Original subtitles

(slow dramatic music) (muffled shouting)

(horse neighs)

(water splashes) (men shout)

I was in the mountains of Torkestan.

The roads were controlled by the Soviets.

(tank hums)

I went with my donkey.

It was new for me going not by a car but with a donkey.

(donkey brays) (water rushes)

(hooves clop)

Bombardment started, and I was hiding myself.

I saw and said, "Oh my goodness, like flying dragons."

The rows of the planes. I just rushed into cave.

I stayed there five or 10 minutes, lot of sound,

and then quiet, silent totally.

And then lot of shouting, crying,

kind of thing that I couldn't believe it.

I saw that my donkey, my donkey, my donkey was wounded.

And that I never forget.

My donkey was dying.

The eye was full of blood,

and I sat there as he was talking to me.

"Why you fight?

What's wrong with you? Who you are?

Have you ever seen a donkey burning the house

of another donkey?

No."

(flies buzz)

The war had started. Oh gosh, what a war.

(gunshots blast)

(explosion booms)

(children's voices echo)

(soft dramatic music) (wind blows)

(children laugh and shout)

(muffled singing)

On a cold winter day in December 1979,

the Soviet army entered Afghanistan.

(tanks hum)

The country was on the brink of civil war.

(crowd applauds)

Thousands of people were taking to the streets

to protest the Afghan communist regime that had seized power

with a violent coup a year and a half earlier.

(muffled chatter)

After months of riots and repression,

the Soviet Union sent troops to support the Afghan allies

and bring the situation under control.

Afghanistan had to remain a socialist state.

(audience cheers and applauds)

(bell dings)

(speaks in foreign language)

(upbeat military music plays in distance)

(footsteps march)

(muffled chatter) (footsteps shuffle)

(muffled chatter) (soft tense music)

Soviet came to support this regime, this brutal regime.

So how can you support an invasion

which support the brutal regime?

(bell dings)

I've been a student in the medical faculty,

and I was part of the resistance.

We were distributing night letters.

We were writing on the wall during the night

that, "Russian, get out of our country," and so on

to encourage people to resist against the invasion

and against the regime.

The fight against the godless Soviets

united both peasants in the countryside

and members of the elite.

(soft tense music) (bell dings)

Right in the beginning in my life,

living amongst my people, I knew that we were strong Muslims

and still we are, but not Islamist, but not fanatic.

But whenever there was an invasion,

people were mobilized around word of jihad.

Means fight for freedom.

(wind blows) (flag rattles)

I thought, "The Russians, they don't have any belief.

They're godless.

I should not be with communists,

and I should be with my people."

And I joined the war.

(footsteps shuffle) (muffled speaking)

The Islamists had led the protests

against the communist government.

After the Soviet invasion,

they turned the resistance into a jihad.

(tense music)

They called themselves the mujahideen, holy warriors.

(fire crackles) (muffled chatter)

Mujahideen and ready to die rather

than submit to the domination of the Russians.

The Afghans feel very strong,

but even if we don't have more chance,

but it's still, we will fight to the last drop.

Now, many of the men here are smiling

and cheering and singing songs.

How many of them are going to survive?

Well, we can't say. Maybe none of them survive.

But that's what we have decided that we

will (muffled speaking) we will make it.

(wind howls) (soft dramatic music)

The bravery of the mujahideen inspired people

across the country.

The myth of the freedom fighters born.

(bell dings)

I remember when I become teenager,

one of my dream was that we will go

and we will distribute water to the freedom fighters.

At the time, I had no knowledge about why they're fighting,

how was the fight, only that was my dream

that I could go and I could help them.

(footsteps shuffle)

Can these largely illiterate

and totally undisciplined tribesmen

actually defeat the military might of the Russian forces?

The mujahideen were poorly equipped

and lacked modern weapons.

They were playing David to the Soviet Army's Goliath.

(tools tap metal)

When war comes to a place, it often happens

that one man's misery becomes another man's profit.

Well, here in Darra on the northwest frontier,

they do a very profitably in death,

for this is the street of a thousand gunsmiths.

(muffled chatter)

With very little persuasion,

you can get a rundown of the stock in Mr. Haji's shop.

It's a straddler. Yeah. How much is that?

(woman speaks in foreign language)

1,600 rupees.

1,600 rupees? Yes.

Shooting (indistinct).

(muffled chatter) (soft dramatic music)

We are not being held with arms.

We are buying our guns and ammunition from Darra

with our own money, and no one has helped us with this.

Otherwise, we could finish the war in 20 days.

When you stand and have a dream,

you win because you have a hope.

When you have a hope, you live.

If you don't have a hope, you die every minute.

I said, "Let us go to the war,"

because they have everything.

In our hand, what we have? A stone. (laughs)

Can you fight with a stone? Yes.

Can you win it? Yes.

How long it will take? I don't know.

That's why I need help.

(tense dramatic music) (traffic hums)

Help was quickly found.

In the logic of the Cold War

where the enemy of my enemy is my friend,

the Afghan conflict was a welcome opportunity

for the United States.

(bell dings)

Our first reaction to the Soviet invasion,

it was a great shock because some in the CIA thought,

"This is really not a good idea

from even the Soviet point of view, but they still went in."

This invasion is an extremely serious threat to peace.

A Soviet-occupied Afghanistan is a stepping stone

to possible control over much of the world's oil supplies.

The US reaction

to the Soviet invasion was swift,

(door shuts)

articulated by then national security advisor Brzezinski.

I wrote to the president on the day after the invasion

in a memorandum in which I outlined what we ought to do,

and the key sentence in it was,

"We now have a historic chance

to give the Soviet Union its Vietnam."

Brzezinski was a brilliant guy.

He was sent out to Pakistan to reach a bargain,

which would allow us to operate on their soil

to provide assistance to the Afghan resistance,

the mujahideen.

(footsteps shuffle) (muffled chatter)

In Pakistan,

Brzezinski made a historic speech to the mujahideen.

Well, that land over there is yours.

You'll go back to it one day because your fight

will prevail, and you'll have your homes,

your mosques back again because you're cause is right

and God is on your side.

Here's the national security advisor.

It showed that America was back in business,

and from there on, we moved into action,

we, the CIA, and never let up.

(soft tense music) (ammunition clinks)

So we started with maybe, what,

10, 15, $20 million to buy a few guns,

and it kept getting more and more,

another 20 million, another 100 million.

But it was still peanuts.

That's not a lot of money,

but we were beginning to make a difference.

(muffled chatter)

Have you bought many guns Yes.

for Afghanistan? Yes, many gun.

How many? About 30,000.

30,000? Yes.

That's a lot of rupees.

Where's the money come from?

This come America. From America.

Yes.

(gunshots blast) (dramatic music)

The nearest Pakistani city

to Kabul and the Afghan border is Peshawar.

After the Soviet occupation,

Afghanistan's mujahideen claimed Peshawar

as their capital in exile.

This is just one of countless headquarters

that have sprung up in Peshawar.

You can't escape the atmosphere of Peshawar.

If anything describes it,

it's the bar scene in the movie "Star Wars."

Everybody is there. The mujahideen are there.

KGB spies are there. CIA's there.

Every other intelligence service, the good,

the bad, and the ugly, everybody is there.

Peshawar became a hub for the resistance,

but the mujahideen were not united.

Divided along ethnic lines,

seven different factions competed

for weapons coming from abroad.

That way we were just now is just one rebel organization.

Here 40 yards down the road is another.

(footsteps shuffle)

(bell dings)

I arrived a few days after the Soviet invasion.

And if you wanted to cover the Afghan story,

you had to go to Peshawar.

(man speaks in foreign language)

Most of the journalists, including myself,

were very naive in the beginning.

You'd go talk to these political leaders

who immediately began telling you these very tall tales

about what they'd achieved.

They had attacked a convoy of Soviets.

They'd killed so-and-so many hundred, and it was all lies.

(tense jaunty music) (muffled speaking)

In Peshawar,

incidents do tend to become exaggerated.

If all the claims of the Islamic guerrillas were tutted up

and almost the entire Soviet force

of over 100,00 men would've been destroyed.

If you destroy 100 tanks,

if it's not in the media, nothing has happened.

Then I rush to Pakistan back,

and I tried to find out the media,

exaggerating also some time to attract 'em.

"We destroyed 25 tanks," which we had destroyed one.

(laughs) Really.

"We killed 100 Russians." Maybe two.

(birds chirp)

How any Soviet soldiers

has (indistinct) killed?

(speaks in foreign language)

Almost 800 persons.

And how many weapons have they captured?

10,000 in number.

10,000 rifles? Yeah, rifles.

These political leaders realize the more they

were cited on VOA or the BBC,

the more support they would get from the Americans,

from the CIA, and so on.

So it was very, very important for them to have this PR.

(muffled chatter)

Each of those party leaders

had their own strange combination of good and evil,

but the point was to defeat the Soviet Union.

(dramatic music) (wind blows)

(bell dings)

(speaks in foreign language)

(muffled chatter)

(tense music) (muffled chatter)

The Soviets helped the Afghan government

not only with troops and weapons

but with huge investments

to support development of the country.

Kabul began to look like a socialist capital.

Women gained near equal rights to men.

(truck hums)

Some even joined the fight against the mujahideen.

(gunshots blast)

(muffled chatter)

The government had their own asylum for women,

and they encourage more women to come

and sing on the stages.

They were talking about more women's freedom,

but unfortunately from the mujahideen side,

there was nothing for women except beating them up

and I shouldn't have a job and should not work,

should not do anything.

When the government was saying,

"Education for women," they said, "No education.

Freedom for women? No freedom for women."

So it was a woman actually was used

as a political tool by both sides.

(wind blows) (flagpole rattles)

The Soviet army plan to restore order

in Afghanistan without major fighting,

but as it faced a growing resistance in the mountains,

a short mission turned into an endless war.

(soft upbeat guitar music)

(man sings in foreign language)

(vehicle rumbles)

(speaks in foreign language) (tense music)

(muffled shouting) (gunshots blast)

(muffled chatter)

(speaks in foreign language)

(tank rumbles)

(gunshots blast)

(tank rumbles)

(tank rumbles)

(speaks in foreign language)

(soft dramatic piano music) (helicopters whir overhead)

(gunshots blast)

Over 100,000 Soviet troops

are stationed in Afghanistan.

They have modern equipment, modern weapons,

and modern means of transportation.

But they can do little against the ambushes

of the Afghan guerrilla.

On the road, the enemy watches the Soviet convoys

and prepares the trap.

The first and last vehicles are rocketed and set on fire.

When the mujahideen's assault begins,

the Soviet soldiers realize they are helpless.

The enemy will not take prisoners.

(fire roars)

(speaks in foreign language)

(tank hums)

The guerrilla tactics

of the mujahideen proved successful,

and one of their most skilled commanders

was about to become a legend.

In 1981, I was approached by Masoud Khalili

who has been talking with me

about doing this trip into Afghanistan.

And he said, "You've gotta go up there

because there's this extraordinary Afghan commander

called Ahmad Shah Massoud."

And he said, "That would be a great story for you,

and also the French doctors are working up there with him."

(soft rhythmic music)

(bell dings)

(birds chirp) (muffled chatter)

(speaks in foreign language)

(muffled chatter)

(men speak in foreign language)

You obviously couldn't take a bus

or fly because occupied country,

so we had to walk and go take horses with us.

(speaks in foreign language) (muffled chatter)

And then you came to the foot

of these 5,000-meter-high mountain passes,

and you had to walk up them.

(muffled shouting) (hooves clop)

It took hours for the course caravans to get up,

and I kept thinking, "I'm in the 19th century here."

(Juliette speaks in foreign language)

I remember getting to the top,

and I could see probably 100 kilometers into the Hindu Kush,

these mountains, snow-topped mountains

and in all directions, and I just thought,

"Afghanistan, this is it."

(wind blows)

(speaks in foreign language)

(hay rustles)

(soft jaunty music)

When we actually got to the Panjshir valley,

we got word that we had to make this guy, Massoud.

And suddenly, Massoud came with three or four men,

all with Kalashnikovs, and I burst out laughing

because he looked exactly like Bob Dylan.

(speaks in foreign language) (soft music)

(speaks in foreign language)

(speaks in foreign language)

Ahmad Shah Massoud,

perhaps the most gifted guerrilla leader

in the whole of Afghanistan.

Although he's only one of five

or six major Afghan resistance leaders,

he's the most glamorous, the most successful,

and the best known.

I was always proud to be his friend.

He was a good human being, and always, he had a plan.

(speaks in foreign language)

Enemies about 300 people.

He was smart enough to understand his people

and trust his people.

Leadership is very important in a guerrilla warfare.

He has become and proved

to be a charismatic guerrilla leader

of Afghans inside Afghanistan.

(Ahmad speaks in foreign language)

We never seen his photo,

but everybody was talking about how brave he is.

He's alone, and he's climbing in the mountains,

killing the Russians.

(speaks in foreign language)

(men shout in foreign language)

(guns blast)

(explosion booms) (muffled shouting)

(tense ethereal discordant music)

"A revolution eats its own children," they say.

Competition for money, weapons,

and glory generated conflict between mujahideen commanders.

The most heated rivalry was between Massoud

and Hekmatyar, the powerful Islamist leader.

In Afghanistan, the faithful mujahideen

are fighting to establish a pure Islamic government,

and they are selflessly offering their lives,

taking up arms in order to establish a foundation

for the shariah of Islam and the fundamental Islamic way.

In the effort to provide assistance to the Afghan groups,

people took the easy route and defined them

as fundamentalists and the moderates.

After I got there, I thought, "Who thought that up?"

They were all pretty fundamental in what they

were going to do about this Soviet invasion.

If Massoud was a darling of the French and the British,

then Hekmatyar was misunderstood mostly in the West.

They just think he's a beast and evil,

but he's probably among the most brilliant

in a dark sense of all the mujahideen leaders.

(muffled shouting)

Was he effective? Yeah, yeah, he was.

I was able to pay some of his very close commanders.

He readily accepted the assistance,

but he was very resistant to our involvement

(man shouts in foreign language)

(men shout)

(man shouts in foreign language)

(men shout) (speaks in foreign language)

(dark brooding music) (bell dings)

(crickets chirp) (tense music)

(gunshots blast)

The tensions between mujahideen commanders

escalated over the years and had a devastating impact.

(muffled shouting)

I can't say that we were 100% right.

This distance between Massoud and Hekmatyar started,

and it became more and more deeper and deeper

in such a ways that even some

of our commanders fought against inside Afghanistan

while we were fighting against the Soviets,

and the people hated both of us.

(water splashes) (upbeat music)

(men laugh) (pool balls clatter)

(speaks in foreign language)

(tank rumbles) (soft dramatic music)

(man speaks in foreign language)

(car horns honk)

(car horns honk)

(speaks in foreign language)

(people scream)

(reporter speaks in foreign language)

(reporter speaks in foreign language)

(muffled speaking)

(siren wails)

I decided to leave Kabul because I was not feeling safe.

Just took my son, and I went with a stethoscope

with the BP apparatus

and one current internal medicine book.

So I decided to move to Pakistan.

(tank rumbles) (dark brooding music)

By 1985, after six years of combat,

it became clear that the Soviet army was stuck

in stalemate while the resistance kept growing.

(muffled speaking) (rocket whooshes)

(speaks in foreign language)

(cow bells jangle)

(speaks in foreign language)

(tank rumbles)

(gunshots blast)

(vehicle rumbles)

(helicopter blades whir) (soft dramatic music)

(speaks in foreign language)

(weapon fires) (helicopter blades whir)

(weapon fires)

(man speaks in foreign language)

(man speaks in foreign language)

(helicopter blades whir)

(speaks in foreign language) (gunshots blast)

(tank fires)

(speaks in foreign language)

(gunshots blast)

(explosion booms) (speaks in foreign language)

(high-pitched ringing echoes)

(muffled speaking) (gunshots blast)

(dramatic music) (speaks in foreign language)

(speaks in foreign language) (weapon fires)

(speaks in foreign language)

(gunshots blast)

(muffled shouting)

(explosion booms)

(wind blows)

(soft dramatic music)

More than a million people died in that war.

More than 200,000 were wounded and maimed

with no leg, no hand, and thousands become refugees

in front of me going to another country.

The sprawling refugee camps

on the Pakistani side of the border

provide indisputable evidence of the continuing crisis.

Since the Soviet invasion

of Afghanistan in 1979, nearly three million Afghans

have poured across Pakistan's long unguarded border.

(muffled chatter)

(speaks in foreign language)

(man speaks in foreign language)

(Juliette speaks in foreign language)

(muffled chatter)

(speaks in foreign language)

(women speak in foreign language)

(speaks in foreign language)

(speaks in foreign language)

(machine hums)

(muffled chatter) (hooves clop)

I talked to a lot of refugees coming out,

making their way toward Pakistan,

and they'd be walking up this very,

very difficult mountain pass, children forced to walk,

men carrying their kids.

It was the most pathetic sight.

(wind blows)

And they would sleep in the mountain passes overnight,

and, of course, they would die of exposures,

and that's where you saw what impact of war is.

You would always see grave upon grave

upon grave of people who died.

(soft dramatic music) (footsteps crunch in snow)

Life is (muffled speaking) Afghanistan.

I have these kids (muffled speaking)

our lovely country to go to the Pakistan

to join with our brother and Muslim brother.

Even I personally lived through all these things,

and I sometime, when I think that how much capacity you

as a human have, how much resilience you can build,

how much capacity you would have to digest all this.

And I think we should burst.

We should turn to pieces with all these pain.

(muffled shouting)

(woman screams in foreign language)

When Afghanistan was under the occupation of the Soviets,

the news of human suffering went to the Muslim wars.

There were boys who wanted to come

and help Afghan war against the Soviets.

(dramatic music) (feet march)

My age was 23, 24 years in that time.

I was living in the west of Algeria.

I read that Afghanistan was occupied by Soviet Red Army

and Muslims should help their brothers

in Afghanistan to liberate their land.

Afghanistan became very famous in the Arab world,

and then everyone started thinking how to join,

how to help, how to go.

I first started coming across Arabs in Peshawar.

When you had these rather wealthy Saudis

would turn up or from the Emirates,

and they literally had suitcases with them full of money.

It wasn't military in the early days. It was humanitarian.

It was clinics, schools, and mosques, primarily mosques,

and even bin Laden, he began as a humanitarian.

I found Osama bin Laden active full time in Peshawar.

I remember two guest houses to welcome the Arabs

when they come before they send them inside Afghanistan.

Osama bin Laden used to give the money for this rent,

expenditure, one small car to bring the shopping,

telephone for the bills, this,

and he continued doing like that till late '87.

(explosion booms) (muffled speaking)

In Peshawar,

the Arabs were reaching out to Afghan refugees,

recruiting from the youngest among them.

(man sings prayer in foreign language)

All these Arabs who were involved, I seen it.

They trained them that to be that extreme.

In all the camps they built madrasas,

the religious schools, so called.

The Afghan families give the male children

to these madrasas to be educated to be fated.

Then they will keep over there to segregate them,

to train them, to brainwash them.

(muffled chatter)

They were the one who become Taliban.

No education, no formal education.

(boy shouts in foreign language)

(muffled shouting in foreign language)

(speaks in foreign language) (gunshots blast in distance)

People called some of them fanatics.

Everybody has a fanatic somewhere deep inside them.

If you bring in 120,000 Soviet troops

and kill a million people and wound a million and a half

and drive five million into exile,

you might get a little fanatic.

(speaks in foreign language)

(laughs)

Politics is always dirty,

and the countries who are involved,

they choose the most conservative group of people

and train them and make them monsters just

to get rid of USSR.

(muffled shouting) (weapons fire)

(gunshots blast) (explosions boom)

(speaks in foreign language) (soft dramatic music)

(hammer taps)

(wind blows)

In 1986, Moscow admitted that it was impossible

to win against the gorilla force that had the support

of the population and was supplied

by the west and the Arab world.

(muffled chatter)

(speaks in foreign language)

(audience cheers and applauds)

It was the new Soviet leader,

Mikhail Gorbachev, who finally sought a way

out of the Afghan trap.

(speaks in foreign language)

For US President Ronald Reagan,

the USSR was the evil empire.

In the struggles of the Soviet Army,

Reagan saw an opportunity to give the enemy a final blow.

American support of the Afghan freedom fighters escalated.

When we support the Afghan people,

we become caught up in and ennobled

by their struggle for freedom.

Isn't that what America has always stood for

and what we should stand for in 1986 and beyond?

Up to that point, I believe US policy

was to bleed the Soviets, to fight to the last Afghan.

And Ronald Reagan, who had the sense of morality

of right and wrong things like that,

they decided they weren't going

to fight to the last Afghan anymore.

They were gonna give 'em whatever they needed to win.

The head of CIA said,

"I'm gonna give you a billion dollars this year.

Do you think that's enough?"

Well, how would I know what a billion dollars,

whether it was enough or not?

I didn't know it. I said, "Let me try."

And so CIA then began to really move on the Afghan thing.

It was, "Patience my ass.

Let's get out there and shoot some Russians."

(helicopters hum) (dramatic music)

The mujahideen had been slaughtered by Soviet gunships

and nothing we were able to give them

would work effectively.

So we said, "You can have stinger missiles."

(muffled shouting) (helicopter blades whir)

Stingers was one of the most effective anti-air missile.

It was light. It was moveable, not difficult to learn.

Put on your shoulder, and the rocket goes,

and the plane comes down.

(missile fires)

By the first shot, we told the Russians,

"You are no longer the king of the air.

We can stop you,"

and that was the beginning of their defeat.

(fire roars) (muffled chatter)

As the Soviets negotiated their withdrawal,

life in Kabul became unbearable.

The mujahideen had almost sieged the city.

Fuel and food became scarce, and more people wanted to flee.

(muffled shouting)

(soft dramatic music)

The Soviet Union today formally agreed

to pull its troops out of Afghanistan.

(muffled chatter)

(speaks in foreign language)

Want to fight of war?

Be on the side of the resistance and you'll always win.

They don't lose.

What did the CIA effort cost over a 10-year period

from December 1979 to February 1989?

Five or $6 billion?

Five or $6 billion is, what, a month of our efforts

in Afghanistan today, one month with no chance of winning.

One month.

In 1989, the Soviet expedition

into Afghanistan finally came to an end.

(footsteps march)

10 years after its start, the communist government

in Kabul was left alone to deal

with a divided nation and an economy in tatters.

(tank rumbles and creaks) (soft dramatic music)

The war left 15,000 dead on the Soviet side

and an estimated one million Afghan victims.

(audience applauds)

But the Soviet withdrawal

would not end the war in Afghanistan.

(muffled shouting) (speaks in foreign language)

(tanks rumble) (muffled shouting)

Against all odds,

the mujahideen resisted the mighty Soviet Army

for 10 long years.

Now they got ready to overrun the communist government

in Kabul, but the conflicts between the commanders

would open the next dark chapter in the country's history.

(gates groan and creak) (vehicle rumbles)

The day I saw the Soviet tanks leaving Afghanistan,

the back of the tanks going out of Afghanistan,

that was a day that I indeed thought

that what we dreamed now comes true.

But immediately I felt in between hope and fear.

(tanks rumble) (people cheer)

We saw the last Soviet soldier leave the country.

We were been like, "Oh God, finally, finally.

They left and we win the war."

This is the chapter close, and then new chapter

will start but the good one.

We feel so free.

It's like bring back, and this is the country back,

(slow dramatic music)

but lots of bad things happen.

It was not the end of the journey of the Afghan people.

(wings flap) (children laugh and play)

(speaks in foreign language)

(wind blows) (soft dramatic music)