As Barack Obama announces more US troops to train the Afghanistan army, John D McHugh reports on how US soldiers view their Afghan counterparts as an ill-disciplined, badly led bunch with a crippling taste for hashish.

This documentary produced in 1973 is a remarkable document on traditional Islamic culture in Afghanistan before the country met with the disasters of ideological struggles and civil war. To a Muslim sensibility, its importance goes much further. It is an objective and respectful testimony to the profound, essential aspects of the spiritual culture of Islam, captured by a Western filmmaker.