Kabul 24

There have been millions of stories over the past couple of decades about how 9/11, and the War on Terror, have affected global society. This documentary sheds light on an almost forgotten set of people who were being held captive in Afghanistan when the United States exacted revenge on the terrorist-sympathizing Taliban, to whom we disastrously handed the country back. Shelter Now International is a multi-national Christian aid organization who provide food and comfort to those in need. They have a team in Afghanistan, but were told not to preach the Gospel unless asked, since the Taliban have made the attempted conversion of Muslims a crime. On August 23, 2001, eight western members of the organization (Americans Heather Mercer and Dayna Curry, Australians Peter Bunch and Diana Thomas, and Germans Margrit Stebner, Katrin Jelinek, Silke Duerrkopf, and Georg Taubmann), and another sixteen Afghans are arrested for supposed indoctrination. What followed was over one hundred days of brutal captivity, constant mental abuse, threats of execution, and the fear of never seeing their families again. Even in the face of American bombings, the eight keep up their faith: praying pacifists who cannot find it in themselves to harm their guards to escape. A question I had almost right away was: sure, we focus on the eight westerners, but what about the poor Afghans? Do they not count? Yes, we find out they do count, but they were also still in Afghanistan. The few subjects who the film makers are able to talk to have their faces blurred out for fear of reprisal, which was and now is possible.

The main eight subjects all use their faith in God to get through their ordeal, although each seems to have had their breakdowns and doubts on many occasions. The four prisons they are shuffled around to are squalid, and filled with political Afghan prisoners- one prison for non-believers has 1500 boys in it. The country's women are treated as less than human; they are not allowed to r...