Unembedded in Afghanistan.

"Afghanistan is safe," Laura Bush said after her six-hour visit to the country in April. "There are certainly parts of it that aren't right now. But, in general, I think it is a very safe place to travel."

Carmela Baranowska tells a different story from that of the First Lady in the documentary Taliban Country. The Australian filmmaker embedded with 800 U.S. Marines in Oruzgon province in May and June of 2004. After trekking with American troops, she returned to the isolated and dangerous region in central Afghanistan the Marines had dubbed "Taliban Country."

The film reveals an alliance between U.S. troops and a private army under the command of Governor Jan Mohammad, a man Baranowska calls "local warlord, police force, and judiciary." Mohammad is an imposing figure with his shocking white beard, dark green cloak and turban, and an AK-47 slung behind his back.

We don't see much of Mohammad's army, though there is a terrific scene of Marines sharing the lad mag FHM with the militia. Both the American and Afghan young men giggle over photos of bikini-clad women.

Mohammad is corrupt, and the Marines know that. "From the first day, I was overhearing conversations," Baranowska told The Progressive. "They would say to each other, 'Oh, the governor is shady. We're paying him to be our friend.'"

Opium poppy cultivation sky-rocketed in Oruzgon province in 2004, and we get a glimpse of the illicit drug production in the film. Marine Lieutenant Colonel Asad Khan jokes with a local leader about the nearby poppy fields. In the next scene, a Marine says to the Afghan militia: "Don't worry, when we're done with the war on terrorism, we'll start the war on drugs, and you're not going to be our friends anymore."

Weeks later, Baranowska revisits Oruzgon province. I want to find out the real story behind the American and militia operations," she says in the film. Traveling with her translator, her driver, and two armed policemen, the filmmaker wears a burqa.

She interviews people who were allegedly detained by the U.S. and their Afghan allies. One young man named Jannan says militia leader Jan Mohammad targets his village because he belongs to a different clan. "In searches in this area, they imprison people according to their tribe," Jannan says.

"When I went back independently, people were saying that if you didn't like someone you call them a Taliban," Baranowska told The Progressive. "And obviously there were Taliban in the area, but there were all these unanswered questions."

The Taliban are never captured on film. Yet their presence is felt. One militia commander acknowledges there may be a few Taliban sympathizers in his town. "Other than that, the people here are very poor and very helpless," he says.

Taliban Country reveals the desolate landscapes of central Afghanistan, a dusty place where neither the U.N. nor aid agencies work. Villages look barren, as only children and old men seem to inhabit them. Women are scarce.

More disheartening than the utter poverty is the torture, as told by Afghans. "We have no more honor," one man tells Baranowska regarding treatment in U.S. custody. "We'd prefer death to this humiliation."

In the village of Passau, a group of men hold up cards that read, "Enemy Prisoner of War. Department of Navy-Evidence Tag." The U.S. Central Command confirmed thirty-five men were detained in Passau.

Noor Mohammad Lala, an elderly man, quietly tells Baranowska what he claims happened to him when he was detained by the Marines: "They tied my hands and then they put me in a container. They removed my clothes. I pleaded through an interpreter that it was against Islam.... I couldn't see behind me, but someone was fingering me. Some of them were pulling my testicles." The Marines released him after three days of detention.

Baranowska passes through other villages and hears similar accounts. "In this remote corner of the country, Marines are turning the local people against them," she narrates.

The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission has catalogued at least 120 complaints of abuse by coalition forces, including excessive force and sexual abuse. An American reservist disclosed that rough treatment of prisoners was standard operating procedure at Bagram Air Base at his March military hearing on charges of involuntary manslaughter in the deaths of two Afghan detainees.

Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups have filed suit on behalf of prisoners who claim to have been abused in Iraq and Afghanistan. The ACLU also requested military documents regarding prisoner mistreatment under the Freedom of Information Act.

After Taliban Country aired on Australian television, the U.S. military ordered an investigation into the alleged abuses. Lieutenant Colonel Khan, who was in charge of the unit Baranowska embedded with, was fired and six Marines were reassigned. But the Jacoby Report, an official investigation of abuses in Afghanistan, has not yet been made public, despite its completion in July 2004.

Baranowska is pushing for an independent inquiry. She's been touring the United States and has begun discussions with Congressional staffers. "The more lack of public transparency and accountability, the more that these abuses will just keep continuing," she told The Progressive. "And that's what it means to have a culture of impunity."

Our government would have bus believe that we've brought democracy to Afghanistan, complete with presidential elections and girls going to school. But so much goes underreported: Parliamentary elections have once again been postponed; the U.S. military spends tens of millions of dollars to fortify its military bases there; Hamid Karzai appoints war criminals to his administration; and violence against women remains virulent.

"Democracy is more than just elections," Laura Bush said at a teacher training institute in Kabul. How true.

Elizabeth DiNovella is the culture editor of The Progressive. Carmel, Baranowska's website is www.talibancountry.com. To see government documents relating to treatment of detainees, log onto the A CLU website at www.aclu.org.