FILMMAKER Ibrahim Nash’at risked his life to expose the bloodthirsty secrets of the Taliban – by living with the terrorists.
He captured astonishing footage of the terror group’s tyrannical rule in the fallen capital and told The Sun about what he saw.
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Nash’at, 34, was based at the abandoned CIA military airbase Hollywood Gate, where prominent Taliban figures set up camp after allied forces withdrew in August 2021.
His documentary – Hollywoodgate – follows Taliban Air Force commander Malawi Mansour and his cronies as they repair and harness some of the $7.2billion worth of US military equipment left behind in Afghanistan.
Shocking footage shows them sleeping in the American dorms, donning US army fatigues, trying out the gym and rifling through Western booze left behind in the fridge.
Nash’at had been pushing to film in the country for months before the chaos of the August withdrawal and as thousands scrambled to flee, he was fighting to go directly into the viper’s nest.
He managed to get approval for the project on the condition that he record only what the Taliban wanted him to see.
But the brave filmmaker made it a year in the private knowledge that his footage would not make a promo for the terror group – but reveal their inner workings.
On his last day, Nash’at filmed the huge Taliban parade to mark a year since they reclaimed full control of the country.
Thousands of fighters marched alongside scores of US tanks, rifles and planes in front of the group’s allies Russia, Iran and China who sent delegates to watch.
It was on that day, August 31, 2022, that the Taliban’s Secret Service asked him to report to their office with all of his footage.
Instead, Nash’at, sensing he had been “clocked”, finished filming and drove straight to the airport, fleeing the country on the first flight out.
Early on in the film, Taliban boss Mansour casually says in front of Nash’at that “if his intentions are bad, he will die soon.”
While the Egyptian filmmaker says he had to believe they wouldn’t kill him, he “never felt safe”.
In another scene one of the men says “that little devil is filming” – a frequent occurrence, Nash’at explains, that his friend and translator Adel, kept secret.
His life at the base was turbulent, sleeping whenever and wherever he was invited to, moving around a lot and constantly re-seeking permission to film.
Members of the Taliban would often grab his camera or utter death threats which he only learned about when editing the documentary at home in Berlin a year later.
Nash’at filmed them picking through the remnants of Western life left behind by the Americans – a fully-stocked medicine cabinet, an extensive gym, television rooms and still-decorated bedrooms.
He watched them repair rifles, trucks, tanks and airplanes – each time not believing they had the capacity to fix the larger and more complex pieces of kit.
Nash’at said his first thoughts as they pulled up to the abandoned base were, “how can this place even exist?”
“Because the Americans claimed that they destroyed everything behind them,” he told The Sun.
“There are weapons. And it seems like these weapons can be fixable.”
How was $7.12billion worth of US military kit left behind in Afghanistan?
BY Ellie Doughty, Foreign News Reporter
AFTER pulling out of Afghanistan, scores of American weapons and equipment were left behind in the hands of the very enemy the West had been trying to defeat in a war that raged on for two decades.
The Pentagon revealed in a 2022 report that roughly $7.12billion worth of military equipment given to the Afghan government over the course of 16 years was abandoned in the country.
The US gave some $18.6billion of kit to the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) between 2005 and 2021, the report seen by CNN said.
US military command said that it had all been rendered “impossible” to use.
But Nash’at’s film shows aircraft repairs being carried out, Taliban members driving in American tanks, flying American planes and carrying American guns.
Almost 80 aircraft were left abandoned with their control panels smashed out at an airbase north of Kabul in 2021.
Some 42,000 pieces of night vision, surveillance, biometric and position equiptment were also left behind.
Additionally some $48million worth of ammunition including 250,000 automatic rifles, 95 drones, and more than a million mortar rounds were ditched in the country, Foreign Policy reports.
On August 15 this year, the Taliban held a military parade in Bagram – another pivotal US air base.
Hordes of the militant fighters flouted Western guns, tanks, rockets and flags from atop US army tanks as they marked three years of a tyrannical rule.
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Early on in Nash’at’s time at the base, Mansour and his followers tour the extensive gym left intact by the Americans who fled.
He barks a series of orders at his henchmen as they saunter around the gym, turning their nose up at the Western kit.
Then he climbs onto a treadmill, uses it for a few minutes and in an ironic pivot away from Western-hating Taliban ideals, orders the men to put one in his home.
Nash’at said Mansour “directly understood that American soldiers used to train here”, and as a result wanted to train his men there too.
The Taliban fighters lived and slept at the base, even wearing American uniforms after branding the sleeves with their own flag.
The kitchen was still stocked with Western alcohol when they arrived, which they scoffed at, and there are scores of advanced medicines which Mansour initially says they ought to save and use.
But in the end they were all left unused and expired.
The Secret Service came to me and said, you have to come to our office tomorrow and bring all of your footage. I understood, this is a clock
Ibrahim Nash'at
Nash’at said: “They are able to fix Black Hawks… but not save the medicines.
“He focuses only on fixing the weapons… These medicines could have filled a hospital if they were saved.
“That is the kind of regime they are building.”
Over the 12 months he lived there, Nash’at filmed tense clashes inside the ruthless cult and watched their shift from a militia to a full-blown military regime.
He fled Afghanistan on August 31, 2022, after the Taliban worked out that he was not there to film a propaganda piece for them.
“I was clocked,” he said.
“The morning of the parade, the leaders, all of them came to the airport and they were sitting in one room.
“When I entered that room, the Secret Service came to me and said, you have to come to our office tomorrow and bring all of your footage.
“I understood, this is a clock. I know it’s going to go only down a step from that moment.
“So I said to myself, today is your last day of shooting.
“Do as much as you can. Finish everything. And the moment you’re done, you run to the airport and leave the country.
“By the time we got back to Kabul from the parade, I went to the airport and I fled the country.”
Nash’at said he had to believe while living with the Taliban that they wouldn’t kill him, to get through the fear.
He told his mum he was working on a job elsewhere – and kept his real location a secret from loved ones.
But he said he never felt safe.
“I didn’t think they would kill me”, he explained, but he feared they could arrest him.
“I had to try to be able to live within this very dangerous space. I had to convince myself every single day that I could survive,” he said.
“I accepted the risk that I took. I accepted that it was fearful to be there. I never felt safe.
“I’m dealing with people who are very impulsive.”
Nash’at said the parade he filmed on his last day in Afghanistan was surreal, facing the vast advancements the Taliban had snatched upon by fixing US kit.
He said: “That same person who is incapable of doing anything in my eyes has been able to work with a team to fix all of these airplanes that were officially announced by the US that they would never be fixed.
“I was afraid seeing all of that running, knowing how powerful they have become. And I was very sad that Afghans have to face that.”
I accepted the risk that I took. I accepted that it was fearful to be there. I never felt safe
Ibrahim Nash'at
Speaking of the planes, Nash’at said: “I never expected that they would fix any.
“Even there was one scene when he was walking, Mansour was walking with the head of the technical team that’s fixing the airplane.
“And he was like, did you fix the Black Hawks? And he said, yes.
“And he’s like, now focus on the F-35 bombers. I thought that he was just talking nonsense.
“When I saw them flying, I realised that I just underestimated the people in front of me.”
The last scene of the film is shot inside a car with two senior Taliban members as they head back to the base from the parade.
One of them, speaking on the phone to someone from the Defence Ministry in Tajikistan, says: “You claim to protect your territory, yet you harbour our enemies.
“You have gone too far. We caught some of those your harboured and they confessed.
“And we ended their existence on earth.”
The Sun has reached out to the Pentagon for comment on the weapons left behind in Afghanistan.
- Ibrahim Neshat will be in conversation at Curzon Hoxton on the October 3. Hollywoodgate is part of BBC Storyville’s Autumn Season