...and embraces Islam.

He also exposes nicely how the occupying invasion-terrorists murder the entire families of Talibaan commanders.

---

Sleeping with the Enemy

Australians have every reason to hate the Taliban. Their fighters have now killed 23 of our soldiers in Afghanistan.

The latest, 21-year-old South Australian Jamie Larcombe, another victim of a ragtag bunch of men, whose greatest weapons are secrecy and surprise.

We lift the Taliban's veil and take you right inside the vipers' nest, thanks to documentary-maker Paul Refsdal.

Brave or fool-hardy, you be the judge, but Paul entrenched himself in a Taliban stronghold, literally sleeping with the enemy.

And one of the most startling things about the resulting film is that he got away with his life.

Full transcript:

MICHAEL USHER: In a tumble-down hut in the mountains of Kunar Province, eastern Afghanistan, a doting father plays with his two youngest children. Davran is a family man, a bloke who likes a laugh and a bit of sport with his mates. But Davran is also a Taliban commander. A ruthless fighter who's taking along his eldest son, aged 12, as he leads an ambush on unsuspecting coalition troops.

PAUL REFSDAL: I would expect to meet the demons, you know, with the long tails and a hole in their foreheads because of what I have been hearing in the media but what I met was normal people. Is she afraid, if she thinks I am American?

DAVRAN: Of course, yes.

MICHAEL USHER: This rare insight into the Taliban was recorded by Norwegian filmmaker Paul Refsdal, who lived, slept and ate with them for two weeks in their mountain hideaway.

MICHAEL USHER: You captured some quite intimate moments for example, Davran playing with his children?

PAUL REFSDAL: Yes.

MICHAEL USHER: Quite touching moments.

PAUL REFSDAL: He behaved like I would be with my children. It was like a normal man, you know?

MICHAEL USHER: But this was an adventure that nearly cost Refsdal his life. Here in Afghanistan, as a journalist, you risk your life to cover the story. You want to get close to the action, close to the people, but you do everything to avoid falling into the hands of the Taliban. That's exactly what Paul Refsdal wanted. Call him courageous or call him foolish, he left Kabul and headed high into these hills, knowing that he stood every chance of being captured or killed.

PAUL REFSDAL: I had some guarantees from a Taliban commander, quite a high-ranking commander in Kunar Province. He said, "OK, you are welcome. You will be my guest." That's the best guarantee you can get.

MICHAEL USHER: How did you know you could trust them?

PAUL REFSDAL: You're never sure. You don't know if they're gonna treat you as a guest or they are going to kill you. I saw two Taliban fighters hiding behind the rock. Long hair, big beards, no smiles on their faces.

MICHAEL USHER: That's Refsdal, doing his best to look like a local.

PAUL REFSDAL: I am a tall, white guy. You know, they are fighting tall, white guys so when you meet them, that's the point of no return. You just have to keep on walking and smile and just hope they are not gonna kidnap you.

MICHAEL USHER: But Refsdal's immediate fear of these armed Taliban fighters was quickly eased. Commander Davran approved of him and his band of fighters found the filmmaker as intimidating as he found them.

PAUL REFSDAL: They were talking about me; there was some whispering, of course. Actually, some of it I got on tape.

MICHAEL USHER: What did they say? "He's really scared of us, the same way we're scared of that bald head"?

PAUL REFSDAL: Actually the real translation is “he's poo-scared of us like we are scared of that, they call it melon-head”. It seemed like the Taliban had humour, actually.

MICHAEL USHER: Funny and at times, comically incompetent fumbling as they load their weapons. And the ‘Dad's Army’ approach to warfare became even more bizarre when Refsdal realised Davran was about to ambush a military convoy almost from the doorstep of his own home. One of the things that surprised me is here you have this commander fighting warfare with his wife and children in tow?

PAUL REFSDAL: He was leading the attack a couple of hundred metres away, 300m, 400m away maybe from his house. He was shouting to his children, you know, "Now you go and hide in the house."

DAVRAN: Let the first vehicle pass, then start the attack!

MICHAEL USHER: Down in the valley, an American convoy is headed down the road. They're driving into a trap. Davran has teams of men on both sides of the valley. They're using an old heavy machine gun that could be best described as an antique. But they're hitting their mark. The convoy below seems powerless to respond. That raises some serious questions, doesn't it, of the awesome might of the coalition?

PAUL REFSDAL: Yes.

MICHAEL USHER: That they can't strike back against this small bunch of men and their rusty old guns?

PAUL REFSDAL: The weapons they had, there wasn’t any weapon that I saw there that couldn't have been used in World War II.

DAVRAN: Shoot those sons of poo! You hear! Hit the check point hard! I will not back down. I’m victorious in the battle as well as in propaganda! Every fight, he acts like this. Allah is great!

TBC...

abu_rashid wrote on Apr 28^th, 2011 at 8:57pm:


When you hide behind women and children you do tend to get them killed.

abu_rashid wrote on Apr 28^th, 2011 at 10:42pm:


If Taliban 'soldiers' were fighting in Australia they would not find the ADF commanders at home with their wives and children but in the field with their men.
It is an excellent tactic (at least when fighting a western enemy)  to withdraw behind the cover of civilians after a strike, thus forcing the enemy to either leave you alone or risk killing civilians, with all the resulting negative propaganda whipped up by the very people putting the civilians at risk in the first place.  However this will will only work for so long, then the enemy will decide that the risk to his own personnel and to the success of the mission is too great and some collateral damage must be accepted.

In short, if the Taliban want to protect their women and children, stop using them as cover.

And what do you mean by 'my Bible'? You know nothing of my religious beliefs.

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If the government was destroyed, and they were just bands of militias fighting to defend the country from the invaders, then I think they'd be defending their homes.

Maybe not? Maybe they'd abandon their families? Good point, never thought of that, since the concept of family is not very highly valued in Australia, then they might just abandon them I guess.

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They are in their homes, as civilians, what else do you expect of them? The Talibaan and all Afghan resistance fighters are just civilians, who unfortunately have to spend their spare time fending off a brutal enemy that never ceases to ravage other countries for their own dominance and gains.

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This is nothing but despicable atrocity-excusing propaganda for the wicked war crimes committed by the invading forces, and  I suspect you know it.

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Even though the vast majority of Aussies do not believe in religion, it still underpins their cultural disposition to a degree.

What about hiding behind civilians while carrying out out a military campaign? I thought Islam forbade that. Or is that only for non-Muslims?

Are we supposed to respect their family time and wait for them to come back out so the 'spare-time' war can continue?

abu_rashid wrote on Apr 29^th, 2011 at 11:03pm:


Abu, the very best way to defend home and family is to make sure the enemy either doesn't find them, or doesn't get close to them..

Setting up ambushes a couple of hundred metres from your own front door is not the way to keep your family hidden..

fd,

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The only people I've ever seen doing this are the Zionists, who strap young Palestinian kids onto the front of their vehicles when they enter in to occupy more Palestinian land.

We're discussing actual facts here, not propaganda.

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It's part of an invasion and occupation of a civilian area isn't it? The defenders are going to be in their home territory, whilst the aggressors are going to have their families nice and safe at home... for now.

But in fd's little fantasy world, I guess we can pretend that someone defending their home and family might travel to the other side of his country each monday, fight the invaders all week close to his countrymen's homes/families, then return back to his home side of the country on weekends, so as the invaders don't attack him when he's close to home. Nevermind that the invaders can come in and destroy his home/family at any time whilst he's away or that people from the other side of the country might be coming to fight in his region whilst he's away, we'll just humour this ridiculous notion for a little while.

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There's certainly some propaganda going on here, but it seems to all be coming from you. Can you show a single case where an Afghan resistance fighter hid behind his wife? Or are you now going to abruptly change topic making yet another wild unfounded claim about Islam out of thin air?

gizmo,

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Yeh, half the country is going to live in hiding, good one.

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If troops were occupying near my house, I'd be attacking them there, not going to the other side of the country to attack them, as you two clowns seem to suggest is the way it's done.

I sincerely hope one day you find yourself in that situation. Being cowards though, I know you would both flee before troops even came near your homes.

On the contrary he's a hero and a champion of the truth. I dunno what the race/ancestor crap is all about, maybe you're into some primitive ancestor-worship kind of cult or something (interesting you then use the term heathen).

He is enlightening his people to the truth that they've been blinded to by those who seek to mislead them, and therefore he could be nothing but a hero to them, when/if they finally come to see the truth.