‘The NATO Commander in Eastern Afghanistan has said that this year 54 foreign bases have already been closed…’
Last December Channel 4 aired a documentary entitled Billion Dollar Base: Deconstructing Camp Bastion, the predominating ‘takeaways’ from which were a) what phenomenal amounts of money we’d spent on our eight-year operation in and around Helmand Province, and b) how unimpressed the Afghan brass were by what ‘little’ we were leaving behind.
I found myself watching most of it through gritted teeth; but it was hard, nevertheless, not to have some sympathy for the incoming Afghan soldiery.
A new documentary film has now taken up that very story. Tell Spring Not to Come This Year (dir. Saeed Taji Farouky and Michael McEvoy) offers us a rare glimpse of the Afghan National Army – specifically, the heavy weapons company of the ANA’s 3/3/215 Corps, in Nahr-e-Saraj – as they take on the continuing Taliban (et al.)
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