PILOT 1: We are currently 22.000 feet above the ground, and up here only really heavy artillery would be able to hit us, if they had any interest. But we have been told that in some of the places we’ve flown over, where there have been UN people standing on the ground, that some of the local people on the ground had been standing there, shooting at us with their rifles, but their bullets don’t reach more than halfway to the plane.

 

PILOT 2: We often sit here and tell each other that, if we landed on the ground here, these people would never have seen an airplane before. Over and over, we wonder about how people manage to live in some of the places that we can see from high above, out of the window. But evidently, they can. They’re a pretty tough people.

 

MAN IN CAR: But showing Afghanistan in this day and age is no easy task. Authorities have prohibited us from filming people. No one must be filmed, not even animals. It is strictly forbidden to film any of God´s creations.

 

Tape: According to Islam, and according to our society, they are not allowed.

But why?

Because it is in Islamic rule, there is no question of why. In Islamic society nothing is allowed, such as television, such as ties, such as [Anya Biracardi, Biracardos] to play.

 

00:00:03,115

This is the tradition of Pashtuns that women stay home and take care of the household chores while men work in the field.

 

00:00:19,112

They take care of the children, stitch clothes for us, cook, they manage the household chores and we the men take care of everything outside.

 

Do you think that the women would want to work in the fields and maybe even go to school?

00:00:38,666

No.

 

00:00:39,965

Why not?

00:00:41,803

They are not used to it.

 

And you think that it is better to go on this way?

 

00:00:45,234

The Islam does not allow that.

 

 

What about the girls, would they go to school?

 

00:00:55,594

No.

 

00:01:05,079

No, the people do not want them to go to school.

00:01:05,079

Specially the people in the villages.

 

00:01:10,780

This is considered a taboo among Pashtuns if their women go to school.

 

00:01:14,864

We don’t like this.

 

00:01:25,448

Do not look at us.

 

00:01:30,568

Yes, people seed opium and we also do it

 

00:01:35,895

but the problem is that if we are provided help financially, we will stop opium production otherwise the opium production cannot be stopped without anything else

 

00:01:40,961

The Taliban have sympathized with us because we are poor people and we cannot make a living with anything other than this.

 

 

-I joined them at Kandahar, and still now I am with them, and I am working as a secretary of Defence Minister.

-And what was the reason why you chose to join the Taliban?

-Because Islam has [...] when other people are taking your country, you have to join the war. You participate in the war. 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 taken out from the country, then the war will be ended.

 

00:01:48,852

Can you please take some of my bullets in your car with you?

 

No no, don’t chuck that one

 

00:02:08,749

This was a one-way fire.

 

00:02:09,815

This was not a fight.

 

00:02:10,717

We have seen a lot of fighting in Afghanistan and that is why I know this was a one-sided fire.

 

00:02:15,320

And after half an hour, the firing intensified and most of the people on the road, children, younger, older, men and women were killed.

 

00:02:27,860

The bodies were hurt. Dogs had eaten them and only after 3 days we were allowed to collect the bodies.

 

00:02:46,788

Manan Niazi would announce on the radio “If you do not prove you’re honest to the Hazara, we will teach you a lesson.

 

00:02:53,776

We will kill you all, men and women, either convert to Islam or die.

 

They held different customs, I agree, but the holy custom that is Sharia, we will keep all of the customs under the frame of Sharia, no custom will be allowed without Islamic culture. Nothing will be allowed. All the cultures and all the customs will be within the frame of the religion of Islam.

 

INTERVIEWER: What makes a Danish person want to fly over Afghanistan?

 

PILOT 2: It´s a good job, it’s a challenge, it’s generally considered to be a formative experience. It’s also just exciting to be able to see some of the world, and then we also get the added bonus of actually being able to help some people out here.

 

INTERVIEWER: Isn’t it risky to fly over Afghanistan?

 

PILOT 1: No, I don’t think so. The safety net that the UN provides us with makes it so that both parties have permitted us to fly over certain areas within scheduled time frames. Within any given time frame, we have about an hour to make it to the airport.

 

INTERVIEWER: So, does that mean that the parties are more or less having a ceasefire while you’re in the air?

 

Pilot 1: You could say that, you could say that. Only on rare occasion is there an actual war going on when we arrive at an airport. This time, there is probably a bit of action going on in Kabul, but nothing is going to happen in the time interval that we’ve been given.

 

WOMAN: In March, a decree came that proclaimed that foreign women should not drive cars. So, we sat next to the chauffeur in the passenger seat. Exactly one and a half months later, the next decree came. If the driver is Afghani, foreign women are not allowed to sit in the front seat, they have to sit in the backseat. And then the next one came, which meant that we could no longer have Afghani men sitting next to us in the backseat.

 

INTERVIEWER: So, when you stroll down the street, do you feel a sense of hostility towards you?

 

WOMAN? I love that you say that I’m “strolling” down the street. That’s one of the things I never do. I am actually a prisoner in a gilded cage. I only have the place where I live, the delegation, which is the place where the international branch of Red Cross have all their offices, and then I have the hospital with which I am affiliated. You’re not allowed to discriminate between different sections of the population, and there are actually quite a few different population groups here in the country. Some are considered to be superior to others. Likewise, we have another big issue revolving around the role of men and women, specifically gender discrimination, which means I´m always on guard. When I arrived back in November, they had gotten this idea of sending all the women to live in the same place here in Kabul. The place had no running water, no electricity, nothing worked, and there were no doctors. This was regarded as unacceptable within the international community.

 

00:03:08,221

The judge says that the order of Allah should prevail.

 

A simple person cannot cut a head, they don’t know the way of cutting the head, they are poor, they see the doctors to cut the head. When that person commits a crime, it is the rule of Islam that the hand of a thief and the […] should be cut.

 

WOMAN: Sometimes I tell myself, “I should go home. I should not put up with all this. We should all boycott them. Let the country collapse, and then maybe they’ll slowly build themselves up again, all by themselves”. But on the other hand, we have given them some expectations, and I don’t have the consciousness to let them down, to leave them in their own mess, so to speak. I’m starting to believe that with our presence, we can help minority groups and also affect the government.

 

00:03:15,232

Are you happy that the Taliban are here?

 

00:03:20,382

What they are doing is not right.

 

00:03:25,217

The Taliban’s are mostly against this

 

 

MAN: When the Taliban took over East Afghanistan about one and a half years ago, we were in the process of building six schools. Two for girls and four for boy. But it was apparent to us that in those areas, the Taliban-movement would not allow the girls´ schools to have any girls in them. That was clear to us. So, then we decided to cease construction of the school, because we had decided that our limits had been reached. But because we also feel that education is so important in Afghanistan, we started to look elsewhere for places where girls were actually being educated.

 

We have made a deal with the local authorities, agreeing that there will be girls in those schools. If that doesn’t work, we’ll call it quits.