We are living through turbulent decades in this 21st century. This warlike twenties perhaps began on August 30, 2021, when the United States withdrew its last soldiers from Afghanistan in such a hurry that the image emerged of desperate people trying to hold on to the fuselage of the plane. This was a humiliation for the supposed leader of the free world. It hasn't even been three years, but so much has happened in between that it's become a long time.
It is very surprising to come across Madrileños around the world on Telemadrid, whose episode was recorded in Kabul. Oh yes, that's right, it's from 2012 and, like so many others, is renewed every Saturday evening after the premiere episode. This deviates from the tone of the veteran show about successful expats who show us their mansions and lead us through expensive shops and elegant cafes. We are witnessing the exact opposite, a descent into the hells of interwar Kabul, a decade after the Allies landed and a decade before the Taliban returned to power. Western forces had pushed the Islamists from power, were trying to build a state, and were trying to appear as if they controlled the country, when in reality they only controlled part of central Kabul, a fortified area occupied by people is surrounded that they also don't trust. , which they consider hostile.
The first residents of Madrid that the reporter visited Beatriz Vigil, They are a steward and stewardess hired by local airlines who make you wonder if they knew exactly what they were getting into. The others are linked to international forces: a soldier, a diplomat and a national police officer. Today's viewer sees this report knowing that sooner or later the respondents will get out of it. This time they don't ask them what they miss more, the family or the beer and the ham; Nor whether they will one day return to Madrid: 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 openly declare that they almost never leave their well-guarded compounds, the embassy and the barracks, respectively. When they go outside, they do so without obligation, in an armored car and with bulletproof vests. In the soldier's case, he doesn't take the gun out of his hand as he watches through the windows of his vehicle. The building in the embassy shows its facilities: a terrace with a basket, a foosball table and a treadmill where you can run without entering the street. “We are monks. We could call it the Charterhouse of Kabul,” he says. In 2015, this diplomatic headquarters suffered a bloody attack that left two Spanish soldiers, five Afghans and four attackers dead.
A “Buzkashi” competition, in which players on horses attempt to place a decapitated animal carcass into a gate, in Qara Shabagh, Afghanistan.WAKIL KOHSAR (AFP)
We see the flight attendants walking through dusty markets, but they quickly confess that they live with other Westerners in walled settlements and with armed guards on rooftops. The police officer is the most fearless: he goes with the reporter to a religious ritual in which Shiite children beat each other on the back. 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 participants. In a shopping center she tries on the burqa and we see from the camera how the world looks (very bad) through this fabric net. It overwhelms him, no wonder. She asks if she can walk down the street in the burqa, but she tells her that the locals would immediately recognize a Westerner in disguise based on her movements and that they might not take it well.
They understand the fiasco of Afghanistan's reconstruction, that the Taliban were not defeated, that these suffering people would once again fall under the yoke of fanaticism. No one will say they didn't see it coming.
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