THE WATCH OR THE TIME

There are important lessons to learn from the West’s epic failure in Afghanistan.

Never in modern history has such a collective effort been engaged in by so many nations. Never before has so much aid money been dumped into a single country. And yet, all of it somehow left Afghanistan as impoverished as ever and left the terrorists they were fighting in charge.

Instead of government wonks and military experts, this film asks the everyday Afghans and foreigners who lived through it what they witnessed. It goes beyond military and political analysis and provides insights into the much less reported – but no less murky – aid industrial complex.

The organisational systems that launched a war in Afghanistan and swooped in to save it only to leave it in shambles, are still running much of the West’s interventionist policies and foreign aid efforts today. We ignore the lessons from those 20 years at our own peril – and at a cost to how many more innocent bystanders?

This film gives us a deeper understanding of a past cause that our country sent people to fight and die for – the 20-year war in Afghanistan and the nation building that went into it. It leverages off this event to help our understanding of our current context and hopefully informs our future choices.

The film draws in audiences with the personal characters it portrays and through their highly-attuned perspectives, it offers a greater insight into many under-reported and under-scrutinised systems that arguably contributed to the catastrophic outcomes of the West’s foreign policy and aid work in Afghanistan. These systems still exist today and still carry out actions in our name.

This film will help people gain a more nuanced understanding of good vs bad in war, the work of aid organisations and humanitarian groups, the critical work or complicity of journalists in reporting on power, the importance of giving people a voice, and wether war can ever really be justified.

With a more informed society, the hope is that humans will move more in solidarity with each other and towards peace and stability. By understanding the massive military and humanitarian aid mechanisms of West, it is hoped that more pressure be brought to bear on governments to give an account and take responsibility for the great power they wield. This will only be done if people understand what is happening in their name.

Our director Travis and producer Catherine share a combined 15-year history of work and experience inside Afghanistan. Our Iranian-born executive producer Navid Bahadori has deep ties and interest in the geopolitical landscape in the region. Through their collective research and access to archive material throughout the 20-year war, the key elements of the film are covered. Their deep network of contacts in Afghanistan also gives the production unique access to partners with contemporaneous information and material as well as an ongoing wealth of knowledge and experience of living there. We enlisted Afghan advisors who we consulted to give feedback on all facets of the film.
The production has also partnered with Sound Central, a non-profit that historically hosted festivals, workshops and concerts for the Afghan youth. After the Taliban takeover in August 2021, Sound Central pivoted to helping evacuate and resettle Afghan musicians who wished to escape.

We want to provide audiences with engaging and in-depth information about what happened in Afghanistan, and provide more insight into the impact of war and the West’s efforts to shape lower income nations. We want to shed light on foreign policy and provide a platform to deepen our understanding of how it can impact generations. We also hope our film inspires more conversation around foreign policy. These aims could be reached through:
– hosting community screenings
– sparking interest for others to research the issues further
– hold more informed discussions with friends and family about the questions it raises
– write letters to political representatives about any proposed involvement in wars that Australia or other nations Australia might partner
– question our duty of care to the Afghan people that we made promises to
– encourage peaceful protest against injustice and corruption
– increase awareness of how financial aid to poorer economies might work in practice