Former student of Idhec, former collaborator of Raymond Depardon, François Margolin is a director, producer and screenwriter. He traveled to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan for six weeks, prior to 2001, to shoot a documentary on the daily life of the inhabitants.
"
History always repeats itself twice: the first as a tragedy, the second as a farce
" wrote Marx in 1852 in
Louis Bonaparte's Le 18 Brumaire
. As on many other subjects, he was wrong. What is happening today in Afghanistan is certainly a repetition but of one and the same tragedy. Twenty years apart.
I had the chance - so to speak - to go for six weeks, in 2000, to the Ttliban, when they were already in power, in what was then called the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. I was going there to shoot a documentary - more or less clandestinely - on what daily life was like under their regime and to understand how they justified producing 85% of the world's opium, while the Koran prohibited drug use.
The experience was difficult because not seeing a woman's face or hearing a single note of music - let alone alcohol, of course - for such a long time was a very depressing experience.
But it was obviously much more so for all those, Afghan women and men, who had lived like this for almost four years.
Public stoning, prohibition for women and young girls to follow a normal education, prohibition for them to circulate without a full veil equipped with a grid on the face, prohibition of all images with human representation, prohibition of television, the press: anything that was not formally authorized was prohibited.
Francois Margolin
I must admit that at the time, the fact that the country was ruled by these “
students of religion
” - the etymology of the term “
Taliban
” - did not interest many people in Paris and even in the West. We were more concerned with Commander Massoud who resisted in his Panshir valley than with the situation of women throughout the country. It was, for example, extremely difficult to find a French television channel to finance our expedition.
It was not until the Al-Qaeda attack on New York's World Trade Center towers on September 11, 2001, that the world - in the West - became interested in Afghanistan. That people began to talk about public stoning, the prohibition for women and young girls to follow a normal education, the prohibition for them to circulate without a full veil with a grid on the face, the prohibition all images with human representation, the prohibition of television, the press, ... Finally, anything that was not formally authorized was prohibited.
The “
religion students
” were only applying the Quran to the letter, following their interpretation, of course, which is not that of most Muslims in the world, but they did so without disturbing anyone.
Western countries did not really recognize the regime, but there were "
semi-ambassadors
" who shuttled between Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, and Kabul.
The most astonishing ministry was that of "The Promotion of Virtue and the Suppression of Vice".
Francois Margolin
A semblance of state functioned with its retinue of ministers and ministries - the most astonishing being that of "The Promotion of Virtue and the Suppression of Vice" - people would not starve and some form of security there. reigned there, which explains why many Afghans, little suspected of sympathy for the regime, had welcomed it with open arms, before quickly becoming disillusioned in the face of generalized “copying” and repression.
I think if it hadn't been for September 11, the United States would not have intervened in Afghanistan and the Taliban regime would have remained in place for the last twenty years, with all kinds of accommodations plus or less accepted by Westerners. There were then semblances of negotiations on the reduction of opium production - and not on its "elimination"
[This point is controversial, Editor's note]
, as has often been said, by mistake, since - with the aim of , on the Taliban side, to show a certain goodwill but also to raise the prices of this resource, which is the main resource for Afghanistan, and the Taliban, even today.
In addition, neighboring Pakistan - yet officially an ally of the United States - exercised enormous influence over the regime - which is more than ever the case today - which it dominated. The best example having been the destruction of the symbol of Afghan independence, the two gigantic and magnificent Buddhas of Bamyan, which was a pledge of ultimate submission of the Taliban to Islamabad and its secret services, the ISI.
The Taliban's mistake at the time was to harbor bin Laden and his al-Qaeda henchmen. It must be said that he participated in the financing of the regime and that he had helped them in their difficult period of conquest of power. I believe that the Taliban of now - twenty years later - will not make the same mistake again and that their entire strategy, which we see at work today, of recognition by the great powers that are China and Russia , and even Iran or Turkey, participate in this idea.
We can continue to comment on the existence of various tendencies among the Taliban, on a possible change in them, I believe that all this makes no sense.
In any case, no more than when, for a few weeks, after September 11, learned experts spoke to us about
“moderate Taliban
”, straight out of their imagination and, no doubt, of their fantasy of cool Talibanism.
I think of my Afghan friends, so happy to have resisted all the invaders and who find themselves subject to an internal invader who hardly knows the history of his country.
Francois Margolin
What is terrible today is to think that not only the billions poured out by the Americans but also the enthusiasm and the commitment - not to mention the dead and wounded - of thousands of foreign soldiers and humanitarian workers will not have served any purpose. Nothing more than to get back to where it started, to a radical Islamic regime that does what it wants and imposes its own rules on forty million Afghans. It is an absolute failure.
History is repeating itself, indeed, as in a nightmare, in this country which is perhaps the most beautiful country in the world, for a population which has no choice, except that of fleeing, without much hope. I think of my Afghan friends, so educated, so proud of their country, so happy to have resisted all the invaders through the centuries and who find themselves subjected to an internal invader who hardly knows the history of his country.
