We are living through turbulent decades in this 21st century. These bellicose twenties perhaps began on August 30, 2021, when the United States hurriedly withdrew its last soldiers from Afghanistan, so much so that it left that image of desperate people trying to cling to the fuselage of the plane. That was humiliating for the supposed leader of the free world. Not even three years ago, but so many things have happened in between that they have become long.
It is very surprising to come across Madrilenians around the world, on Telemadrid, with an episode recorded in Kabul. Oh, right, it’s from 2012 and they renew it like so many others after the premiere episode every Saturday night. This moves away from the tone of the veteran program about successful emigrants who show us their mansions and take us around expensive stores and sophisticated cafes. We see the complete opposite, a descent into the hells of interwar Kabul, a decade after the landing of the allies and a decade before the return to power of the Taliban. Western forces had ousted the Islamists from power, were trying to build a state and were trying to make it seem like they controlled the country when, in truth, they only controlled part of the center of Kabul, a fortified area surrounded by people they do not trust. , which they presume hostile.
The first Madrid residents visited by the reporter, Beatriz Vigil, They are a steward and a stewardess, recruited by local airlines, who leave you wondering if they knew exactly what they were getting into. The others are related to international forces: a soldier, a diplomat and a national police officer. Today’s viewer sees that report knowing that those interviewed will get out of there sooner or later. This time they don’t ask them what they miss more, the family or the beer and ham; Nor if they are going to return to Madrid one day: it is assumed that they will. The conversations are mainly about survival in an inhospitable environment, about the paranoia of distrusting everyone. Two dangers lurk everywhere: kidnapping and attack.
The diplomat and the soldier are frank in explaining that they almost never leave their well-guarded compounds, the embassy and the barracks, respectively. If they go outside it is out of obligation, in the armored car and with bulletproof vests. In the case of the soldier, he does not take the weapon out of his hands while he watches through the windows of his vehicle. The one at the embassy shows its facilities: a patio with a basket, a foosball table, a gym treadmill to walk without stepping on the street. “We are monks. We could call this the Kabul Charterhouse,” he says. In 2015, that diplomatic headquarters suffered a bloody attack in which two Spanish soldiers, five Afghans and four attackers died.
We see the flight attendants walking through dusty markets, but they quickly confess that they live with other Westerners in walled communities and with armed guards on the roofs. The policeman is the most intrepid: he goes with the reporter to a religious ritual in which Shiite children whip each other’s backs. They visit a women’s prison full of children. And they witness a spectacle called buzkashi, in which people on horses play with the corpse of a decapitated animal. Vigil realizes that she is the only woman among hundreds of attendees. In a shopping mall, she tries on the burqa, and we see from the camera what the world looks like (very badly) through that mesh of fabric. She overwhelms him, no wonder. She asks if she could walk with the burqa down the street, but they tell her that the locals would immediately detect a Westerner in disguise, because of her movements, and that perhaps they would not take it well.
You understand the fiasco of the reconstruction of Afghanistan, that the Taliban had not been defeated, that these suffering people would once again fall under the yoke of fanaticism. No one will say that they didn’t see it coming.
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