The
film opens with a series of haunting war photographs. Over the carnage, George
W Bush says, ‘The United States will bring to the Iraqi people food and
medicines and supplies, and freedom.’ His voice dissolves into the high-pitch
of his co-conspirator, Tony Blair, who exalts his actions as ‘a fight for
freedom’ and ‘a fight for justice’.
Pilger asks ‘What are the real aims of this war and who are
the most threatening terrorists?' In a remote village in Afghanistan, he
interviews Orifa, who lost eight members of her family, including six children,
when an American plane dropped a 500-pound bomb on her mud-brick home. This is
juxtaposed with Bush telling Congress that the United States is ‘a friend to
the Afghan people’. Few countries have been helped less by the United States –
less than three per cent of all aid to Afghanistan is for reconstruction from
war damage.
Kabul, the capital, is a maze of destruction, with cluster
bombs not cleared from the city center and families living in abandoned
buildings. ‘I’ve spent much of my life in places of upheaval, but I’ve rarely
seen such a ruined city as Kabul,’ says Pilger, standing in a shoe factory
where the populations of two villages have squatted, destitute.
Most of
the damage was inflicted not by the ‘official enemy’, the Taliban, but by
warlords backed, trained and funded by the United States, who restored the
poppy harvests and opium trade, which the Taliban had banned.
Recalling the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Pilger
reveals that President Jimmy Carter signed a secret presidential decree authorizing
the bank-rolling of the warlords, known as the mujahedin, to fight the Red
Army. Among them, the CIA and Britain's MI6 trained Islamic extremists,
including Osama bin Laden, as part of what was called Operation Cyclone. From
this, says Pilger, ‘came the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and the attacks of September 11’.
The
Taliban were also secret friends the United States. Shortly after they took
power in Afghanistan, they were offered a bribe by the administration of
President Bill Clinton if they backed a plan for an oil pipeline from central
Asia through Afghanistan. However, when George W Bush became President, the
connection between Al-Qaeda and the Taliban was an embarrassment, and the tie
was cut.
Pilger's interviews with administration officials –
described by former CIA analyst Ray McGovern as ‘the crazies’ – are perhaps the
highlight of a film made when 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq were raw.
He interviews Under Secretary of State John Bolton, who was
Donald Trump's National Security Adviser. Bolton tells Pilger that the United
States has done more ‘to create conditions in which individuals can be free
around the world than any other country’.
When Pilger points to the US record of bombing countries
into submission, Bolton says, ‘Are you a Labour Party member… or a Communist
Party member?’ When Pilger replies that Tony Blair's Labour Party are his
allies, he says, ‘Oh, really?’
Of all Pilger's films about American foreign policy,
Breaking the Silence achieved something of a ‘cult’ status as counter-history
and was shown across the United States – thanks in part to Ray McGovern, who
took the film on a tour of campuses and small towns. ‘We warn people,’ he said,
‘about the crazies.’ Nothing, he might add today, has changed.
