A crash course on a crushed civilisation

Bitter Lake (2015)
Written and Directed: Adam Curtis

The latest offering by Adam Curtis puts in perspective the genesis of the present-day firebrand fundamentalistic Islam that seem to rock the world and give other law-abiding Muslims a bad name. The author sets the blame squarely on the Saudi rulers for their efforts to spread Wahhabism.

After World War 2, King Abdul Aziz of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) met FD Roosevelt aboard a ship on Bitter Lake in Suez Canal to strike a deal. The Americans were free to bring in money and technology to have their oil as long as the royal family was free to spread Wahhabism to the world. Splurge with oil money, KSA built many madrasahs in many countries, from Africa to the Indian subcontinent all the way to Indonesia. Hence started the nidus for the yearning for the practice of a primitive non-progressive 10th-century type of religion and total rejection imperialism, which is construed as corrupting Islam.

Meeting at Bitter Lake … 

President Franklin Roosevelt (right) meets King Abdulaziz. 

Photograph: Courtesy Everett / Rex

In 1953, Afghanistan was ruled by a forward-thinking King Zahir Shah, who was keen to develop a modern Afghanistan. First, he wanted to irrigate the near-desert lands by building a dam. He was impressed with FDR and his ways of turning America around after the depression. Hence, the same construction company that made megastructures in the USA, Morrison Knudsen, built their dam. As fate had it, as in the construction of dams worldwide, it proved to be a curse to the country. The structure was frauded with problems. Salination of water made agriculture problematic. Only poppy could grow well! It drew unwanted characters to the area. Power struggling warlords mushroomed. Over time, the region became a political interplay between the US, USSR and China.

By the 60s, KSA was flushed with oil money. The British, by then, had its empire carved away was in dire straits. The British businesses wanted to bring the oil money back to the UK. They started happily selling their arms to KSA, who by then had a new king, King Faizal, who was keen to modernise his country. To satisfy certain quarters which were not happy with modernisation, he financed the spread of Wahhabism to lands far away. The Western world was quite pleased with such an arrangement, as communism was spreading its influence.

The cosy relationship with the UK came to an end during the 1967 Arab-Israel war when the British weaponry proved useless against the Israelite might. The Americans were summoned to fill in the blanks.

At about this time, the banks became powerful again, away from the control of governments. They became corrupt, lending money to many whose creditworthiness was questionable. Wages were low to the masses, but they were happy because money was abundant. It all came crashing down when the banking system later crashed, exposing its weaknesses.

The stabilising power of the  Afghan King came to an end after a coup d'état by Mohd Daud, a Pashtun minister. Russians moved in, breaking the delicate balance of the country. Just like the British who discovered the hard way, some 150 years previously, Afghanistan was no easy country to tame. The Russian invasion had awoken the web of Wahhabi infused madrasah students the world over to pour into Afghanistan to fight an infidel army and plant an Islamic rule. The Americans were more than happy to finance these Mujahideen rebels.

The problem is that the rebels started dividing into many factions and infighting when the Russians were defeated by their common army. Each section wanted its share of power and poppy trade. The West soon discovered the mistake of oversimplifying the war in Afghanistan as a fight between 'good and evil'. There were many layers of resistance along the way. The lust for power, control, dangerous levels of corruption, profiteering and apocalyptical Islamism proved just too much for the policemen of the world to stomach as the bodies kept piling up.