The final episode of Kabul pointedly soundtracks its opening scene with a speech given by George W Bush when America invaded Afghanistan in 2001. “The oppressed people of Afghanistan will know the generosity of America and our allies,” Bush’s teleprompter tells him to say. “The United States of America is a friend to the Afghan people.”
This taut six-part thriller, a pan-European co-production, is set in Afghanistan’s capital in August 2021, at the end of a 20-year western intervention that has, ultimately, not delivered the stated goal of freeing the country’s people from the fundamentalist authoritarianism of the Taliban regime. To the contrary, the Taliban are ready to install a more fearsome version of their old government as soon as the scheduled withdrawal of the Americans and their European allies takes place.
