fourteen people are killed in an air strike in the province of afghanistan. investigative journalist group redfish shines a light on germany's arms trade claiming that not everything is aboveboard. white house threatens to revoke the security clearance of former intelligence chiefs of openly criticized donald trump. well for the latest on these stories you can head to our to dot com coming up though the director of a new t.v. show about british jihadi converts is the guest on.

sophie shevardnadze as propaganda has entrapped a lot of men and women of european origin enticing them to join the terror called there are you topping promises. of the golden globe and bafta winning british director spent months researching their stories and just recently presented a film this state about. travel to this law mixtape well he's my guest today. and those are the tyrion state based on public ultraviolet existing only to wage war and sleep everyone around the price this may seem like hell to most people but its claim to pure islam never failed to attract supporters from around the world what happens to the new recruits once they get to the caliphate what is life like under the strict moral police and the constant threat of an airstrike. what happens

to those who share their religions about this running state after the rise of. characters minsky welcome to the show it's really great to have you on our program so perry your film this state which is about british muslims going to join isis has been criticized for giving terrorists a human face now i get it that you wanted to nuanced look you wanted the people to understand more about the issue how do you poor the public to relate so go to join isis where do we even begin to sympathize with people who join a death cult how do you find the human angle there well it's difficult obviously and i think asking people to sympathize with them is difficult. the problem with facing over here in this country is that there's a very sort of simplistic response to some of these incidents which is they're all insane they're all mad and we just kind of dismiss what's happening in that way i

don't think that does a service to those who suffered and been injured and died at their hands actually i think we need to try to have a slightly more nuanced understanding of why people might possibly choose to do this thing and so we've attempted through extensive research to create characters that are a little bit more realistic a little bit closer to the types of people who actually did decide to travel to syria back in twenty fourteen twenty fifteen. but whether you end up actually sympathizing with them that's another matter but then for isis right all publicity is it doesn't really matter whether the picture fighters or there are threats how do you feel about giving them what they actually want. well i suppose the first thing to say is that the version of isis that we're depicting effectively no longer exists you know the characters the fictional composite characters we've created are all likely dead now either died in battle or died in the bombing campaign so.

that version of isis as a caliphate as a state. no longer exists so what they want or don't want in that manifestation is rather moot but in the end i wasn't really aiming this i wasn't thinking about the needs and desires and wishes of devices of the islamic state when i was making this program i was thinking about my audience the audience in the united states because america co-founded this project. trying to tackle the view we have of these events and let's not forget of course. that this terrorism is has now been imported back onto the streets of cities in western europe so it's a very real and live issue for us and understanding the process is actually quite important dramas job is to hold a mirror up to society in my view and nobody could deny that this is

a pretty important part of what's going on in our society at the moment so you answer seismic times that your drama would serve as you would hope that you would serve as a sort of anti recruitment video for islamic state do you feel at this point it was actually perceived as such. well the reaction of the audience was interesting and complicated because the first episode given that this four part drummer is shown from the point of view of the recruits and we were following extensive research very carefully the first part of the drum is almost like a celebration it ends with a fairly euphoric feeling of arrival of acceptance into a bounder brothers a band of sisters and the reaction to that was. certainly in some aspects of the british press at least furious hysterical because as the as the subsequent

episodes go on and you start to see the disillusionment of these young brits. you see the way in which a determination to join the islamic state survives a direct confrontation with the islamic state itself. disillusionment sets in and in the end. a number of them attempt to leave and that overall shape coming through the series as a whole was probably gave our audience a more realistic sense of the reality of life in the islamic state so what about the want to be terrorists i mean surely amongst your audience were people who were just about to go and join isis do you think having seen the film some of them were like well you know what i'm not doing this i would have thought so of course it's very difficult to tell because these people are not easy to identify. but. if they were drawn in by the first episode and then watched in two episodes two three and

four and saw the reality of life and they would have seen a number of things in there that they would have known from the research is were accurate because we were very very careful to get this is accurate as we could yes i think they would have had second and third thoughts about going out but of course as a said earlier you know the the concept of of a caliphate in iraq or in syria and in iraq essentially no longer exists now so i understand there is this desire for a sense of community belonging that is partially responsible for people joining isis going to isis but british or european muslims have a well established quite large squad all committed at home right i have in their program some time ago about how some british suburbs are actually having sharia law as their own sharia law us so what is it that they're looking in ice is that they

don't get at home in terms of community and belonging. that's a very good question if you talk to people who've been tempted by. harpist interpretation of islam. what's interesting and particularly interesting about the people who made the decision to travel is that their association with their faith was shallow these are often recent converts to islam from another religion or no religion. they were people who had been born muslim but it had no real connection with their faith until relatively recently when they'd almost been born again to steal a phrase from another faith. so these are not typical of british muslims or french muslims or american muslims or i would have to say russian

muslims. in fact everything our research gave us suggested that the deeper your knowledge of islam is the less likely you are to be tempted so to think of these people as muslims in the wider sense is misleading these are often people who have come to a position of extreme interpretation of his of islamic faith for a variety of complicated reasons not necessarily to do with the religion itself but peter isis advertise itself with the images of her visit while ns anyone who's anyone has seen it i've seen it my friends of scenario we're not you know one of iraq how can people who go to join them claim that they didn't know what they were joining how can there be disillusionment when the beheading videos don't exactly create a picture of what stuck in syria. i know it's

a very good question but when you talk to people who are tempted to travel or have travelled it's very interesting the very last thing they focus on is the violence that's not to say that they claim to have been unaware of the violence but it's not i mean of course there are exceptions of course there were psychopaths among those who traveled but i'm not really talking about that group. it's interesting how rarely they cite the violence as as any factor at all in their decision to go they talk about the kinds of things you mention they talk about feeling of racism in the country from which they come they took about feeling of isolation of not of being seen as other of not being part of of of the community of the country from which they come they talk about seeking a band of brothers a band the sisters where there's a camera artery a sense of fellow feeling whether it be welcomed or not criticized and won't come

in for race discrimination of any kind or religious persecution of any kind they think of it about in terms of community of course when they get there the daily reality of violence and cruelty and corruption and all the other aspects of the islamic state that we show in the drama are forced in upon them so it's not to say that they would claim that they weren't aware of it but it wasn't uppermost in their mind when they made the decision to travel. i understand everything you're saying but it's still mind boggling to me how can they overlook that kind of violence how can that be the last thing on their mind will bear in mind that. i underline what i said just a few moments ago that these are people whom might have only relatively recently come to an understanding of islam remember that when a couple of guys from britain were stopped at the airport on the way to syria they were found to have

a book. islam for dummies in their backpack. but they are told that this particular interpretation of islam not only condones this level of violence but mandates it now of course as any. mainstream muslim will tell you this is a very very particular and unreliable interpretation of of muslim scripture but these people without a very deep knowledge of their faith are talking to. clerics and to members of their own peer group who are telling them that this level of violence is mandated as part of god's law. and of course little phrases can be found just as phrases can be found in the bible which guarantee. extraordinary outrageous punishments. seem to support this kind of action but of course when they get out

there having been born and brought up in a different kind of culture. some of the iniquities some of the cruelties and some of the corruption and the and the misuse of power that they see works on them and this is why i say the film in the end is about how a conviction to join and to support the islamic state form outside the islamic state survives. the direct meeting with. the islamic state right peter we're going to take a short break right now while we're back we'll continue talking to peter as lewinski acclaimed british director of a controversial t.v. miniseries about experiences of british records stay with us.

welcome guys are. looking forward to. this is what happens to pensions in britain. you watch tries a report. if . you could. go to that. you could. do it only if we.

ask you to do it it's really true you know if. you. want to go to. google to one of the most. we're back with peter golden globe winning director of the state t.v. series which tells the story of british jihadists in their ranks of islamic state in syria peter welcome back now eighteen months of research went into this film you

conducted interviews but i know from your previous work such as to promise you take great care with visuals that you based a visual as a real live footage you've got to have seen so many of the islamic state videos and it's impossible to watch all that gore abou hait story about how were you not throwing up all the time how did you manage to pull through. well thank you for asking that question is not one i'm often answered but of course you're absolutely i'm often asked but you know of course you're absolutely right to prepare the program i had to look at a lot of material listened to a lot of material and also read a lot of material that that was appalling. and not only that when you get these images into your head and of course the images that i was huma far more graphic than anything i could include in a in a television program for

a general audience you can't get those images out of your head i remember years ago i made a t.v. series produced television about child abuse and of course i had to direct actors to play abuses which meant i had to read quite a lot of material produced by psychologists who are working with child abusers and i had young children my own at the time and these ideas when you read the stuff you can't get it out of your head you know it's disturbing material and i had that same experience again doing the research for the state somehow i suppose i try to i try to compartmentalize things that to do is work and things that have to do with my ordinary life and my family and my loved ones. but i've got to write these characters i've got to direct actors playing these characters i need to see what they see and know what they know if i'm going to write their responses

realistically it's difficult to do that you know from a certain tree position hiding behind the sofa so exactly the research for the state comes from real people who want to eyes as you talk to those people was it hard for them to relieve this things where they were panicked and or defiant i don't know. one of the advantages of working. in drama compared with what you do in real journalism if you like is that we are able to offer people the opportunity to talk off the record because no one has to go on camera on camera for you no one has ever quoted none of this material is every used in a book or a newspaper article it's surprising how many people who are prepared people who are prepared to talk under those of the record circumstances and one of the undertakings we give is that we just won't talk about it now your question of

course completely reasonable but then it leads to the next question and the next question and before i know it i'm talking to you about where we met these people and the kinds of people they were and i've just given them my undertaking. that i won't do that so all i can do is ask you to trust me that we did our research very thoroughly in extensively it was checked obviously by channel four as lawyers so they see all the research material but beyond that i'm not really going on that subject ok let me turn the question around then what did you feel when you were coming to interview them after all they are former terrorists you said it's hard to be objective about i says and you know i totally agree i get it but how did you talk to them if you weren't objective about who they are first of all i can't claim that i did most of these interviews myself i had a very good research team who were picked. because they were rather better at this

kind of thing than i am but my approach with all these things is. keep one's eye on the prize you know and the prize here is to try to increase human understanding i found a very prevalent attitude amongst my own peer group which was that these people who go out there are insane are psychotic. although as i said earlier there are undoubtedly some examples of their in the main that's not the case if i'm going to try to help us understand that how can we combat if we can't understand if we refuse to understand or try to understand then i have to talk to these people and there's no point going in with a hostile or aggressive attitude to sort of prove my attitude my antipathy to who they are what they're saying if you're going to talk to people you better talk to them properly and hear their side of the story so i keep my eye on the prize which is to try to increase understanding i don't believe in us standing in our

respective trenches and bellowing at each other or or firing sidewind of missiles at each other i don't think that helps in the long run so. obviously they were all very different people with different backgrounds and i'm not asking for any names or any specifics but just in your opinion what did you notice dale had in common well very interesting question and of course there's been quite a bit of academic research about this and as far as i could see they had very little in common they came from. well to do backgrounds they came from economically challenged backgrounds they were. children of first generation immigrants and they were what you might call caucasian indigenous white british people they were people of limited academic attainment and quite high academic achievers attainment amongst the people whose interviews we read and and who we actually interviewed ourselves

the only common factor that i found and i referred to it earlier is that they have a shallow. association with the faith rather than being people who had years and years of study of prayer in mosques those types of people tended not to travel. so man will go to ices to five have sex slaves have friends comrades why do women go i says is clear they should only expect a full on veil in a marriage nothing else what so paling about that. it is hard to understand i agree somebody told me a story during the research which i found helpful i don't know if if you will. talking about the kinds of guy that young british muslim women were looking for. course in my day it was a sort of biker type you know type that your mother wouldn't like really but what i

was told from a pretty reliable source was that what a lot of young british muslim women are looking for now is the devout guy the guy who prays five times a day and that it seemed to be an almost disneyesque quality to some of the attitudes that we were reading expressed online from women who are contemplating going out there is this phrase which kept cropping up of wanting to be a lioness amongst lions this play remender sized view of the muslim warrior extremely devout praying five times a day going into battle risking his own life for his faith. the idea of wanting to be associated with a figure like that in a quite wide died way that a lot of modern british women you know for heart for equality would find very hard

to understand i'm not saying that's the case in every case and in fact one of the characters i've depicted is a very different type of woman from that but that came across pretty strongly in the research so this law makes states so-called version of islam claims to be extremely traditional with a focus on family life but what's the most poignant thing for me about this whole thing is how families power over children is being superseded by the so-called state how does it happen by force. i'm not exactly sure what you mean but certainly it is interesting to see the children of some of the people who migrated out there appearing on film on television. seriously propagandist. i saw it here going to mean is that once yes you are part of isis and you have a family there your children don't belong to you they belong to state and they get to do whatever the state tells them to do and you don't really have much right to

say no i don't want my kid to do this or that. well from research we carried out the children do continue to live with their parents it's not a collective education in the sense of you know the old fashioned kibbutz in israel or something like that which literally lived apart from their parents but at ten young boys are taken off a military training and we depict that in the show. and at that point of course they are there in residential training therefore directly exposed day and night to the indoctrination associated with the people running the islamic state and of course parental influence is much reduced at that point. also the state has given me an idea of many things i didn't realize for instance the daily routine of the recruits i mean it's kind of like communism the lives of the jihadi fighter doesn't go just in trenches but in

a cosy house where the wives and maids and the so-called you have a brides don't have to pay for anything when they come i mean seriously communism i was wondering who supports them and only who pays for the house where did you have is and you had rights get money to buy things. or remember that this drummer is set in twenty fifteen in the relatively early period when people from all over europe including russia traveled to syria to join the islamic state and as you know. the fighters of the islamic state spread very quickly across vast areas of terrain in syria and in iraq and over around mosul which the second city of iraq and as i understand it. everything was left so the banks were left full of gold and then of course they had access to the oil fields. so

they continue to sell oil bizarrely to to the assad regime. sworn enemy is so you know there was a certain pragmatism there it would seem. and as a result of this in the early stages they were they had a great deal of money so money was handed out fairly freely and of course. because of the ethnic cleansing that took place. people fled their homes. and these foreign jihadists much you had seen. and their partners were able to move into those vacated properties some of which were extremely looked juris so yes in those early days there was a great deal of money and a great deal of property and they they requisitioned the best vehicles so that there was this phrase turn the five star jihad and i think in those early days to some extent there was an element of that in some areas here thank you very much for

this very interesting inside were talking to appear in the golden globe and winning british director of the state t.v. series about the life of british recreates inside islamic state in syria that is it for this edition of. some call donald trump a traitor and the helsinki summit treasonous as the media continue their meltdown

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