Ben Anderson (Holidays in the Axis of Evil, The Violent Coast) takes a timely trip to six countries that the United States either invaded or intervened in during the Cold War and sees what life is like a decade or so after the Americans left.

Ben Anderson Interview

BBC Four: It seems an appropriate time to visit these six countries...
Ben Anderson: Yes. Many of the guys running the current war on terror are the same ones who ran the war on Communism - Dick Cheney, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, John Negroponte, Elliot Abrams, Otto Reich. And of course George W Bush offered Henry Kissinger a job, but he turned it down in favour of his business interests.

BBC Four: What was the attitude towards Americans in the countries you visited?
BA: It's pretty much the same everywhere you go - they hate the foreign policy and the presidents but they all want to go to America, buy American products, watch American music videos and play American sports. In Central America, Cambodia and Vietnam a lot of people want American visas and will do all they can to get them. But when you mention what America did to them and their country, they haven't forgotten.

Off the beaten track in Vietnam there is still some real hatred towards Americans. We went to My Lai, the site of the massacre where US soldiers killed 504 civilians. It's exactly the same as in Abu Ghraib - the US government claimed it was just a rogue element, but there were senior leadership helicopters flying above while the massacre was going on. In that village a few people shouted at us because we looked like Americans. One drunk guy got off his motorbike and as he was charging towards us our guides had to stop him and say that we were British and therefore okay.

BBC Four: One of the interesting legacies of the American involvement in these countries is the deportees that you met.
BA: There are lots of deportees in Cambodia and Central America. Their families fled the wars in the late 1970s and early 80s, so the kids were very young. They went to America and ended up in the poorest parts of the country, so a lot of kids got into gang culture. Two of the biggest gangs in Central America are called Mara Salvatrucha and 18th Street, which are both Salvadorian gangs that started in LA in the 1980s.

Eventually these gang members get done for armed robbery or assault or murder and are deported back. But it's a foreign country to them. They don't know anybody, they don't know their way around - what they do know is other deported gang members. Because they're foreigners or they have tattoos,

18th Street gang members

they often turn up at the airport and the police or rival gang members shoot them. There are stories in El Salvador of kids being shot within hours of getting off the plane. Some kids have got family there, but a lot of them have nothing - no money, no home, they don't even know where the capital is.

BBC Four: The whole experience sounds much more bleak than your previous travels.
BA: It was. Even in Liberia there were grounds for optimism and we met some really inspirational people. In Cambodia, Vietnam and Central America we did meet lovely people but when you see the damage done to those countries - not just by the Americans, but by the government of the time, or by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia - it's just unbelievable. In Cambodia, the only people we met who really had their lives together and were smiling were an all-female team who were there to de-mine the country. It says a lot about a country when the only happy people are the mine-clearing team!

BBC Four: Did you have any trouble travelling around the countries?
BA: In Vietnam we had a government minder with us at all times. Every day there were things on the schedule that got cancelled. The American vets weren't allowed to criticise current American foreign policy because Vietnam gets almost $1 billion a year of American investment, so they were scared that if an American vet was seen in our documentary criticising George Bush then that might somehow affect the investment.

In Latin America, some of the stuff with the gangs was a little difficult. There's a lot of evidence which suggests that the police are going out and just killing people who look like gang members, which can just mean any young boys with tattoos. So hanging out with the gangs was a bit tense.

We also went into a prison in Honduras where the gangs have their own wing. If there's a riot, the prisoners somehow get machine guns and hand grenades. It's not like here where the prisoners sit on a roof for five hours and don't eat.

BBC Four: One of the hallmarks of your programmes seems to be eating pretty grim food. What were the culinary highlights this time?
BA: That's my boss' idea! Even in places where they were carpet bombed in Vietnam or there was a massacre in El Salvador, obviously people are still getting on with their lives and food is part of that. In El Salvador we ate iguana soup, which is supposed to be a natural aphrodisiac. We ate armadillo in El Salvador, which we found out recently is one of the only animals that can give you leprosy. We also ate tarantula in Cambodia.

BBC Four: How was that served?
BA: You buy a big plastic bag with a branch in it. You pull the branch out and there are tarantulas crawling all over it - almost as big as your hand. Someone then puts one in a frying pan, adds seasoning and hands it to you on plate. It was disgusting. I spent about 10 minutes thinking that we didn't really need this for our film but our guides said they eat them all the time.