Adam Curtis: Bitter Lake (Bitter Lake)

Increasingly, we live in a world where nothing makes any sense.

Events come and go like waves of a fever,

leaving us confused and uncertain.

Those in power tell stories to help us make sense

of the complexity of reality.

But those stories are increasingly unconvincing and hollow.

# Excuse me, I'm lost... #

This is a film about why those stories have stopped making sense.

And how that led us in the West to become a dangerous and destructive

force in the world.

It is told through the prism of a country

at the centre of the world. Afghanistan.

# Who are you? #

Come Down To Us by Burial

# Here we are

# I'm tired

# Break it down

# Break it down, to my eyes

# Baby, come on, come on

# And, girl, I know

# I know you want it

# I'm trusting you, I'm going

# Going

# Tonight, do you feel alive?

# Tonight, do you feel alive?

# Come down to us

# Come down

# Down... #

In 1946, American engineers, along with their wives and families,

began to arrive at a dusty airstrip in Helmand

in southern Afghanistan.

They worked for the biggest construction company

in the world - called Morrison Knudsen -

and the King of Afghanistan had brought them there

to build a giant planned new world -

a complex of dams, canals, roads, and even a new model city.

The king's aim was to harness the power of the giant Helmand river

and turn his country into a modern society - just like in the West.

'The Asiatic kingdom of Afghanistan is located

'roughly 10,000 miles from either coastline of the United States.

'Almost directly on the opposite side of the globe, westward from China,

'beyond the Himalayas.

'It is a landlocked country, bordered on the north by the Soviet Union,

'and on the east by Pakistan, and on the west by Iran.'

The King was called Zahir Shah, and he often came to visit the project.

Afghanistan was a deeply conservative country and he was

determined to modernise it.

What the King was trying to create in Helmand was a copy of what

President Roosevelt had done in America in the 1930s.

And the company he had hired - Morrison Knudsen -

had worked back then for Roosevelt,

building a new world of dams and power stations across America.

Now they were going to do the same for Afghanistan.

The engineers and their families lived in a complex of houses

around the King's country palace in Helmand.

It became known as Little America.

INDISTINCT VOICES

You got everything you need?

Quite a lot of stuff lying around. There is a dead insurgent lying here.

A man in his early 20s.

Come on, let's go. Let's go.

DIALOGUE IN THEIR OWN LANGUAGE

ALL SHOUTING AT ONCE

OK, I'll follow you in. Off you go.

OK.

Good morning.

Stand up.

How are you? I'm fine, thanks.

You are very good.

How are your families?

What will it take to stop the fighting?

TRANSLATOR REPEATS

HE ANSWERS IN HIS OWN LANGUAGE

MOBILE PHONE PLAYS SONG AS RINGTONE

RINGTONE STOPS

INDISTINCT VOICES MIX WITH MUSIC

How long have you been with the Taliban, if you don't mind me asking?

Chris, what's going on?

All right, wow!

LAUGHTER

Wow. You look creepy up close.

A little creepy from far away too!

Yeah, that's true.

What's going on? How are you feeling?

I'm feeling pretty good right now.

It's been a pretty exciting day.

Yeah, getting kills out here.

Today, just for documentation,

today was the day we went against order and we shot anyway.

We killed, like, a whole bunch of people.

24 unapproved rounds.

24 unapproved high-explosive mortar rounds.

That's about 40,000 pounds of death right there.

Yo. Yo.

Fuck it, looks like a rave in here, almost.

All I got to say... Actually, I do have something to say.

Let's hear it.

I love the fucking Marine Corp. LAUGHTER

- I know many of you... - We got you on camera saying it!

I know, I know many of you don't, but what we did today...

Yeah, we need born killers, like you.

Oh, we're all born killers.

INDISTINCT VOICES

At the end of the Second World War, President Roosevelt travelled to

the Great Bitter Lake in the middle of the Suez Canal.

At the same time, he sent another American warship

to pick up the King of Saudi Arabia, King Abdulaziz.

The meeting of King and President was to have powerful - and disastrous -

consequences both for the West and, in a strange way, for Afghanistan.

Roosevelt was dying, but over the last 13 years

he had used his power on an epic scale to transform the world.

After the Wall Street crash and the terrible depression that followed,

Roosevelt had taken charge.

He had passed laws that broke up the banks

so they would never run out of control again.

And he had rebuilt America with a series of giant dams

that brought electrical power and employment to millions of people.

And he had planned and fought a world war against Germany and Japan.

Now, as Roosevelt sat waiting for Abdulaziz,

no-one could possibly have imagined the consequences of this meeting.

For it was going to unleash forces that in the future

would undermine everything that Roosevelt had worked for -

his belief that politicians should use their power in a planned way

to reshape the world.

But Roosevelt knew that to keep that power, America needed oil.

And he wanted to forge an alliance with the King to make sure

the vast Saudi oilfields remained under American control.

In their conversation, the two men laid the foundations for an alliance

that continues to the present day.

America would get its oil - and in return, Saudi Arabia would receive

wealth and security from America.

But the King was well aware of the dangers of opening up his country

to the influence of the modern West.

And in the negotiations that followed, he laid down a condition.

We will take your technology and your money, he said -

but you must leave our faith alone.

The Saudi faith was called Wahhabism.

It was a radical, violent and extremely puritanical form of Islam,

and its followers among the Bedouin tribes hated the modern world.

Wahhabism was part of a wider movement in Islam

that had risen up in reaction to the European empires.

Another was the Deobandi movement in India.

They all believed that modern imperialism was corrupting

the true nature of Islam, and wanted to go back to a world

based on the original teachings of the Islamic texts.

Abdulaziz had harnessed this force in the 1920s to seize power.

But he had unleashed something that didn't want to stop.

The Wahhabists wanted to go on and create a caliphate

across the whole of the Arab world -

and to stop them, in 1929, Abdulaziz machine-gunned them.

He ruthlessly killed the warriors who had made him King.

But their belief - a violent, intolerant and, above all,

backward-looking version of Islam -

remained at the heart of Saudi Arabian society.

And the deal made that day on the Great Bitter Lake

meant that America would get its oil

but it would also be protecting Wahhabism -

a force that had its own global ambitions.

Ambitions that were very different from America's.

HARP PLAYS

Who's the turban job on the throne?

You mean the Khasi.

That's Randy Lal.

Who?

Randy Lal, the Khasi of Kalabar.

Ooh!

How do you know he is, then?

- How do I know he's what? - Randy.

- That's his name! - Ooh!

He's very good looking, isn't he?

Yes, only the most richest and powerful rajah in northern India,

that's all.

- He's smiling at us. - Smile back.

Coo-ee!

You don't have to go raving mad.

My father, who are those people?

That, light of my darkness, is Sir Sidney Rough Diamond,

a British governor whose benevolent rule

and wise guidance we could well do without.

By the mid-1950s, the American engineers had built

the giant dams that were going to create what they called

"a new wonderland of vegetation and power" in Helmand.

But the project was running into problems

and it was beginning to lose its innocence.

As the giant dams were completed, they had an unexpected effect.

They raised the level of the water table

and started to bring salt to the surface.

And one of the plants that thrived in this new soil were poppies.

Some of those leading the project said they should stop.

But the American government stepped in and insisted that they should

continue because by now the dams had become a central part

of the struggle with the Soviet Union.

All sides in the Cold War began to compete to offer Afghanistan

bigger and better schemes to modernise the country.

Afghan politicians exploited this ruthlessly.

The Prime Minister, Mohammed Daoud, spent his time travelling the world

playing the countries - Russia, America and China -

off against each other.

Daoud wanted to use the modernization as a way of consolidating his power.

Afghanistan was a fragmented country.