Living with the Taliban on the Afghan frontline

Living with the Taliban on the Afghan frontline

[url=http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/politics/international_politics/living+with+the+taliban+on+the+afghan+frontline/3734447]www.channel4.com[/u rl]

www.channel4.com...

Channel 4 News has obtained rare film of Taliban fighters on the Afghanistan frontline, including footage of their attacks on US forces. Channel 4 News Chief Correspondent Alex Thomson looks at what the film tells us about the insurgents and their tactics.

Even if I did want to do it, I would not be allowed to by ITN. Nor would anybody here. But out there in the wide open world of the freelancer, Paul Refsdal did it. He did it brilliantly well.

(visit the link for the full news article)


[edit on 4-8-2010 by john124]

Incredible rare footage of the war from their side showing entire Taliban families living on mountain tops with their wives and children, and indiscriminantly firing automatic weapons at American or Afghan convoys passing by.....

Machine gun refitted US air force cargo planes are what they fear the most, as they spray the area with bullets indiscriminatly every time they pass over killing anyone residing in the mountains if they haven't took cover quickly enough. Perhaps easier than going after the Taliban camps on the ground due to their higher mountain top positions.

You get the impression of how stupid this war really is from another angle, and that the Taliban are just humans like anyone else. And because of the long length of the war the living Taliban are becoming a legitimate resistance in the eyes of more people than the day before, as the body counts increase.

Link to video transcript

[url=http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/politics/international_politics/living+with+the+taliban+on+the+afghan+frontline/3734447]www.channel4.com[/u rl]
(visit the link for the full news article)


[edit on 4-8-2010 by john124]

Found this similar video on youtube if Channel 4 vid doesn't work outside UK, although longer version is subscription according to their website.



[edit on 4-8-2010 by john124]

Thanks for posting this John. Makes for a fascinating insight into the story of war from the other side. You are right, in one way it humanizes the Taliban and we got to remember we are occupying their land. Amid the small successes NATO has, you can see the futility of this war against an enemy who know the land better than anyone and have been able to repel foreign invaders for decades.

Originally posted by john124
You get the impression of how stupid this war really is from another angle, and that the Taliban are just humans like anyone else. And because of the long length of the war the living Taliban are becoming a legitimate resistance in the eyes of more people than the day before, as the body counts increase.

The Taliban has always been a legitimate resistance. They are a militarized idealogical group of people and probably the only group of Afghans fighting for Afghanistan itself and not stupid and selfish agendas.

Of course they live hiding their days away in the mountains with their families. What the hell do Western journalists think about Taliban lifestyle, that they rise from the depths of hell every morning to terrorize innocent NATO soldiers and then disappear into the wind? Considering they live off the grid, deep within the elements, I consider them to be much more human than the cowards who employ technology to attack them from planes in the sky.

I've heard a lot of conspiracies about the Afghan war before, and most are total BS... but lately I've been thinking. Maybe the "civilized" world is waging war against all people in the world who have the capability to live in harmony with their environment WITHOUT their lives and minds being raped by the globalist machine. I've noticed that even within my own country (Canada), the government singles out and deprives its people of their basic privileges and rights if they spent their life growing up in the bush as opposed to a city with cookie-cutter education systems.

reply to post by john124

That is just a clip of the original video from your link.

But anyhow it is an interesting video.

Great video, but be warned. People do not like seeing footage of war 'from the other side'.

My view? If you want to document war, and cover a war, you should show both sides, so well done to you for raising awareness of this video.


When they were CIA-supported, fighting the Soviets, they were 'Freedom Fighters' and 'Mujahadeen'.

People in the US Administrations at that time cheered when they carried out suicide bombings and attacked Soviet military convoys and the Soviet occupiers, and fought against a superior-armed occupying force in their country the only way they knew how to survive and resist occupation.

But now they are fighting a US-led occupation, when they carry out suicide bombings and attack NATO military convoys and the NATO occupiers, and fight against a superior-armed occupying force of their country in the only way they knew how to survive and resist occupation, these people fighting against the foreign occupation of their country are terrorists, cowards and murderers, not 'Freedom Fighters' or 'Mujahadeen' but Taliban terrorists.

People call the Afghan insurgents cowards and terrorists for their tactics, but are they more or less cowardly then a drone in Afghanistan carrying out missile strikes piloted by someone who is safely a couple of thousand miles away out of harm's way where he/she can kill without fear to their life?


If an IED is cowardly, so is a Drone Strike. Hands-off killing.

A NATO air strike from several thousand feet safely in the sky is more cowardly than an Afghan insurgent taking on a heavily armed and professional NATO patrol with an automatic rifle, who knows that the people he fights can call in overwhelming air power and artillery strikes on him at any time.

Afghan insurgents are people resisting the occupation of their country, and the War Lords, Drug Lords, Corrupt businessmen and gangsters propped up in Kabul.

[edit on 5-8-2010 by Regensturm]

I just gave you my first ever s/f, well found, the war of the flea in action, just a bunch of family guys defending their country and culture from powerful robbers.

I bet they wonder why God is taking so long to give them victory.

My deepest respect goes out to these brave men. This video tells the brutal truth. For every soldier killed, there seems to be at least as many civilians. In this particular case, there were clearly more civilians killed.

This video got some sort of nostalgia feeling to light up inside me, a longing, a desire to be there, helping those poor guys by hunting down occupying forces. Only thing i would ask for is a fair game which means good weapons and enough ammunition. Now i understand what my grandparents felt like when they were at war with russia, defending from a clearly overpowered enemy.

It is pride, it is a certain sense of knowing that you are correct. How wrong must it feel for a soldier to be on enemy territory?

Give 'em hell!

[edit on 8/5/2010 by above]

Originally posted by Regensturm
When they were CIA-supported, fighting the Soviets, they were 'Freedom Fighters' and 'Mujahadeen'.

According to Orwell, this is the motto of the Western empire Oceania:

WAR is PEACE
FREEDOM is SLAVERY
IGNORANCE is STRENGTH

I always thought Orwell was a naive anti-communist... until I opened my mind and looked at what is really going on in the world. Orwell proved how predictable poor yet abusive political leadership can be on global levels.

Orwell was an anti-Stalinist, and more generally anti-Totalitarianism. He saw the fight against fascism in Spain betrayed by the Western powers and Stalin, and then whilst working for the BBC during WW2 realised how powerful the use of propaganda could be in motivating and influencing the masses.

He predicted the media would be used by governments to control the masses via minutes of hate and carrying the government line, and about how a government could generate fear to rally the masses around them in support by hating a possible imaginary bogeyman terrorist whose sinister and dangerous character was constantly hyped up by the propaganda spouted about him.

He predicted how wars and terrorists, imaginary or not, would be used to justify oppression and dictatorship, and the interchangable enemy used to justify wars, and that wars in themselves would be fought endlessly to maintain the masses rallying around the government and flag in support.

We could say Orwell was a visionary, a prophet, but for society, that would be a cop-out, a shirking of blame that we allowed what he wrote to happen.

Looking at the time 1984 was written, with the events happening at the time, it's easy to see that we could have seen what he saw had we looked beyond the facade and sheen of government-to-masses consumption as he did.


Goldstein = Bin Laden.

Eurasia = Soviet Union

Eastasia = Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, North Korea etc.


Interchangable enemies and bogeymen.


The clock has struck 13.

[edit on 7-8-2010 by Regensturm]