Iran backs the opposition alliance. The Taliban are Sunni Muslims, the Iranian Islamic regime is Shi’ite. Iran turned against the Taliban after they captured three provinces bordering Iran.
37.10 Men picking up guns These weapons supplied to the Afghan Shi’ite minority of Masar-i-Sharif are said to have come from Iran. The Taliban captured them when they took the town.
37.22 SYNC Talib Commander These weapons did not come to Masar-i-Sharif by themselves. They didn't walk over here. They were carried by vehicle or aircraft.
37.42 map According to Amnesty International, the Taliban massacred thousands of civilians when they took the town of Masar-i-Sharif in 1998. They also shot dead 11 Iranian diplomats. The incident almost sparked war between Iran and Afghanistan.
38.00 prisoners Also captured at Masar - 26 Iranians who claim to be produce truck drivers. The Taliban say they were caught smuggling the weapons.
38.10 SYNC Iranian Driver (ENGLISH) Q: The Taliban say that they find guns in with the food?A: It is not correct. It is wrong. I say I brought only goods and cooking things like them.
38.25 These truck drivers were released, despite calling for revenge for the diplomats’ murder.
38.35 SYNC Iranian prisoner We ask the Islamic Republic of Iran to avenge the blood of those martyrs who were killed in the Masar-i-Sharif Consulate. They have to take revenge by all means on anyone - be they Talib or Pakistani. We were saddened to hear the news and again we request the leaders of Iran to avenge the blood of our martyrs. Chant: God is great!, God is great! Long live Khemeni! (Iranian president)
39.10 CU fruit, men eating In far more sumptuous surroundings - a different group of Iranians - who are very much the Taliban's welcome guests.
39.19 They are a new side in this imbroglio - members of Iran's Sunni minority - Targets they say of relentless persecution by Iran's Shi’ite government. Previously operating in Afghanistan in secret, they take the opportunity to make an announcement to the world: - the aim of their own Taliban-style revolution on Iranian soil.
39.42 SYNC Mohiuddin,Ahl-e-Sunnah-Wal-Jamat Our war is not against the people - not against our country. It is against the system which is hostile towards us - animosity, hostility towards our faith. We have to tell the world about our oppression, about the tyrants of our government.
40.07 It's confirmation of Iran's greatest fears - Taliban ambitions to expand their Islamic new order.
40.14 SYNC Mohiuddin,Ahl-e-Sunnah-Wal-Jamat Other nations have done it. The Afghans did. If we are compelled - and Iran doesn't stop its tyranny, we will be forced to do something in our own defence.
40.33 SYNC Ahmed Rashid, Pakistani Author and Columnist (ENGLISH) If this is so, I think this would be of enormous significance because it would be really telling Tehran that the Taliban are harbouring anti-Iranian groups. It would be very provocative for the Iranians if the Taliban were doing so. It would perhaps give another justification for some kind of Iranian attack or measure taken against the Taliban.
FADE TO BLACK
41.08 SYNC woman with child They beat all the men. The fighting was heavy. We women and children were forced to flee.Q: Did many people die?A: Yes many people died. Those who managed to leave somehow survived. The others were killed.
41.46 photos The Sunni Taliban are also targeting Afghanistan’s Shi’ite Muslim minority, like these ethnic Hazaras. These photos show mass graves being exhumed in a nearby area. The American-based Human Rights Watch reported that 170 civilians were massacred by Taliban forces in January 2001. It seems some civilians were skinned.
41.14 Terrified, people need little persuasion to leave.
41.21 9 months pregnant, this woman walked through snow for two days. Her child did not survive.
42.32 Jalozai tents Some of those who flee the drought, hunger and fighting, end up here. On the outskirts of Pakistan’s border city of Peshawar, “Jalozai” is a transit camp, a plastic sea of eighty thousand people, which sprung up at the start of the year 2000.
42.49 Nazar Mohammad is doing everything he can to keep his children clean. Jalozai has already claimed the life of his daughter.
42.57 SYNC Nazar Mohammad “My father said, ‘Don’t leave us in Afghanistan. Stay with us in spite of the hunger, war and everything.”I told them I want to save my children. I ignored my father’s orders and now I’ve lost my daughter.
43.16 Torkham border post Torkham, the border post on the Pakistani side, has been closed to Afghans on-and-off since the end of 2000. Yet hundreds of thousands have crossed the mountainous border by foot to seek refuge since then.
43.31 tents Pakistan still harbours over 2 million Afghans, the world´s largest refugee problem, but UN support has been cut back to barely nothing compared to during the Soviet war. Pakistan is no longer able to provide for even the basic upkeep of the refugees, and so refuses to let them be registered. Afghan refugees are close to the bottom of this society. Their situation is desperate. Most have been here for months without any support, except for simple plastic sheeting.
44.02 SYNC Wakil, refugee In the day the heat kills us and at night the cold. We have no shelter and no proper drinking water. We lack medical care and medicine and we don´t have proper toilets.
44.20 Every day diseases like measles cause children to die. Stomach diseases are common and private hand-outs of food have caused riots.
44.30 VOX POP man This is how much rice we have had...
44.34 VOX POP woman Apart from this I have received nothing.
44.44 refugees A million optimistic refugees came home from the camps in Pakistan when the Taliban came to power. But many have since gone back. This endless ebb and flow of refugees will continue, in turn creating new recruits for the swelling Taliban ranks.
45.13 SYNC Sami-ul-Haq We now have Taliban from Arab countries, the Far East - Thailand etc. Central Asia also, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan - They are also seeking Islam. They were not allowed to read the Koran for 100 to 150 years.
45.33 Taliban Online An international brotherhood, united by a willingness to use all means, military and others, to impose Koranic law.
45.47 SYNC Mullah Mohammed Musa Khan, Taliban Ministerial Secretary (ENGLISH) Our holy custom is the Shariah, and we will keep these customs under the frame of the Shariah. No custom will be allowed without the Islamic culture. Nothing will be allowed. All the customs and all the cultures will be going in the frame of the holy religion of Islam.
Fluttering videotape
46.23 SYNC Rachel TaprellM.E.R.L.I.N. (ENGLISH) The feeling you get from people is that they are generally happy that the Taliban have come. Prior to the Taliban there was fighting on the streets, most people were armed, people didn’t have any freedom.
46.40 Covered women in market But the freedom felt when the Taliban first came to power, has long since evaporated.
46.54 SYNC Ahmed Rashid, Pakistani Author and Columnist (ENGLISH) Well, I think for the region, the Taliban phenomenon has already proved disastrous. It has completely polarised the region. On one side you have Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, who have been backing the Taliban. On the other side, you have everyone else - India, Iran, Turkey, China, Russia, the Central Asian states who are very much not just against Taliban, but have publicly now voiced their disapproval of Pakistani and Saudi support for the Taliban.
47.23 Taliban on tanks The Taliban regime may be internationally shunned, but there is more support for its anachronistic interpretation of Islam than originally meets the eye. It’s likely that if the Taliban were squeezed out of existence, some other Muslim fundamentalist group would mop up its support base.
47.46 SYNC Anders Fänge, Director, Swedish Committee. for Afghanistan (ENGLISH) People in the West are so negative to the Taliban, so that anything which is bad for the Taliban, that is good. But one has to ask the question, what will happen if the Taliban implodes, if the Taliban collapses. The answer to that is most presumably that it will be complete and total chaos in Afghanistan. The fighting will continue and of course this has not made it easier for us who are working with saving lives and working for the development of the country.
Building walls
48.38 SYNC Jallal Atmar, doctor (ENGLISH) The problem with Afghanistan is so complicated and there are many internal and external forces interested in Afghanistan and they do anything according to their own wish and according to their own benefit. Therefore for the present I am not so hopeful. Otherwise if the United Nations does something about the people of Afghanistan, and show some type of sympathy ... Otherwise I am not so sure the future won’t be as dark as it was in the past.
49.12 Taliban on tanks Indeed the future may be dark, because until the world’s disaffected Muslims are brought into global politics and the global economy, we will always have groups like the Taliban to fear.
49.45 ENDS
CREDITS – STATE OF THE TALIB
Production Assistant
Kate Benyon-Tinker
Production Manager
Joanna Turner
Researcher
Sam Goss
Editor
Sam Bailey
Director
Keely Purdue
Executive Producer
Mark Stucke
A Journeyman Pictures Production
00.18 The country stands at the crossroads of the region’s most significant powers, and has never been left to deal with its hardships in peace.
00.34 Now it is the site of the world’s truest Islamic experiment, according to those who rule it. The Taliban, or ‘god’s students’, have recreated the time of the Prophet Mohammed.
00.50 TITLE STATE OF THE TALIB
01.04 Kabul The capital, Kabul - reduced to rubble by a decade of war with Russia and then a decade of civil war. It is hard to imagine a city which has suffered more.
01.26 Carts carrying dead and wounded Death has been Afghanistan's constant companion. Between 300,000 and 400,000 children alone lost their lives as various Islamic factions have struggled for power since the Russians pulled out in 1989. War has buried between 1.5 and two million people over the past twenty years. A small pocket of resistance to the Taliban still survives in the north. But Afghans pay a heavy price for resisting the Talib regime.
02.18 FADE TO BLACK
02.25 Taliban on streets When they took power in 1996, the Taliban enforced an Islamic year zero. They banned all forms of diversion, from chess to television, and life for women was to change dramatically under the new order.
02.42 women They were to be prevented from studying and working, reduced to shrouds. For the Taliban, it was an effortless leap from the 20th century to the 7th.
02.56 SYNC teacher We are very unhappy that they have arrived in this city. It’s not only me who feels that. A lot of others feel that. We hate them. I went to the city one day for shopping. They beat me with rifles even though I wore my veil like this, they told me to cover my face totally.
03.21 SYNC daughter They asked, why are you outside? You have to be at home! Why are you riding a bike. It is prohibited according to Islam!
03.30 SYNC teacher One day I bought meat in the butcher’s shop. It cost 15,000 Afghani a kilo. The good meat cost 16,000 Afghani and the bad meat 15,000 Afghani a kilo. We bought the good meat even though it cost 1,000 extra. There was a Taliban spy at the butcher’s. He asked what we had paid. I said 16,000, and he left. A little later a Taliban showed up and asked the butcher for the price of the meat. He answered 16,000 Afghani. The Taliban said ‘We have fixed the price at 15,000.’ And he went on: ‘Put your hand here’. Then he chopped off four of the butcher’s fingers.
04.16 Man smoking & kite flying In areas not under Taliban control, people reacted in horror to decrees banning smoking and music. They now knew even their children would be in breach of Taliban law… in Kabul kites had been banned for distracting children’s attention from the Koran.
04.38 Map & Mohammed Nabi Mohammadi walking into lobby The Taliban were formed in Kandahar in 1994 by Muslims who wanted to bring about an Islamic revolution. Their Leader, Mullah Omar, is rarely photographed, but if there’s a single powerbroker in Afghanistan today it’s Mohammed Nabi Mohammadi. Most of the Taliban leaders were his junior commanders during the anti-Soviet war. He says given time the Taliban would emerge as fair rulers.
05.09 SYNC Mohammed Nabi Mohammadi They must be given a chance - once peace and security is implemented and law and order is in place and the killing and anarchy is finished. I assure you that the rights of all women and men will be guaranteed.
05.30 Taliban When the Taliban rose to the fore, Afghanistan was a bloody and brutal society. Thievery and murder were rife, and corrupt Mujahedeen warlords vied for power. Many thought the Taliban and their conservative edicts would bring order to a lawless land.
05.56 SYNC peasant We too want Islamic Law, and to grow beards, as the prophet has ruled. Women shouldn’t leave home. It doesn’t look proper. This is the way we like it.
06.15 SYNC Judge In the name of god, I greet the prophet, and I curse Satan. You ask about the difference between the holy students and the Mujahedeen. There is a great difference. The Taliban fight for God and peace, and to remove all other parties.
06.40 At first the Taliban could only be filmed secretly.
06.45 SYNC Judge Our judgement is made according to the Islamic Shariah and according to the book.
06.55 SYNC Judge When someone steals something with their hand, that hand should be cut off. Crime is much less now. 90% has gone, only 10% remains.
07.15 Taliban Other Taliban deterrents are stoning, burial alive and execution by firing squad. The Taliban’s human rights abuses, sparing no sector of society, have brought them international isolation.
07.45 Execution crowd On a Sunday afternoon in Kandahar three alleged murderers are publicly shot. It’s a spectacle for young and old.
07.55 SYNC boy (ENGLISH) They are killing some people, three people.Are you going to watch it? No. I ‘ve come here to play football
08.14 FADE TO BLACK
08.19 Mujahedeen fighting and Massoud After the Soviet war, fighting continued between various factions of the Mujahedeen, and the Soviet backed regime of President Mohammed Najibullah. In 1992 the Mujahedeen seized power but split along ethnic lines, and in 1994 the Taliban movement, dominated by Pashtun, emerged. The Mujahedeen eventually formed the Northern Alliance, under the command of Ahmad Shah Massoud. But to the Taliban, the moderate Islamic state which Massoud stood for was simply not Islamic enough.
08.56 SYNC Ahmad Shah Massoud, former leader Northern Alliance The Taliban are narrow minded people. They know nothing of human Rights or democracy. They do not accept any rights for women. In the provinces where they have taken power, they have closed the girls’ schools, closed the cinemas and smashed television sets. They even stopped ordinary games like football and volleyball. They claim these things are not Islamic. Without any real court or hearing, they’ve started to cut off people’s hands and feet.
09.51 Massoud’s troops in snow 1996 was perhaps Kabul’s darkest hour. Massoud’s troops dug in to try and hold the city as the Taliban laid siege to it. These men were the front line troops in the west’s cold war with Russia. But here they stood alone. Temperatures of minus 20 had slowed the Taliban’s assault, but their rockets rained down on the city.
10.14 hospital In Kabul’s hospital the tale was one of terror and death.
10.29 SYNC Girl on bed It was nearly midnight when the rocket hit our house. My brother’s wife was injured, and he and his son were killed.
10.46 The rocket came from the Taliban – I don’t know why.
10.53 SYNC Babette Zaugg, Field Nurse, Red Cross (ENGLISH) And this is a shell injury.
10.56 SYNC Boy Went down the river on our bikes. There were three of us. I was sitting by the river when the shell landed.
11.06 SYNC Nurse(ENGLISH) Most of the roads are closed. No supplies are coming in. People have a very hard time so they send their kids to find whatever they can find to eat, to cook, maybe to sell, and there they step on mines.
11.23 Boy singing My God, why are they attacking Kabul? The shells and the rockets have left a city of ruins.
11.44 Jeeps and bicycle With nearly all roads into Kabul closed, food and fuel were running out. There was no electricity and no water. People began burning furniture, and to curse the relentlessness of the Taliban’s march to power.
11.59 VOX POP 1st man They didn’t keep their word. They said they’d target military area, but now they fire at civilians. The rockets have been falling in this area - one just here. They’re hitting a lot of houses.
12.16 VOX POP 2nd man We thought the Taliban were good people - real Muslims. They are not the people that they seem.
12.28 Blind couple Tens of thousands of families waited at home for help that never came. This couple are both blind, she by disease, he by landmine. One of their sons starved to death.
12.41 SYNC Husband A man can’t leave his home to search for food for his children. People are terrified and frightened. If they hear a door banging, they think it is a rocket attack. They have lost their nerve.
13.04 Crowds waiting for food to be distributed The end of the winter brought some relief to the poor of Kabul, as some food was airlifted in. But aid groups estimated that up to half a million people were on the starvation line.
13.16 VOX POP 1st woman I swear by God, I have nothing to eat.
13.20 VOX POP 2nd woman Our home is freezing. We have no fuel. My husband is very weak.
13.34 Ahmad Shah Massoud getting into car In Massoud’s factories, old pieces of equipment were being melted down in last ditch efforts to defeat the Taliban. Massoud was a hero from the anti-Soviet war, devastating the Russian army and paving the way for the creation of the Afghan republic.
13.49 But in September 1996 the Taliban captured Kabul from the Mujahedeen, hung President Najibullah and implemented Shariah Law. Massoud fled to the mountains, where he tried forging an alliance with another warlord, but they failed to stop the Taliban from taking control of 95% of the country.
14.12 Massoud was killed by a suicide? bomber in September 2001. During the siege of Kabul, he alleged that the Taliban were being directed by Pakistan.
14.25 SYNC Ahmad Shah Massoud, former leader Northern Alliance The blockade has been implemented to break the resistance of the people of Kabul. According to the information I have as the economic siege continues and the blockade tightens the Taliban will re-launch their attack as instructed by Pakistan.
14.58 Guns/ Pakistan State oil selling gas along Kabul route The Afghan civil war would not be sustainable without the support of the surrounding countries. Pakistan is the main supporter of the Taliban. Pakistan State Oil sells gasoline along the main route to Kabul, but Pakistan denies the depth of the links.
15.20 men praying The religious schools, or madrassas, where the Taliban receive their Islamic education, lie in Pakistan. This madrassa, near Peshawar - is the largest with two and a half thousand devotees, and is touted as the Taliban's Harvard.
15.36 Starting as young as six, they are recruited from both the Afghan refugee camps here and the poor of Pakistan, and spend eight years learning the ways of fundamentalist Islam.
15.48 SYNC madrassa student Get lost deadbeat! Is this a madrassa or a film studio? Don't you have any shame?
15.56 doors close There could be as many as half a million madrassa students in Pakistan, living a Spartan existence, that forms a harsh, narrow world view, which doesn't welcome cameras.
16.15 Sami ul Haq's students do more than just read the Koran. A former Pakistan senator, he is according to leading investigators of the Taliban, the movement's chief recruiting officer.
16.29 SYNC Ahmed Rashid, Pakistani Author and Columnist(ENGLISH) Sami ul Haq has been one of the ideological founding fathers of the Taliban since 1994. Many of the Taliban central committee were actually students at his madrassa, so he knows them when they were kids. His madrassas have also supplied huge amounts of manpower to them so he's very very important and very much revered by the Taliban.
16.59 The Taliban’s military campaign began after Pakistan announced it wanted to open up trade routes through Afghanistan to the Central Asian Republics, and thousands of Taliban recruits came from Pakistan.
17.17 SYNC Sami-ul-Haq Only Afghans are going back to the Holy War. I'm not sure that Pakistanis are going. We don't permit it. But the borders are open and it's possible they might go to see their friends over there.
17.34 SYNC Ahmed Rashid, Pakistani Author and Columnist(ENGLISH) It's very difficult to put a percentage on it because the tendency has been that when the Taliban launch an offensive they normally ask religious leaders in Pakistan to send their Madrassa students to help them out, and you have spurts of maybe two, three thousand young men, boys - going across the border - helping the Taliban out for a specific offensive and then coming back.
18.00 Taliban In fact the Taliban have been armed and advised by Pakistan’s Secret Service, the ISI. The objective was the creation of an army that was to be an extension of the Pakistan army in all but name, based on the close ethnic links between Afghan Pashtuns and Pakistani Pashtuns.
18.18 SYNC Ahmed Rashid, Pakistani Author and Columnist(ENGLISH) Pakistan intelligence is very much part of the government and government policy has been to support the Taliban, give them backing, give them advice, give them help in various material fields where they may be lacking. So the ISI has been carrying out government policy as such. I mean, it has been doing that since the Benazir Bhutto government first started working with the Taliban in 1994.
18.49 SYNC Mohammed Nabi Mohammadi I do not know of it but I'm saying if Pakistan did offer military and economic help I pray to Allah that he will reward Pakistan with Paradise and give them rewards in this life because they would have helped the oppressed and a just cause.
19.16 The Taliban army is said to consist of up to 40% Pakistanis. This Taliban soldier, hit a mine during an attack and wounded his leg. He says there were many Pakistanis among the men in his force.
19.28 SYNC Doost Muhammad, Taliban soldier (Pashtu language) -Among them there are people from Kandahar and Punjab in Pakistan. I don´t know their language, they are speaking in other languages. There were everything. -No Arabs, but Punjabis. I know because I can speak urdu.
19.56 Faisal mosque Islamabad’s Faisal mosque - the largest in Pakistan.Attending prayers, the nation’s elite -- professionals, generals, bureaucrats, diplomats from Islamic countries.
20.18 Mujahedeen fundraising Outside, the fundraising stalls of Islamic fundamentalist groups waging a guerrilla war against India in Kashmir. Donations stream in, a sign of the huge popular support in Pakistan for Islamist causes. It’s this scene that sends the United States into a rage. Pakistan’s leader General Musharraf is powerless to stop such groups, although he distances himself publicly from Islamic terror.
20.56 Among the stalls, young fighters from a group called Harkut ul Mujahedeen, declared a terrorist organisation by the U.S. for its links to Osama bin Laden –
21.09 SYNC Bin Laden follower Q: Who is your leader?HARKAT MUJ: Osama bin Laden,
21.16 Q: Can you tell me what this says? HARKAT MUJ: Have faith in God - fight the Holy War alongside the prophet.
21.29 The UN placed sanctions on the Taliban for harbouring Osama bin Laden, freezing Taliban funds and flights. And the US bombed suspected bin Laden bases in Afghanistan in 1998. Incredible then that his groups have been operating so openly on Pakistani soil.
21.47 SYNC Ahmed Rashid, Pakistani Author and Columnist (ENGLISH) They really have an almost kind of different agenda. It’s a much more Islamic agenda rather than, if you like, a Kashmiri nationalist agenda. And I think a lot of these groups are out of hand. I don’t think they’re being controlled by anyone.
22.01 Guns, Pakistan’s North Western Frontier province Many of Pakistan’s tribesmen in the north western frontier province are heavily armed, thanks to drugs smuggling, and have a much greater kinship with the austere Taliban regime than the elite of Lahore. This is because the Pashtun tribe’s territory stretches for miles on both sides of the border, and for them the brutal but respected Pashtunwali code of honour is more important even than religion. Across a broad swathe of lawless western Pakistan, tribal leaders feel compelled to defend their Taliban allies in Afghanistan.
22.40 Taliban The notion of Muslim unity in the jihad against the western ‘infidels’ has great resonance throughout this deeply conservative region. In the hadith, sayings which were attributed to the Prophet Mohammed, it says that martyrs stand nearest the throne of God. The Taliban regime was recognized only by Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, but Osama bin Laden has praised it for being what he calls the only ‘real’ Islamic system in the world.
23.13 SYNC Taliban soldier If we force men to go to the mosque or ban women from walking on the street, or doing other bad things, these are the rules of Islam. We don’t care if people say we’re barbaric or not.
23.29 SYNC Taliban soldier We are honoured to be called ‘fundamentalist’ or be accused of dragging people to the mosque or forcing people to grow beards. These are Islamic rules.
Washing at river
23.54 SYNC Mullah Mohammed Musa Khan, Taliban Ministerial Secretary Islam has said when there is cruelty, when other people have taken your country, you have to join the war. Therefore I’m doing the war and I want to die in the war. When do you think the war will be over?When all the cruel people of Afghanistan have been punished and when they have been kicked out from the country, the war will be ended.
24.30 Taliban Elements of Islamic Shariah Law are applied in a dozen countries, but the strict Taliban system is based on the fact that God’s word is fixed and immutable. It is administered by the Department for Promoting Virtue and Defending Vice.
24.49 SYNC Mullah Mohammed Musa Khan, Taliban Ministerial Secretary It is the rule of Islam that the hand of a thief and the foot of a thief should be cut.
24.57 Execution footage This secretly recorded amateur video supposedly originated in Kandahar, immediately before an execution.
25.04 SYNC Taliban official Hurting another person is unlawful, no matter whether it is physically, psychologically, spiritually, or economically.
25.19 The condemned has his throat slit.
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25.30 Boys’ school/ secretly filmed Taliban (ENGLISH) Q: What schools are open? Boy’s schools and girls’ schools are open?A: Boys’ schools.Q: Do you plan to open girl’s schools?A: Not now! Q: Do you have teachers, women teachers?A: Yes they are in their own houses and the girls are going to their own houses and they study there. In the houses.Q: That’s OK?A: Yes. That’s OK. There’s no need to come out, to the bazaars and to the schools, because they are getting their knowledge in the houses.
26.12 Girls school in house The Taliban tolerate these schools at home, as schooling is permitted for girls under 12. In the early days of their regime, they actually banned women from the streets and bazaars. After protests, they were allowed limited access, but Afghan women remain totally dominated by men.
Kites, children
27.08 School in north This school in the north is not under Taliban control, hence girls are permitted. It’s a rare privilege especially since so few Afghan children, about one child in a hundred, receive an education. Islam is so entrenched in Afghanistan that even in a secular school like this the Koran is revered. The teacher has asked his pupils to read from the holy scriptures.
27.35 'The Koran is the book of God'.We believe in the Holy Book'And we are in a secular school!
27.47 wedding Afghanistan is a deeply traditional country. Wedding celebrations are separate for men and women, even in the north.
28.04 Veiled women And even in Opposition controlled territory few women walk outside without what they consider "proper dress". Here in Masar-i-Sharif in the north, women wear the ‘burqa’, or veil. The campus of the one university in Afghanistan the Taliban couldn’t stop women attending is here. Some students wait until they reach it, before changing into casual clothes.
28.37 students But the Taliban clampdown on women shocked and saddened many who had placed their faith in a new Islamic order.
28.45 SYNC Isabelle Ahmadi, Undergraduate (ENGLISH) At first I thought the Taliban wanted to establish a strong central government in Afghanistan. It was good. But when we saw their treatments against women, that they don’t let them work or even go outside, we are very worried about our future, what happens with us, because we are studying at university now and we wish a good future for ourselves.
29.29 mosque Islam dictates that a woman’s testimony is worth only half that of a man, her inheritance rights are less, and her powers of sexual temptation are to be seen as Satanic. But the Koran also lays down rules for her kindly treatment.
29.46 SYNC Isabelle Ahmadi, Undergraduate (ENGLISH) According to holy Islam religion man and woman have the same rights, and man and woman can both work and study.
29.57 Female doctors Before the Taliban took power, 40% of Afghanistan’s doctors were female. But the Talibs banned women from working in the medical centres and prohibited male doctors from treating women, effectively giving women no access to health care.
30.15 SYNCDr. Wofi, surgeon As a general rule we didn’t have any particular problems after the Taliban arrived. But they did cause difficulties when it came to the women. This was because of their general policy. The Taliban consider the duty of women to be separate from that of men. Some of our doctors therefore couldn’t treat women as freely.
31.02 doctors Some foreign nurses were reluctantly permitted. Later, aid agencies persuaded the Taliban to allow a handful of female doctors to work in rural areas.
31.13 Veiled women But they continue to harass women found breaching even minor decrees.
31.21 SYNC Ross Everson, aid worker(ENGLISH) Just today we had a case where two women were beaten outside this office for wearing sandals.Campbell: Beaten by Taliban?Ross Everson: Beaten by Taliban. They have electric cord which they beat the women with.
31.47 VOX POP woman Women and girls want peace and security. The war is exhausting our children.
32.07 Babies And Afghanistan’s children suffer enough. A quarter of them die before they reach the age of five. Infant mortality here is almost the highest in the world, second only to Sierra Leone.
FADE TO BLACK
32.29 Poppies/ sheep After two decades of war Afghanistan’s shattered economy relied heavily on opium. In the devastated rural communities, with no money for irrigation - the only crop they can afford to grow is poppy, as generations have done. Even though Islam strictly prohibits all drug use, production under the Taliban increased spectacularly, and Afghanistan accounted for 80% of world production of raw opium, used to produce heroin.
Abdul lives at the edge of the poppy fields near Jallallabad.
33.04 SYNC Abdul Waheed What can we do? We are poor people and we cannot survive on other crops.
33.13 Islam-u-dine is only 12. But he has no doubt what he’ll do when he grows up.
33.20 SYNC Islam-u-dine I have to grow opium. There are no schools to go to. What else could I do?
33.33 Praying in poppy fields When they came to power the Taliban claimed to be as pure on drugs as they are on all other Islamic bans, but argued that farmers should be exempt from the ban until the war was over. They also believed the poppy trade was hurting the west. But they went even further. In each area they conquered, the Taliban imposed a ten percent tax on the proceeds of opium sales. Their tolerance of opium helped their military advance. Before the Taliban invaded this area, the local Mujahedeen tried to stop the poppy harvest. The community revolted and welcomed in the Taliban. But then the Taliban made a complete policy reversal.
34.21 In July 2000 they unilaterally banned all poppy cultivation in the areas under their control. Now just wheat is grown here.
34.32 SYNC poppy farmer Poppy, we used to plant poppy in on all this land last year.
34.42 fields Everything indicated that the ban was strictly observed by farmers. In fact in May 2001, the UN reported that poppy cultivation had almost been completely eradicated in the space of one season, with the world’s supply of heroin effectively shrinking by 75%. The Taliban ban on production was set to devastate rural areas which had come to rely on the drug trade.
35.08 SYNC poppy farmer They cannot plant poppy and if they do they will be punished. The Taliban were very tough with those who planted poppy, and even killed four or five of them
35.22 But then the Taliban reversed policy again, telling farmers they could start planting poppy in the event of a US military attack.
35.35 Taliban at prayer Religious fervour won’t feed a nation. Without the poppy, it’s a grim future. Most of Afghanistan’s public servants are already working for the public good, not a salary.
35.47 SYNCAini Dashdi, doctor (ENGLISH) If you want to know about our salary, we have been paid twice in the last two and a half years, and it´s about 10-15 dollars per month.
36.07 SYNC Bazil,Taliban District Governor The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and its offices can only ensure security of the area. But financially we’ve got no money to solve the main common problems of the people.
Sifting grain
FADE TO BLACK
36.44 Helicopter, Northern Alliance weapons Throughout the civil war Pakistan and Iran have been vying for influence in Afghanistan. Iran backs the opposition alliance. The Taliban are Sunni Muslims, the Iranian Islamic regime is Shi’ite. Iran turned against the Taliban after they captured three provinces bordering Iran.
37.10 Men picking up guns These weapons supplied to the Afghan Shi’ite minority of Masar-i-Sharif are said to have come from Iran. The Taliban captured them when they took the town.
37.22 SYNC Talib Commander These weapons did not come to Masar-i-Sharif by themselves. They didn't walk over here. They were carried by vehicle or aircraft.
37.42 map According to Amnesty International, the Taliban massacred thousands of civilians when they took the town of Masar-i-Sharif in 1998. They also shot dead 11 Iranian diplomats. The incident almost sparked war between Iran and Afghanistan.
38.00 prisoners Also captured at Masar - 26 Iranians who claim to be produce truck drivers. The Taliban say they were caught smuggling the weapons.
38.10 SYNC Iranian Driver (ENGLISH) Q: The Taliban say that they find guns in with the food?A: It is not correct. It is wrong. I say I brought only goods and cooking things like them.
38.25 These truck drivers were released, despite calling for revenge for the diplomats’ murder.
38.35 SYNC Iranian prisoner We ask the Islamic Republic of Iran to avenge the blood of those martyrs who were killed in the Masar-i-Sharif Consulate. They have to take revenge by all means on anyone - be they Talib or Pakistani. We were saddened to hear the news and again we request the leaders of Iran to avenge the blood of our martyrs. Chant: God is great!, God is great! Long live Khemeni! (Iranian president)
39.10 CU fruit, men eating In far more sumptuous surroundings - a different group of Iranians - who are very much the Taliban's welcome guests.
39.19 They are a new side in this imbroglio - members of Iran's Sunni minority - Targets they say of relentless persecution by Iran's Shi’ite government. Previously operating in Afghanistan in secret, they take the opportunity to make an announcement to the world: - the aim of their own Taliban-style revolution on Iranian soil.
39.42 SYNC Mohiuddin,Ahl-e-Sunnah-Wal-Jamat Our war is not against the people - not against our country. It is against the system which is hostile towards us - animosity, hostility towards our faith. We have to tell the world about our oppression, about the tyrants of our government.
40.07 It's confirmation of Iran's greatest fears - Taliban ambitions to expand their Islamic new order.
40.14 SYNC Mohiuddin,Ahl-e-Sunnah-Wal-Jamat Other nations have done it. The Afghans did. If we are compelled - and Iran doesn't stop its tyranny, we will be forced to do something in our own defence.
40.33 SYNC Ahmed Rashid, Pakistani Author and Columnist (ENGLISH) If this is so, I think this would be of enormous significance because it would be really telling Tehran that the Taliban are harbouring anti-Iranian groups. It would be very provocative for the Iranians if the Taliban were doing so. It would perhaps give another justification for some kind of Iranian attack or measure taken against the Taliban.
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41.08 SYNC woman with child They beat all the men. The fighting was heavy. We women and children were forced to flee.Q: Did many people die?A: Yes many people died. Those who managed to leave somehow survived. The others were killed.
41.46 photos The Sunni Taliban are also targeting Afghanistan’s Shi’ite Muslim minority, like these ethnic Hazaras. These photos show mass graves being exhumed in a nearby area. The American-based Human Rights Watch reported that 170 civilians were massacred by Taliban forces in January 2001. It seems some civilians were skinned.
41.14 Terrified, people need little persuasion to leave.
41.21 9 months pregnant, this woman walked through snow for two days. Her child did not survive.
42.32 Jalozai tents Some of those who flee the drought, hunger and fighting, end up here. On the outskirts of Pakistan’s border city of Peshawar, “Jalozai” is a transit camp, a plastic sea of eighty thousand people, which sprung up at the start of the year 2000.
42.49 Nazar Mohammad is doing everything he can to keep his children clean. Jalozai has already claimed the life of his daughter.
42.57 SYNC Nazar Mohammad “My father said, ‘Don’t leave us in Afghanistan. Stay with us in spite of the hunger, war and everything.”I told them I want to save my children. I ignored my father’s orders and now I’ve lost my daughter.
43.16 Torkham border post Torkham, the border post on the Pakistani side, has been closed to Afghans on-and-off since the end of 2000. Yet hundreds of thousands have crossed the mountainous border by foot to seek refuge since then.
43.31 tents Pakistan still harbours over 2 million Afghans, the world´s largest refugee problem, but UN support has been cut back to barely nothing compared to during the Soviet war. Pakistan is no longer able to provide for even the basic upkeep of the refugees, and so refuses to let them be registered. Afghan refugees are close to the bottom of this society. Their situation is desperate. Most have been here for months without any support, except for simple plastic sheeting.
44.02 SYNC Wakil, refugee In the day the heat kills us and at night the cold. We have no shelter and no proper drinking water. We lack medical care and medicine and we don´t have proper toilets.
44.20 Every day diseases like measles cause children to die. Stomach diseases are common and private hand-outs of food have caused riots.
44.30 VOX POP man This is how much rice we have had...
44.34 VOX POP woman Apart from this I have received nothing.
44.44 refugees A million optimistic refugees came home from the camps in Pakistan when the Taliban came to power. But many have since gone back. This endless ebb and flow of refugees will continue, in turn creating new recruits for the swelling Taliban ranks.
45.13 SYNC Sami-ul-Haq We now have Taliban from Arab countries, the Far East - Thailand etc. Central Asia also, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan - They are also seeking Islam. They were not allowed to read the Koran for 100 to 150 years.
45.33 Taliban Online An international brotherhood, united by a willingness to use all means, military and others, to impose Koranic law.
45.47 SYNC Mullah Mohammed Musa Khan, Taliban Ministerial Secretary (ENGLISH) Our holy custom is the Shariah, and we will keep these customs under the frame of the Shariah. No custom will be allowed without the Islamic culture. Nothing will be allowed. All the customs and all the cultures will be going in the frame of the holy religion of Islam.
Fluttering videotape
46.23 SYNC Rachel TaprellM.E.R.L.I.N. (ENGLISH) The feeling you get from people is that they are generally happy that the Taliban have come. Prior to the Taliban there was fighting on the streets, most people were armed, people didn’t have any freedom.
46.40 Covered women in market But the freedom felt when the Taliban first came to power, has long since evaporated.
46.54 SYNC Ahmed Rashid, Pakistani Author and Columnist (ENGLISH) Well, I think for the region, the Taliban phenomenon has already proved disastrous. It has completely polarised the region. On one side you have Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, who have been backing the Taliban. On the other side, you have everyone else - India, Iran, Turkey, China, Russia, the Central Asian states who are very much not just against Taliban, but have publicly now voiced their disapproval of Pakistani and Saudi support for the Taliban.
47.23 Taliban on tanks The Taliban regime may be internationally shunned, but there is more support for its anachronistic interpretation of Islam than originally meets the eye. It’s likely that if the Taliban were squeezed out of existence, some other Muslim fundamentalist group would mop up its support base.
47.46 SYNC Anders Fänge, Director, Swedish Committee. for Afghanistan (ENGLISH) People in the West are so negative to the Taliban, so that anything which is bad for the Taliban, that is good. But one has to ask the question, what will happen if the Taliban implodes, if the Taliban collapses. The answer to that is most presumably that it will be complete and total chaos in Afghanistan. The fighting will continue and of course this has not made it easier for us who are working with saving lives and working for the development of the country.
Building walls
48.38 SYNC Jallal Atmar, doctor (ENGLISH) The problem with Afghanistan is so complicated and there are many internal and external forces interested in Afghanistan and they do anything according to their own wish and according to their own benefit. Therefore for the present I am not so hopeful. Otherwise if the United Nations does something about the people of Afghanistan, and show some type of sympathy ... Otherwise I am not so sure the future won’t be as dark as it was in the past.
49.12 Taliban on tanks Indeed the future may be dark, because until the world’s disaffected Muslims are brought into global politics and the global economy, we will always have groups like the Taliban to fear.
49.45 ENDS
CREDITS – STATE OF THE TALIB
Production Assistant
Kate Benyon-Tinker
Production Manager
Joanna Turner
Researcher
Sam Goss
Editor
Sam Bailey
Director
Keely Purdue
Executive Producer
Mark Stucke
A Journeyman Pictures Production