Beaudry Robert "Bowe" Bergdahl’s tragic journey has been well documented. A United States Army soldier who was held captive from June 2009 to May 2014 by the Haqqani network (aligned with the Taliban) in Afghanistan and Pakistan, ever since his release Bowe’s story has been the subject of intense media interest. To many, not least to President Donald Trump who has repeatedly called the US Army sergeant a “dirty rotten traitor”, Bowe’s story is Homeland brought to life.
To cut a complex and deeply harrowing tale shamefully short, the crux of the debate raging is this: was Bowe a deserter, an American traitor, who purposefully walked off his US Army base in Afghanistan to join, or at least aid the Taliban in their mission to control the country? Or was he a mentally unfit solider who never should have been allowed to enlist in the first place, a man who fled the chaos of war, confused and delusional, found himself captured and was then, for five long years, subject to some of the worst human rights atrocities ever inflicted on a modern P.O.W?
Journalist and film maker Sean Langan, a British GQ contributor who himself was captured and held for four months by the same group who imprisoned Bowe, has dedicated himself over many years to try and answer some of these questions, and to understand the man behind the media sensationalism. This evening Langan’s brilliant, long-awaited documentary, ‘Coming Home: Bowe Bergdahl Vs the United States’, will air on BBC 4 at 9pm; a world exclusive with Langan having secured the first face to face interview with Bowe, whose release was only guaranteed by President Obama in 2014 through a controversial prisoner swap program.
Although journalist Mark Boal interviewed Bowe over the phone for many months as part of the excellent Serial podcast series, Langan's new film deep dives into the story and the scandal, speaking not only with Bowe but with relatives and with some of the US army personnel close to the events that unfolded out there amid the dust and danger.
Today Bowe himself sits and awaits sentencing in the United States – he has admitted desertion - although after watching Langan’s film one wonders how any rational human being can think locking up a man (yet again) who has such obvious psychological problems - a man who was for three years kept in a cage suspended from the ceiling, in total darkness, by his captors – is anything but barbaric, whatever his political allegiances.
Langan's film is vital journalism and one hopes Donald Trump is paying attention.
Coming Home: Bowe Bergdahl Vs the United States airs BBC 4 at 9pm
