Episode 10 BBC News: The Editors

Hello. Welcome to Kabul. Could the Taliban capture Afghanistan again

when the Americans and British leave at the end of this year? Are there

down sides to being upwardly mobile? Would Scottish independence be bad

for sport in Scotland and in the rest of Britain?

. Afghanistan has gone through some

terrible fighting and many extraordinary changes in the last 30

years. From 1996 to 2001 it was ruled by the Taliban who turned it

into the most extreme religious State on earth. When I used to come

here in those years you could be whipped or executed for showing an

ankle, for whistling a tune or for having a picture of a living

creature. There was little electricity and almost no petrol. At

night I remember noticing the loudest sound was the barking of

dogs and the only light came from candles in people's windows. When

the Taliban were driven out in 2001, I assumed like most people, they

were completely finished. But when the British and Americans leave at

the end of this year, is there a chance that the Taliban might

actually come back? Most people outside Afghanistan feel

they know what has gone on here. Their assumption is the British and

Americans ignoring all the warnings of history became bursting in,

fought an unnecessary war, infuriated the inhabitants and are

leaving with their tails between their legs.

But if this is true, how come so many people here are hoping

President Karzai will sign a new security deal with the Americans to

keep some US troops here? TRANSLATION: If the British and the

Americans are here, the Afghanistan economy is strong. Otherwise, it is

weak. Tell Karzai to sign the agreement and then Afghanistan will

be peaceful. Otherwise it won't and when you leave, there will be

anarchy again. This country remains dirt-poor, but

it is teaming with enterprise. When the Taliban took over 18 years ago,

the economy collapsed. Millions of people fled abroad taking their

money and possessions with them. Not surprisingly, most people here dread

any thought of going back to all that. And this isn't some

pro-Western revisionist propaganda, it is what people in the streets are

saying openly. TRANSLATION: What do the Taliban do

here? They oppress people. They beat them with cables. People couldn't

work and in the name of Muslims, they killed hundreds of people every

day. TRANSLATION: 100% I'm worried and

the people are worried. Everyone is concerned, young and old. The people

of Afghanistan are worried about the Taliban coming back.

After a 35 dreadful years of chaos and civil war, things are starting

to improve. Entrepreneurs and businessmen, even some business

women are setting up here. We went to the trading rooms of a n Afghan

con conglomerate. My main concern is what my Government implement for

investor-friendly policies for us to continue the business and grow? We

have come a long way for us to return back to the 1990s or the

early 2000 decade. I'm not going to rule out a bumpy road ahead, but

going back to civil war seems a far, far scenario right now because the

reality is different on the ground. The Taliban believe that women

should be kept out of sight indoors. They the don't want them to get an

education. OK, we have distributed the papers to you and if right now

you have any sort of questions related to your examination, you can

ask me right now. At this private university in Kabul, hijab, covering

the head and sometimes the face is the rule, but not even the more

Islamist students want to see the Taliban back. They will limit the

freedom of women which Islam let's us free to study, let's us free to

work and let's us to go anywhere that we want, but Taliban will take

all these rights from us. We just want an Islamic Government,

nothing else. Otherwise as they did before, if they come back to power

and they do the things they did before, then we don't want them and

they shouldn't come back. Kabul isn't like Baghdad. It is not

usually dangerous for westerners to be out in the streets and although

there has been suicide bombings in the past few years, the police

manage to keep the level of violence here under control. We are driving

to the head quarters of the police Rapid Reaction Force. The Americans

have he trained and equipped them well and they are a pretty

impressive group. In the old days the Kabul police were feeble and

easily bought off, now they are a lot more formidable and their

commanders are more confident as a result.

TRANSLATION: We are not scared of the Taliban or criminals.

Round-the-clock, we are searching for them. Wherever we find their

networks, then we will immediately destroy them. Could you imagine the

possibility that the Taliban might come back and take power again?

TRANSLATION: The Taliban can never come to power again. They wander

like thieves catching up and the national army and the police are

able to destroy them. God willing. They face a real and growing

challenge as the recent restaurant bombing in Kabul showed. But over

the years, they proved quite effective at the difficult job of

combatting Taliban infiltration in Kabul. Is it the same in the country

as a whole though? Well, it depends where you go, of course, but in

places like Helmand province the Taliban have thoroughly established

themselves, in spite of British and American intervention. This part of

it, thattedy ally isn't safe for westerners so we asked an Afghan

cameraman to film for us. It is classic guerrilla territory. These

are Afghan forces and roadside bombs are set for them. They have just

covered a cache of explosives. Government controls the roads, more

or less, the Taliban have the run of the hinter land, but when the

western troops leave, will the Taliban be able to take over?

Most people here would say, no. The Taliban haven't given a formal

interview for over a year, but their spokesman agreed to talk to us by

phone. TRANSLATION: The vast swathes of

Helmand are under our control. The districts which are under control of

the enemy, that's like a checkpoint and they cannot get out of them.

They cannot move freely. The places which are far away from t centres

are under our control and the presence of the Taliban is

completely clear. Do you really think that the Taliban will ever

take power again? TRANSLATION: We are confident of

victory from the historical point of view, Afghanistan has always

defeated occupiers. We are sure they will be defeated and the Afghan

people will again bring about an Islamic system according to their

wishes. Would the Taliban bring back those

same kind of extreme punishments that were obvious in Afghanistan

from 1996? TRANSLATION: They can't be changed

because the Islamic Law is constant. When there is a crime, we have to

implement Islamic Sharia. Of course, there will be changes in behaviour,

but the law will be as before. We are sure that society is ready for

that. Afterwards, thinking it over, I felt

that although a lot of this was propaganda, we shouldn't altogether

forget that when the Taliban made similar claims in the early 1990s,

they were just laughed at. In some ways, the reality in Afghanistan is

the reverse of what outsiders imagine. It is the western

Governments which are desperate to get their troops out and a large

number of Afghans who would prefer them to stay. There is a good chance

that the British and the Americans, after they have left, will just

forget about Afghanistan. It is what happened in Iraq, after all. And

ever since the 1970s, whenever the outside world has ignored

Afghanistan, disaster has invariably followed.

This is the most expensive part of Kabul. The houses here, may not look

all that much, but they would set you back a cool $1 million and they

are amazingly furnished inside. It is a natural human instinct for us

to want to do better for ourselves and our children. We call it social

mobility now a days, but does that involve cutting yourself off from

your roots, your past, your family? Reeta Chakrabarti wonders if being

upwardly mobile has its down sides? Social moct, the journey up from one

class to another, is always talked of as a good thing. There is little

surprise in that. Who in this day and age would argue that society

should be static? Governments are held to account over

it and politicians argue over how farther making progress. The idea

that where you have come from should affect your life chances is viewed

as deeply wrong by most people. The up sides of opportunity are obvious,

but there are down sides to social mobility too? Moving up and out of

the class you were born in to can be like a one way ticket, you leave

behind family, friends and culture in what can be a rupture with the

past. It is a story very familiar to

Damien Barr, he is a successful writer and was brought up near

Motherwell in Glasgow in the shadow of the steelworks where his father

worked until it was shut over 20 years. His childhood was poor and

sometimes brutal with one of his mother's partner violent to him. He

remains loyal to his family, but he apyred for more. Back at Damien's

old secondary school, where he was celebrated as one to watch. He left

it behind now and become part of literary London. Where are you on

the board here? Which year? I am 1993. It still makes me feel proud

and it is all going to be there. I am always going to be the best in my

class. Your first by line. His past life haunted him and last year, he

published his memoir, a dark and touching account of growing up in

Margaret Thatcher's Scotland in the 1980s. The culture that I grew up

in, it was very macho, it was very homophobic. I could see where I was

from and I knew that that is not where I wanted to be. So the

question we are asking is there there down sides to social mobility

and you clearly think, there are? Of course, there are. You pay a price.

Social mobility has a kind of tax attached to it if you like, an owe

motional tax which I think everybody who has made that progression up or

down has had to pay. So when you went off to university, it was as if

you had a presentament? Tell me about that? I bawl all the way to

Edinburgh and my dad did too. This is what I wanted to. This is my

dream come true. I'm going to the uni. I'm going to become a

journalist and yet I felt sad. I felt a loss. I was grieving. I knew

really, actually there I think and then that I was leaving them behind

and it was a kind of grief and you have to explain your life now. I

remember I got, when I got a first and I called my mum up and I was so

excited and I was like, "Mum, mum, I've got a first." She didn't know

what that meant. Burnley in Lancashire suffered a slow decline

over many years as ambitious young people left. A report in 2010

singled it out as having the highest proportion of low skilled workers in

Britain. Last year, Burnley suffered the indignity of being named in the

Economist magazine as a decaying city. It said its people should be

helped to move to find jobs. Empty houses, abandoned streets, the signs

of an exodus from Burnley are all around. This is a previously proud

industrial city that suffered badly and skilled and talented people have

simply moved on. But Steve, the Chief Executive of

the council, says there are exciting things going on in Burnley now and

this new university technical college, built in one of the city's

old cotton mills is a case in point. Teenagers here are caughth taught

the technical skills they need to progress and it is part of Burnley's

attempt to overcome the problems of its recent past. The problem has

been about jobs, frankly and about to some extent that's linked to

education. So young people particularly, but the general

population too, when they have had opportunities to become economically

active outside the borough and that led them to move away. Is it too

cruel to suggest there was a flight of the middle classes from Burnley?

Flight of middle classes I wouldn't characterise it as that, what I

would characterise it as is flight of people that could get

economically active again and that led them elsewhere and that's, I

think, the reality. The key to all this is to make you are sure the

opportunities exist. We're doing that and that should turn into an

up-turn in population over the next ten years.

Terry Christian shot to fame in the early 1990s as a presenter on the

cult youth word The Word. He is a Lancashire man born and brought up

in Manchester and he still lives here having never wanted the sort of

life he saw in London. He had a successful career in the media and

is well, a little conflicted about what he is now. So Terry, you are a

middle-class boy, are you? Well, I suppose in terms of my lifestyle,

sort of ground coffee rather than instant and living in leafy Cheshire

and people call you a champagne socialist and I have never felt

anything other than working class. In some waysks you took your values

from the area you grew up and your respect for people. So we're asking

the question, are there down sides to social mobility? I think there

are from a personal prospective because when you get to that

promised land, it is not all that it is cracked up to be. It seems that

the assets are the skill sets that will help you become socially

mobile, aren't you being smart or good at your job, it is about you

being ambitious, greedy and competitive.

You sound con testimony tuous social mobility? This idea why can't you be

socially mobile by caring for people? Profit is that matters.

People making money is all that matters. Everything else, well it is

nonsense. The bright lights of big cities such

as here in Manchester are always going to be attractive to the young

and the ambitious, but being upwardly mobile is clearly a complex

business. It is a reminder to all of us pursuing a better life that it

can lead to a loss of identity or to civic decline or simply perhaps to a

sense of disenchantment, opportunity and achievement are great, but

sometimes it seems social mobility can bring a whole new set of

challenges all of its own. This is the national football

stadium in Kabul. A place of both evil memory and of hope. Evil

because this is where the Taliban used to execute their prisoners.

Hope because Afghanistan started playing international matches here

and has been given FIFA's coveted Fair Play Award for doing it.

Afghanistan isn't exactly a sporting giant, of course, but like everyone

else it will soon start thinking about the team it will send to the

2016 Olympics. And those Olympics will have real significance for the

United Kingdom, of course, with the referendum on Scottish independence

due later this year there is a genuine possibility that Scotland

will be represented separately from England and Wales and Northern

Ireland at the Olympics, but would that be good for sport in Scotland

and the rest of Britain? The question for our sports editor,

David Bond. Would London be the last time we see

this? Athletes from England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland

marching into an Olympic Stadium behind one flag. 2012 was not only a

record-breaking Games for Team GB, it marked a moment when the UK truly

came together. Later this year, Scotland will be

asked whether it wants to go its own way? I suppose sport may not be as

important as questions of defence or the economy. But for many people, it

can stir far deeper passions. Sport here in Scotland is seen as a great

source of national pride and for some, the referendum in September is

viewed as an opportunity to build on that sense of national identity, but

pulling Scotland out of the British sports system is still a huge leap

into the unknown. Sir Matthew Pinsent is worried about the future

for Team GB without Scottish involvement. The difficulty is

trying to imagine a scenario where they would be the same, separated

off from Britain and Team GB would definitely feel their loss.

Imogen is one of Great Britain's leading badminton players. And is

tipped to win a medal for Scotland in the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow

this summer. Like all of Scotland's top sports stars, she has the luxury

of choice. She can stay in Scotland at the same time as tapping into the

far better resourced UK elite system. Would you describe yourself

as a Scot or a Brit or both? How do you see that? Both. Obviously I

represent Scotland. I am a Scottish badminton player and I live here, I

have spent more of my adult life in England. I trained in England. I had

an English partner and I feel British as well. I feel like I have

a dual identity in that sense. And you like that and you want that to

stay the same? I think, again, I think we have the best of both

worlds to complete for Scotland and have the opportunity to represent

Great Britain as part of Team GB. That's how it is for me. At the

Edinburgh track club they have been producing top athletes for years.

The 1980 Gold Medallist, Alan Wells started here. Money is already tight

and there are deep concerns at what might happen to the next generation

if an independent Scotland struggled to maintain current funding levels.

Bill Walker is the club's head coach. At the moment, you know, the

money, well we get a lot of support from England, the coaches, they come

up here and give us a lot of help and we don't have the depth of

coaches at a high level in Scotland or the depth of the athletes to

cover all the events. We have got good athletes, but not in every

event and therefore to put a team together would be difficult.

But what does the possible end of Team GB mean for those young Scots

dreaming of competing in the Olympics? Scotland could compete on

its own stage in the Olympics if they were a load to. That could be

my only chance as a sprinter. It gives you a lot more respect if you

compete for Team GB as well. Competing for Scotland is good, but

you kind of get a lot more honour and stuff if you are in Team GB. For

now, thoughts of the Olympics are taking a back seat. In July, Glasgow

will host the Commonwealth Games and provide Scots with another

opportunity to perform in front of a home crowd. This brand-new velodrome

will be one of the main attractions during the summer's Commonwealth

Games and the Scottish Government hope the national passion that will

be generated here will have a big impact on the referendum. For some,

the Games and investment in new facilities like the Sir Chris Hoy

velodrome and the Emirates Arena are evidence that Scotland can be

self-sufficient when it comes to sport. The budget is nearly all

coming from Scottish public money. Well, I think that sport, there is a

range of issues that people are concerned with in terms of... The

former First Minister is leading a Scottish Government study into the

future of sport. He is confident that when it comes to sport an

independent Scotland would be able to stand on its own two feet. Do you

think it will be harder in the future to provide a Chris Hoy, a

Kath Grainger if you come out of the Team GB system? No, I don't. I'm

firm in that resolve. In the sense it might be harder, it is tougher,

there is coaching, there is investment and infrastructure, but

I'm struck by football. Football is not the best example, but being a

small country, it is as big as our imagination wants to be, as our

ambition wants to be, whether it is yes or no in September, I believe

Scotland will have a great sporting future. Scotland's sporting ambition

then is clear, but how would the Scottish Government turn promises

and aspirations into a proper infrastructure to help deliver on

the ambitions? The country's Sports Minister is certain Scottish

athletes won't be disadvantaged. In the event of a yes vote, we will

work very closely together to make it work. I see sport being a very

important part of that. Our priority will be establishing our new

Scottish Olympic team and Paralympic team. There maybe opportunities for

us to work together across these islands and I'm up for that

conversation. Even if Scotland votes yes, athletes will be given the

choice to compete for a new Team Scotland or stick with Team GB. For

some, it raises the prospect of a very difficult decision. I believe

that many of those athletes will want to compete for Team Scotland on

the first Olympic team that Scotland would produce. There would be such

an exment around that, but if athletes choose to go elsewhere,

that's a matter for them if they qualified tor Team GB, that would be

a matter for them, but I have no doubt that the excitement of

competing for a Scottish Olympic team would be a huge draw for many,

man athletes in Scotland. This debate about sporting identity

reflects the far wider questions facing this country. But whichever

way the vote goes, one senses 2014 will not only be a big year for

Scottish sport, it could be an important one for British sport too.

I have never seen this city, Kabul, so active and prosperous, but it is

distinctly nervous at the same time. This year will bring a new president

and by the end of it, Afghanistan will be on its own without British

and American troops. Are the nearly 40 years of violence and civil war

coming to an end? Well, let's hope so. But this time the outside world

mustn't forget Afghanistan. That's it from this Kabul edition of The

Editors. Until we meet again, goodbye.