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Saturday, February 20, 2010

National Geographic's: Afghanistan (Before the War on Terrorism) Revealed

National Geographic has a pretty decent documentary filmed in Afghanistan before the War on Terrorism started. Afghanistan Revealed shows the fight of Ahmad Shah Massoud, founder of the Northern Alliance, against the Taliban.



I have a few complaints against the documentary, though. In an effort to show that Afghanistan is unconquerable by outsiders it falsely claims the British lost three wars to the Afghans. In truth the first Anglo-Afghan war was a massive Afghan victory but the second war was a British victory that made Afghanistan fall under a nominal sphere of British influence and the third war was a British defensive victory against an Afghan invasion of Pakistan. The second complaint is about how Massoud comes across. One must remember Massoud, a person who I feel we should have supported before his death right before 9/11, was an Islamist as well (but not revolutionary-expansionist like the Taliban) and a drug dealer (he needed money from somewhere). Just remember that when tries to think of him as an Afghan democratic liberal.

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