Afghanistan in the 1950s: Back to the Future [Full Documentary] - BBC News

this is precious i love this sweet and i just add half of it and kept another half because i thought i will never ever have them again for me this is a diamond reminds me of my childhood and the golden time [Music] i was so excited to discover these films my family had many photographs but we lost them when we fled the afghan wars as refugees most afrans have no pictures of their past nothing to show their grandchildren it is a terrible gap in our lives these films kept safe for half a century are the only ones i have ever seen that have survived the wars they show my afghanistan to me the real one a land full of life and hope they tell a special chapter of our story that's almost forgotten half a century ago an american glenn r foster from california arrived in southern afghanistan he stayed on for seven years a keen photographer in black and white and marvelous color glenn took his 16 millimeter film camera through kandahar and helmut he toured through villages and deserts sometimes he just let the camera run foster's family kept the films in a trunk at home and they kept a reel of tape noting his impressions as plain as the day he recorded them there come an optimism surprises our 21st century heirs welcome to the kingdom of i afghanistan the way to really see a country is to learn a little of the language and culture and really get to know the people it usually turns out that a visitor receives the wrong impressions if he rushes about afghanistan to someday be on everyone's tourist list as a must but the tourists of the future will not be able to see some of these things [Music] we tracked down foster's assistant now living on the far side of the world in america he hadn't seen the films in 50 years foreign foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign even though there are masses of people the country seems able to feed them all though their diet may not be abundant you don't see the hunger that you do in some countries and beggars are seldom seen this is due in part by the reclamation projects instituted by the government bread sold in a bakery like this is very very delicious you may want a little something to go with your bread here you can buy a little mutton and be on your way the films capture a time when afghanistan was changing modernizing filling with ideas king zahid the last afghan king imagined a forward-looking country united under one flag all asia was emerging from the second world war the old imperial power britain and retreat new countries were born india and pakistan afghanistan's most intimate neighbor in 1956 pakistan drew up its first constitution it declared itself as something completely new in islamic republic mata boudin crossed the border into pakistan to film the celebrations the school children are queuing up for an orange as a gift it was a time of moral ambition of aspiration for all zahesha saw his country as at the heart of a modern asia here he is greeting the visiting president of turkey jalal bayer in 1958 zahir shah cautiously opened up state and society he reformed the army he promoted afghan national independence day known as the justin there's my film um [Music] foreign it's hard to imagine now but then kabul had money in the bank a hundred million dollars zahesha decided to place his investment strategically into the south of afghanistan where the river helman cuts through an immense desert dr faro kazam was advisor in the african ministry for power and energy the ubuntu's fathers zahirsha hired the best foreign engineers with state of the art equipment from a company called morrison knutson everyone called it mk no beard company company [Music] foreign and that's how our filmmaker glenn foster came to be there he was an engineer with morrison knutson mk drove roads through the desert and canals through the sand it built three colossal dams at lightning speed foster and mahtabudin went out to film each stage of the project in detail from the grand opening of the dams to the nearest canals spreading across the desert not many americans still remember the old days in helman but there are a very few we went to afghanistan and uh our daughter was about to well i went ahead of you because we didn't have the house any house for the family for the first six months and we're working on the new kandahar international airport and then it came over about six months later we lived in this little bungalow i think it was a two place was it a duplex yeah it had one bathroom a living room and the long kitchen with a table at the end with two chairs yeah that was that was a dining room well it had been built in a huge compound that the government of afghanistan had made available to mk quite a few years earlier when mk went in in 1946 and seven to start the helmand valley project the way these guys are so self-sufficient and so if you're working here and and you have to move a 20-ton generator from here to there you can't call up joe blow at the crane outfit tell them to send over their 200 ton crane but they they knew how to do it the american technicians didn't come to afghanistan as single men for just a few weeks as they do now no they brought their families their phonographs they brought their swimming costumes [Music] helman was a fun place to grow up my neighbors were american we used to go to their picnic and fourth of july parties we used to invite them to our eat celebrations i went to a co-educational school my father opened a cinema and hell month everything seemed possible then there [Music] i remember santa claus arriving on a donkey in lashkarga and the presents he brought really nice color pencils books dolls and sweets [Music] afghanistan's irrigation projects had many difficulties in the early years the land flooded salts rose up through the earth and the early settlers were herdsmen with not much idea how to farm such [Music] it took a lot more investment and loans huge loans to green the desert afghanistan's death grew as the age of independence slipped into the age of international development the new u.s government aid agency usaid foreign the growing of opium puppies that helmand is famous for now all over the world was virtually unknown we at france felt safe in those days to go wherever we wanted even after dark so did the americans we weren't afraid of each other then foreign foreign more than a million people moved into southern afghanistan in these boom years seeking jobs in schools hospitals and factories glenn foster had no doubt in the power of technology to bring about profound social change squares of new brick kilns such as this are spraying up in every village of the kingdom to supply the materials needed to build the new afghanistan the populations exploding out into the open and advanced building program the spirit of a new area is driving them at a furious pace and the population from the very youngest to the oldest have a job to do [Music] kandahar's brand new airport used the latest technology the outside world was drawing closer we didn't see our new airport as the product a far away cold war between the united states and the soviet union to us it was a marvelous new opportunity we were building the international airport the airport included large underground fuel tanks very high capacity fuel tanks it included a very sophisticated uh refueling system electronically controlled right out of the apron it included overnight facilities for maybe a hundred people back in the 50s and 60s uh when a plane stopped to refuel everybody got out and stayed overnight wherever you were on the way while the aircraft was serviced and then the pilots and everybody get back on it might be the next morning and was designed to use a maximum of local materials and all construction around kandahar was all uh adobe and brick there's no timber no steel so the airport was designed as brick it was designed as arches we had huge big parabolic arches like this out facing the apron and then a barrel arch that went behind them to enclose the terminal building and the afghans were they were experts on uh on that kind of construction well the russians had built this beautiful airport in in kabul so usaid so wait a minute we can't have the russians building that's my opinion building airports up in carpool we got to do something too so they built one in kandahar with usaid money correct that's right yeah in 1973 king zahir shah's cousin overthrew him in a bloodless coup he declared afghanistan a republic and himself the first the uthan road the tiger of his times balancing big investments from the americans against those of the soviet union i was part of that lucky generation the first who would reap the rewards of all the hard work we were ambitious girls we had big ideas to be lawyers to be doctors to transform our country [Music] we could not have known how very quickly the best of times would become the worst in 1978 a group of communist army officers overthrow president khan the sour code it began a generation of war and invasion the war we are still living with today [Music] my parents were worried for our future my sisters and i dressed in old burkas and plastic shoes we managed to catch a bus across the border into pakistan as refugees we took just small bundle of things mata boudin escaped too along the road he had helped to build in the 1940s in december 1979 soviet troops entered kabul they broke open police dr azam escaped like us he fled the country and spent years the years of war brought the dams canals and power lines of southern afghanistan close to that kandahar airport though is still largely intact the andersons didn't think they would see it again until a different technological innovation made that possible went on the internet here not too long ago to see what i could find out about the international airport in kandahar and i found out that the nato forces were using it but that also the the afghanistan national airlines was using it for domestic flights all over indonesia or all over afghanistan and also for some some international flights in the area i would go back there yeah yeah those were the days we had a good life we really did we had a really good life foreign foreign [Music] foreign

Channel: BBC News

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Id: naHWKSpjZGI

Length: 28min 52sec (1732 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 22 2021