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How did the U.S. lose the war in Afghanistan? Who bears responsibility? And what has been the human cost?
Drawing on decades of on-the-ground reporting and interviews with Taliban and U.S. officials, this epic three-part investigation traces how America’s 20-year investment in Afghanistan culminated in Taliban victory and examines the missteps and consequences.
Drawing on decades of on-the-ground reporting and interviews with Taliban and U.S. officials, this epic three-part investigation traces how America’s 20-year investment in Afghanistan culminated in Taliban victory and examines the missteps and consequences.
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00:20A guerra é cheia de deslizos, cheia de deslizos,
00:24de deslizos, de tragédia, de deslizos, de deslizos e de casalidades.
00:29Drawing on years of reporting from both sides of the war.
00:33You set off a car bomb, it's going to kill women and children and innocent civilians.
00:38This was fighting.
00:39You reject the idea that you handed a good deal to the Taliban.
00:42Not at all, I got a good deal for the United States.
00:45We wanted out, we got out safely.
00:48Correspondent Martin Smith investigates the missteps.
00:51No one really knew how this would unfold.
00:54And miscalculations.
00:56People ask, what was the American strategy?
00:58The Americans did not have a strategy for Afghanistan.
01:01Why do you think we lost?
01:02I think it's a matter of willpower.
01:04We didn't have the will.
01:05We had a good amount of it, but they had more.
01:08Now on Frontline, the first of an epic three-part series.
01:13Why did we fail in our mission?
01:15And who was responsible?
01:16America and the Taliban.
01:38This program contains violent imagery and graphic language,
01:43which are not suitable for some audiences.
01:45Viewer discretion is advised.
01:48And who was responsible for a good period of time for ?
01:51Everybody.
01:53...
02:09Come on.
02:10That way.
02:10Let's go.
02:11Let's go.
02:13Let's go.
02:14Let's go.
02:22In the first weeks after the fall of Kabul, Afghans were adjusting to a new peace.
02:29The war was over.
02:31The city was relatively safe.
02:34But no one was quite sure what would happen next.
02:40The Taliban had rolled into Kabul on August 15, 2021.
02:45They quickly seized total control.
02:55A stunning turn of events in Kabul started today with the news that the Taliban fighters were surrounding the city.
03:05Now they're inside the presidential palace.
03:07Taliban sitting in the president's desk, some of them lounging elsewhere in the office.
03:11This has happened so fast.
03:13Immediately after they entered the city, scenes of a mass evacuation were beamed around the world.
03:19But America and other NATO countries were certainly caught totally off guard.
03:23And are now having to cope with this surge of people desperate to get out of the country from the
03:28airport.
03:28Now the only safe way to escape are those who fear for their lives.
03:34Two days after their victory, the Taliban held their first press conference.
03:39They promised they would not allow militant groups like Al-Qaeda to operate from Afghanistan.
03:44They would not allow militant groups like Al-Qaeda to operate from Afghanistan.
03:49They would not allow militant groups like Al-Qaeda to operate from Afghanistan.
03:50Chief government spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid also made new promises to the women of Afghanistan.
04:14Why should the United States trust you?
04:16Chief government spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid also made new promises to the women of Afghanistan.
04:24Chief government spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid also made new promises to the women of Afghanistan.
04:28Over the last 18 months, I have come to Afghanistan to meet and interview numerous Taliban officials.
04:35Many have never spoken before.
04:38This is the story of how they won the war.
04:44This is the story of how they won the war.
04:55July was the deadliest month for U.S. troops in Afghanistan since the war began in 2001.
05:00This is also the story of how America's defeat became inevitable.
05:04A story rooted in two decades of mistakes, miscalculations, and hubris.
05:12Problems have been festering for 20 years.
05:14My concern is that people won't look at what were the real underlying issues that allowed it to collapse so
05:22spectacularly.
05:24I traveled the length of the country.
05:27What I saw was people struggling to shake off decades of conflict.
05:34War widows begged in the middle of traffic, often with their children on their laps.
05:40Is this, uh...
05:41It's Teddy Adams?
05:42Yes.
05:43This is our malnutrition department.
05:46Childhood malnutrition clinics were packed.
05:48This is a 180-bed pediatric ward.
05:52But today, there were 243 patients.
05:56Now, I'm sorry.
05:58I'm sorry.
06:00I'm sorry.
06:03I'm sorry.
06:04I'm sorry.
06:08Jobs were scarce.
06:11Two on the streets don't have jobs.
06:13Health care is weak.
06:15You have social problems with women not agreeing with Taliban restrictions.
06:20How do you answer all this?
06:27The Taliban not only showed little concern, they were busy punishing those who disobeyed their rules.
06:38In Afghanistan, justice can be brutal.
06:54On a hill overlooking Kabul, these are Afghanistan's new soldiers of God.
06:59Praying, they say, for peace and stability in a country that's known only conflict for nearly two decades.
07:05The Taliban first seized control of Afghanistan in 1996, after years of civil war.
07:13The movement was established by veterans of the anti-Soviet war of the 1980s,
07:19which lasted a decade and left the country in ruins.
07:22The fear of war is fast being replaced by a fear of repression.
07:27It's symbolized by the white flag of the Taliban militiamen,
07:31heavily armed religious students who patrol the streets,
07:34enforcing their vision of Islamic law.
07:36There are two major factions within the Taliban.
07:40One centered in Kandahar,
07:42the other in eastern Afghanistan along the Pakistani border.
07:47The Kandahari faction was led by a reclusive young mullah, Muhammad Omar Mujahid.
07:54Omar distinguished himself battling the Soviets.
07:58He lost his right eye during a Russian attack.
08:02In the beginning of the Taliban, I was with him, and I was one of the founders of the Taliban
08:09at that time.
08:10I sat down with one of Omar's closest associates.
08:13And how did Mullah Omar emerge as your leader?
08:16This was a big discuss among the Mujahid in that time.
08:20And we chose him as a commander because he was a brave person,
08:25but also we chose him as a leader we call as Amir for all Afghanistan.
08:31The Taliban had been holding an assembly of mullahs from all over Afghanistan.
08:36Mullah Omar was declared to be the Amir of all Muslims everywhere.
08:40Because this was regarded as a key moment for the Afghan nation,
08:45Mullah Omar displayed the holy cloak of the Prophet Muhammad to the crowd.
08:50Neither the cloak nor the ceremony has ever been filmed before, nor has Mullah Omar.
08:55Mullah Omar was extreme in his interpretation of Islam.
09:00Imagery depicting humans was forbidden.
09:03He ordered the destruction of the giant stone Buddhas of Bamiya,
09:07an archaeological treasure almost 1,500 years old.
09:12Omar cracked down on alcohol, music, and movies.
09:17Those who were deemed sinners could be subject to public execution.
09:25Also, in a profoundly fateful move,
09:28Mullah Omar gave sanctuary to a wealthy Saudi fugitive, Osama bin Laden,
09:33and an Egyptian jihadist, Ayman al-Zawahiri,
09:36both of whom then plotted attacks against the West from Afghanistan.
09:41This morning, a U.S. destroyer sits crippled in a Yemen harbor.
09:44At least six crew members of the USS Cole are dead,
09:48Bomb blasts today with the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya
09:53were clearly a part of someone's war against the United States.
09:56The Taliban insisted they were innocent.
09:59It is unclear at this hour who our enemy is.
10:01We were not involved with these attacks.
10:04But one thing, clearly, when Osama bin Laden asked asylum from the Taliban,
10:11the Taliban gave them that.
10:22In the days leading up to 9-11, leading up to the invasion of Afghanistan, of course,
10:28we offered the Taliban every opportunity to turn al-Qaeda over,
10:31and to turn Osama bin Laden over, and they said no.
10:40Tonight, we are a country awakened to danger
10:43and called to defend freedom.
10:47Our grief has turned to anger, and anger to resolution.
10:53Justice will be done.
11:00In the days leading up to the invasion of Afghanistan.
11:08Within a month of 9-11, the U.S. launched Operation Enduring Freedom.
11:13Explosions over Kabul, over Kandahar, over Jalalabad.
11:16The Taliban's fall was swift and decisive.
11:24After a month, the Taliban were in full retreat, and Mullah Omar was on the run.
11:34The U.S. and the rest of the international community now found itself needing to fill a power vacuum.
11:43In late November 2001, at a big hotel outside Bonn, Germany, the U.N. sponsored a conference to determine who
11:50would rule the new Afghanistan.
11:52The U.N. really putting the pressure on Afghan delegates.
11:55But the Taliban were excluded.
11:57This is your chance here to come to an agreement. The world is watching you. Don't blow it.
12:02So, at that conference, there were a whole slew of Afghan participants invited, from the Northern Alliance to Pakistan-exiled
12:11Afghan Pashtuns, Afghans with ties to Iran.
12:15No Taliban.
12:17Was it ever discussed that perhaps there should be an invitation made to the Taliban to participate?
12:25You know, not to my recollection. I think you have to go back in time and think about how everybody
12:29felt at that moment.
12:31And, of course, the Taliban connected to al-Qaeda, connected to the 11th of September.
12:35I think the general feeling was that they'd been defeated, they were out, and we were going to try to
12:41do the best we can with the groups that you mentioned.
12:44It is customary in post-war situations to invite the vanquished to sit at the table to discuss the future.
12:52A decision is made not to invite the Taliban. Was that a mistake?
12:57I think it may have been too early in Bonn, because the Talibs hadn't quite been defeated.
13:04There were still pockets of resistance, and they regarded themselves as the legitimate government.
13:11So, for many in the U.S., it was too early.
13:16By the end of the conference, Hamid Karzai, a charismatic, English-speaking Afghan politician with connections to the CIA, was
13:25chosen as Afghanistan's new interim leader.
13:29But some Taliban leaders were still looking to negotiate a deal, offering to surrender if they could remain in Afghanistan
13:37and, quote, live in dignity.
13:39They did not want to go out of Afghanistan to Pakistan or Iran.
13:44They wanted to collaborate with the new government of President Karzai, help them, and told them that, look, we just
13:51want to stay in Afghanistan. Let us live here.
13:55If you're asking, would an arrangement with Omar, where he could, quote, live in dignity in the Kandahar area or
14:03some place in Afghanistan, be consistent with what I have said, the answer is no, it would not be consistent
14:09with what I have said.
14:10The answer was firm. The Taliban have no place in a future Afghan government, and they should be captured and
14:21imprisoned, certainly at the leadership level, whenever possible.
14:25Terrorists are now scattered.
14:26Bounties were put out. Taliban were chased down.
14:29And in every cave, in every dark corner of that country, we will hunt down the killers and bring them
14:35to justice.
14:37Among the Taliban arrested was their ambassador to Pakistan, Mullah Zayif, seized by Pakistanis and rendered to U.S. custody.
14:48Zayif says he was beaten.
14:51When they got me, they beat me until I became unconscious. I didn't know what happened to me.
14:58My head was broken. My shoulder was broken.
15:01What were they trying to find out? What were they asking from you?
15:04In the beginning, they were asking me, where is Osama bin Laden?
15:07Where is Mullah Muhammad? That's what they were asking.
15:12And three, four days like this, they were shouting, where is, where is Mullah Muhammad? You will be killed.
15:20The Taliban were trying to negotiate some kind of space for themselves to live in Kandahar and Helmand.
15:27Why not respond to those entreaties by the Taliban?
15:31I think it's a very valid question.
15:34And in my own postmortem of why didn't things turn out better in Afghanistan,
15:41one of the questions that lingers, that hangs over this, is why we did not actually try to incorporate the
15:47Taliban into the new Afghanistan.
15:49Counterfactual history is a dangerous exercise.
15:52It's very hard to rerun history and ask, could it have been different?
15:57I do think in the 20-year history of this war, if there was an opportunity to prevent the Taliban's
16:05insurgency from gathering force and disrupting the American and NATO project in Afghanistan, that was probably the moment.
16:15What the U.S. and its allies didn't appreciate was that the Taliban had a legitimacy in Afghanistan that the
16:22U.S. could never match.
16:26The Taliban had a gravity, especially among the remote areas in the Pashtun South and East.
16:44While it seemed outrageous in Washington or London, in southern Afghanistan, on the ground, when the Taliban came knocking and
16:53said,
16:53we were kicked out unjustly, they started to find some takers for that.
17:00Across the world, we're hunting down the killers, one by one.
17:06We are winning, and we're showing them...
17:09By 2002, with the Taliban on the run, the Bush administration was essentially declaring victory in Afghanistan and was preparing
17:17to fight another war.
17:19In Iraq, a dictator is building and hiding weapons that could enable him to dominate the Middle East.
17:26There's no debate that we did take our eye off the ball.
17:30We did it deliberately.
17:31We entered another campaign, an order of magnitude larger and more difficult than what we were undertaking in Afghanistan.
17:38We opened for ourselves a two-front war.
17:43Shock and awe.
17:44Hundreds of bombs and cruise missiles ripping into Saddam Hussein's palaces.
17:49This was central Baghdad today.
17:51With the Americans distracted by Iraq, the Taliban were able to quietly regroup.
17:58Mullah Omar's faction set up headquarters just over the border in Pakistan.
18:04The sanctuary itself was terribly important because it allowed the Taliban to regroup politically and militarily.
18:11And they started to do what guerrilla groups do when they prepare for an insurgency,
18:17to train, to organize, to choose commanders.
18:21The Taliban start thinking about campaigns, objectives.
18:26They start to communicate.
18:28They start sending messages into the Afghan people saying,
18:31we're coming, we're on our way, we need you to join us.
18:478,000 miles away, Mullah Zayef had spent more than three years in Guantanamo,
18:53where the Defense Department was still trying to firmly establish his connection to al-Qaeda.
18:59He says his interrogator assured him the war was over.
19:04It was also investigated by the name of Tom.
19:07It was a tall guy like you.
19:10And he told me,
19:12if you are thinking that the Taliban will emerge again,
19:16this is a dream.
19:17This will not happen.
19:19This became a part of era.
19:21He told you that your movement was history?
19:23Yeah, not possible to someone to be standing against America.
19:31Zayef was then told he could be released only if he would sign a letter that said he was al
19:37-Qaeda.
19:38He said, sign it.
19:39This is for you.
19:40This is all regulation.
19:42You have to sign it.
19:54In the end, Zayef says he signed the letter, but added an amendment stating he was not al-Qaeda.
20:01He was released from Guantanamo on September 11, 2005, and returned to Afghanistan the next day.
20:10Over the ensuing years, the Taliban mounted a fierce counter-offensive.
20:16Today, the news is bad.
20:18There's been an explosion of violence in Afghanistan.
20:20Some of the worst fighting since the U.S. helped to overthrow the Taliban government.
20:29Pitch battles between NATO and U.S. forces and massed gangs of Taliban fighters are raging daily in Afghanistan.
20:36There's some ICOM chatter saying that the Taliban are looking at us right now.
20:46The Taliban were never truly rooted out of these hills, and now they're banned.
20:53Thousands better armed than ever and organized into large-scale units.
20:58We began to see an upsurge in Taliban violence centered mostly in the south, so Helmand and Kandahar.
21:06And the indicators here were pretty clear.
21:08The frequency of roadside bombs, IEDs, improvised explosive devices.
21:23This weekend, the Taliban's leader in hiding, Mullah Omar, released a bold audio recording, saying, quote,
21:30those who thought the Taliban were eliminated were wrong.
21:33We control a large part of the country.
21:38The cables that were coming to Washington from Kabul made clear that the war was going badly.
21:52And that in the absence of more resources and more attention, it was going to get a lot worse quickly.
22:02Adding to the Taliban's growing strength was the Haqqani network fighting in Afghanistan's east,
22:08led by another veteran of the anti-Soviet war, Jalal ad-Din Haqqani.
22:18During the Soviet war, Haqqani had received millions of dollars and tons of armaments from the CIA.
22:31But Haqqani, the one-time U.S. ally, had begun regularly mounting attacks against U.S. and Afghan forces.
22:42According to his son, the U.S. had tried to coax him from the battlefield.
23:11Over time, the Haqqani network became the most lethal branch of the Taliban.
23:18All the while, the Haqqanis maintained strong ties to foreign militants, including bin Laden and al-Qaeda.
23:26Haqqani also had a tight connection to Pakistani intelligence,
23:30who used the network to further their aims in Afghanistan.
23:34They were betting that the Americans would eventually leave Afghanistan,
23:38so they wanted to maintain a strong alliance with the Taliban.
23:43Pakistan did give them sanctuary.
23:46I mean, I know they would deny it, but it's not deniable.
23:50Particularly the leaders, and Pakistan provided that space for them.
23:54And without that space, it would not have been easier for the Taliban to operate the way they did.
24:01So you have a situation where our partners, to whom we're paying billions of dollars a year,
24:06in various forms of security and economic assistance, basically are slow-rolling us.
24:11The bottom line is that the Pakistanis were very duplicitous.
24:15We had a sense that they were confronting this, and the reality was that they were not going to do
24:21that.
24:23It was a fact that continued to anger President Karzai.
24:27But attempts to get the Pakistanis to crack down on the Taliban failed.
24:34Haqqani's effectiveness was due in large part to his prolific use of suicide bombs.
24:46In this Taliban video, a suicide bomber is heading towards his target,
24:51a convoy of two American Humvees.
24:56The bomber is guided by another militant who kept his distance.
25:15The Haqqani network relied on young suicide bombers.
25:21Are you comfortable with, or how do you feel about this, as a method of war?
25:26As a result of the people, they did not have a violence in a terror.
25:30As a result of the people that were a community,
25:35they improved the whole process of humanity.
25:42They were damaged by their families.
25:44Sometimes the other people were presumpting,
25:46but the people who arrested their invasion of an armed criminal.
25:50They experienced Ahqqani's forces automatically.
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29:57Em alguns meses de inauguração, ele enviou 21,000 mais tropas.
30:03Em reuniões dentro da White House, General David Petraeus foi o primeiro dos empolgados para uma nova abordagem.
30:10O problema em Afganistan foi que nós nunca tínhamos as ideias, a verdadeira estratégia.
30:16Você só não pode drone-strike e delta-force o seu caminho do problema.
30:21Petraeus advocated a strategy known in military jargon as counterinsurgency, ou COIN.
30:28O overriding mission of counterinsurgency has to be to secure the people.
30:33We must be partners, they are good neighbors.
30:36To do that, you have to, in Iraq, live among the people.
30:40Petraeus had championed counterinsurgency in Iraq.
30:43He explained it all at a major national security conference in Washington.
30:48What we are doing is what we call full-spectrum operations.
30:51The only way to do this is to apply all of these tools, not just conventional forces.
30:57When the United States achieved some stability in the Iraq War,
31:01it was through the application of counterinsurgency doctrine, led by General Petraeus.
31:06Very significant reduction in security incidents in Baghdad alone.
31:10And there was a sense that this was the solution.
31:13Suddenly we had found the magic formula, and the magic formula was counterinsurgency.
31:17You have to have a huge political component right here, and this is forcing every agency to sit in a
31:22room without barriers.
31:24Counterinsurgency is, arguably, the most challenging form of campaign.
31:28This turns into a whole-of-government approach...
31:30Because it is not just the military operation of clearing bad guys from an area and then holding it.
31:37It also includes helping the host nation forces to reestablish basic services, to get the economy going again, to rebuild
31:48the damage.
31:49The central goal of counterinsurgency is to make the population feel secure enough to engage in peaceful politics.
31:55Protect the population above all other considerations.
31:58Dramatic shift.
31:59A long-term commitment to the region to...
32:01In my experience of Washington, D.C., I've never seen an intellectual bubble like that one.
32:07I mean, it was a conviction.
32:10Again, they are the big ideas.
32:13Afghanistan, on the other hand, has headed in the other direction.
32:16General Petraeus argued that we had never really given counterinsurgency a chance in Afghanistan.
32:23Over the coming months, Douglas Lute, who served both Presidents Bush and Obama, would become dubious.
32:29I was a skeptic of the model, not because, conceptually, counterinsurgency made no sense to me.
32:35But I didn't think that the model applied well to the conditions in Afghanistan.
32:41What conditions?
32:42Poverty.
32:4320-plus years of war already, when we launched in, in 2001.
32:49The ability to build a credible, sustainable Afghan army and police.
32:54The role of Pakistan next door.
32:56So there were a lot of factors here that caused me to believe...
33:00Lute also became increasingly concerned about partnering with a weak Afghan government.
33:05The Afghan government struggled for legitimacy across the Afghan people
33:08because of the endemic corruption of the Afghan government.
33:13But the Pentagon carried the day.
33:16General Stanley McChrystal was chosen to execute this course correction.
33:21I interviewed him in 2009.
33:23You had been in meetings with President Obama.
33:27What was different?
33:28Well, I think the decision to do a fully resourced counterinsurgency strategy.
33:33First, preventing al-Qaeda return to safe havens that had been here before 9-11.
33:39But then also to review the way we fought.
33:43You are trying to win the support of the population.
33:46And that can be either through coercion or it can be through offering things that wins their popular support.
33:53And at the end of the day, it's really not terrifically complex in theory.
33:59The difficulty lies in the execution.
34:04Winning hearts and minds requires a large occupying force.
34:08But by sending in just 21,000 troops, Obama was embracing counterinsurgency light.
34:17In order to apply the standard ratio of counterinsurgency forces to Afghanistan, you would have needed to send something like
34:26300 or 400,000 American soldiers to calm the country down.
34:33That was obviously implausible.
34:36And yet, nobody wanted to abandon counterinsurgency as the solution.
34:40So, they looked at the map of Afghanistan and they identified places in the south and east where the Taliban
34:47seemed particularly strong.
34:49And they decided that they could apply counterinsurgency doctrine in those places and then the math would work.
34:55We are attacking to seize control of the population from the Taliban.
35:01In July of 2009, I followed a group of Marines sent to take Helmand Province in Afghanistan's south.
35:08It's time to change the game in Afghanistan.
35:10These men would be among the first to apply counterinsurgency in Afghanistan.
35:15Make no mistake, we're experts in the application of violence.
35:19Their commander was Lieutenant Colonel Christian Cabanas.
35:22The world will remember what you do here this summer.
35:2840 or 50 years from now, when you're sitting around with your grandchildren, they're going to ask you what you
35:35did in the summer of decision in Afghanistan.
35:39And remember...
35:39You gave a rousing speech to Echo Company.
35:43Echo Company is going to change history starting early tomorrow morning.
35:48Echo Company is going to change history.
35:51They did, it just didn't turn out like we wanted.
35:56It's our time to take our place in the illustrious line of Marines who have gone before us.
36:02You had to have some chills when you heard that speech from Cabanas.
36:05Oh yeah, absolutely.
36:06And I think that was the intent.
36:07You know, it was a tough mission.
36:09And we didn't know what was really going to happen.
36:12I want you to understand, I picked you specifically to be the company that goes the furthest south, based off
36:19my confidence in your leaders and my confidence in you.
36:21We just weren't entirely sure how many Taliban were going to be there and what kind of tactics they would
36:25use, what kind of weapons they were going to have.
36:29When did you come under fire?
36:30We landed around 7.30, it's probably around 9.30, 10 that the fighting started.
36:37Eight years after 9.11, the U.S. war was now fully on.
36:43What are you saying?
36:53The mission was to take a village called Mian Poste.
36:58Jesus, fuck!
37:01The fighting was often heavy, with almost no cover.
37:05Stay down! Stay down! Stay down!
37:08The area was littered with IEDs.
37:10What the fuck was that?
37:11The fuck, it's a fucking idea!
37:12I told you guys!
37:13Do that fucking cops right here!
37:14What the fuck?!
37:16Yo, he's bleeding the fuck out!
37:18I need a gun!
37:19I need a gun!
37:20On the first day, Echo Company suffered its first casualty.
37:24Come on, Sharp!
37:25Come on, Sharp!
37:2620-year-old Corporal Seth Sharp of Adairsville, Georgia, shot in the net.
37:31Sharp! Hurry up!
37:32God damn it!
37:33Let's go!
37:34Where am I carrying him?
37:35Where am I carrying him?
37:36Grab one!
37:36Grab one!
37:38Let's go!
37:38Let's go!
37:39Let's go!
37:39Where's the litter?
37:40Where the fucking litter?
37:42Corporal Sharp didn't make it.
37:54After some hard days of fighting, Echo Company seized and set up their headquarters in an abandoned
38:00schoolhouse.
38:01Temperatures reached 120 degrees.
38:05On patrols, conditions were hellish.
38:08You could walk through a dried field and it would feel just hot.
38:11And you could sometimes just hit a wall of humidity.
38:14I mean, it will sap, just suck the energy out of you.
38:17What's the mission today?
38:19Mission today is a couple things.
38:22Now we're trying to get eyes on a river crossing that we think the Taliban are using.
38:26The other part is trying to see how aggressive they're going to be.
38:29Trying to bait them a little bit into being overly aggressive and see if we can catch them
38:33in a trap.
38:34Do you expect them to attack you today?
38:35I do.
38:38The Marines here were carrying out counterinsurgency's basic tenets, clear, hold, and build.
38:45Clear, hold, and build was a fundamental building block of the counterinsurgency strategy.
38:49You have to clear the insurgency out of the area.
38:52And holding it means you stay there to maintain the security.
38:55And then you try and rebuild whether it's trust with the population or infrastructure that was damaged
39:00or relationships between the people and the government, all that.
39:03Sanger, good morning.
39:05How are you?
39:06This was a contest for Afghan hearts and minds in areas where the Taliban enjoyed their greatest strength.
39:12The hypothesis was that bringing this counterinsurgency fight village by village, they would basically
39:21change the loyalties of the great majority of Afghan people and deprive the Taliban of social
39:27and political oxygen in these areas.
39:32It was ambitious.
39:34And when we were there, counterinsurgency, or COIN, didn't appear to be working.
39:40People had fled their homes.
39:43Merchants had closed their shops in the nearby bazaar.
39:49The Marines went out to reassure the locals that the Taliban had been cleared from the area
39:54and that it was safe to return home.
39:56Why are people afraid to come back to their house?
39:58The Taliban did not get to the house.
40:03They didn't even come back from the house.
40:07OK, well, now they can come back.
40:09They know that, right?
40:10People can start farming again.
40:12Hey, has anybody shopped at the market lately?
40:20Por que você vai para o Alcâreo?
40:24O que você vai para o Alcâreo?
40:25O talibã disse que se você vai para o Alcâreo, vamos matar todos vocês.
40:29Quem disse que o talibã vai tirar você se você vai para o Alcâreo?
40:36Eu falei com o Alcâreo, e perguntou o alcâreo como ele pensou
40:40Mas, os marinos entendem a counterinsurgency doctrine.
40:43Você não está dizendo onde, onde eles foram?
40:45Eles entendem como importante é para ganhar a população.
40:48Eles entendem que é, às vezes, difícil com os marinos
40:53para reinar eles de volta.
40:54Eu vou perguntar essa pergunta para a 5ª vez.
40:56Eu vou perguntar para o marino todo o tempo.
40:57O que eu tento dizer os marinos é que o cara que você é gostoso hoje
41:03vai ser o cara que não atreveu a você ou outra marina
41:08duas rotações de agora que vem de volta.
41:11Eles não perguntaram a minha pergunta.
41:12Listen to me for a second.
41:13Eu preciso de vocês todos para responder a minha pergunta.
41:16Se não...
41:17O que foi perguntado dos marinos que eu vi na terra
41:20era que eles precisam fazer um enorme social.
41:24E não era claro que eles tinham a paciência
41:26ou a compreensão da complexidade
41:29de uma forma de pesquisa.
41:34Não há dúvida que nós perguntamos um enorme
41:37de nossos soldados, aviadores, aviadores, marinos,
41:40os dos no-jones, particularmente.
41:42Meu son foi lá fora da pesquisa.
41:44Eu tenho uma boa ideia do que nós perguntamos
41:46de nossos homens e mulheres em uniforme.
41:48Você não está cooperando.
41:50Você precisa entender que nós estamos aqui
41:52para manter o taliban.
41:53e além do que nós estamos aqui,
41:53Tuve cedo.
41:57Tem gente lá, velho,
42:00chão,
42:01o que eles podem ter que ir no estado no sono,
42:05porque eles podem ser lembrados,
42:06o que eles podem ser aqui,
42:07se não que a gente se proteja.
42:07E agora eu não podem ser os soldados.
42:17After 12 anos,
42:19eu decidi ir ao south afghanistan
42:21para ver como as coisas funcionam sob o talibã rule.
42:26Nós primeiro paramos em Kandahar, a capital espiritual de talibã
42:31e long-time home to talibã founder, Mullah Omar.
42:36Tuberculose felled Omar em 2013.
42:40Hoje o líder superior é Mullah Hibatullah Akunzada.
42:46Mullah Al-Qunzada.
42:47Nós passamos o Eid al-Fitr at Kandahar's grande mosca,
42:51marquando o final do ramadã, a month-long muslim fast.
42:57Mullah Al-Qunzada foi ferido em um helicópter para presidir sobre o serviço.
43:04Como Omar, Al-Qunzada é extremamente secretive.
43:08Ele preached, mas permaneceu de vista.
43:13Mullah Al-Qunzada.
43:17Mullah Al-Qunzada.
43:23Em Kandahar, hoje, os talibãs rulem, muito como eles fizeram em 90.
43:29Barbaras não são permitidas para se resumir.
43:32Mulheres são permitidas para a maioria dos lugares de trabalho.
43:35E mulheres não são permitidas para a escola além da 6ª grade
43:39ou para a universidade.
43:42Então, é isso o seu trabalho?
43:47Em centro da cidade, nós visitamos o local office
43:50de o que já era o Ministério das Mulheres das Mulheres.
43:54Foi isso para a proteção das mulheres,
43:56de quebrezações das Mulheres das Mulheres das Mulheres das Mulheres das Mulheres dos Talibãs?
44:26O Corante Azequiel falou que a gente não sabe que essa comunidade é que a comunidade é a única forma.
44:35As pessoas estão vendo assim, o povo abençoe e a gente não sabe como nada.
44:42Nessas famílias são duas comunidades, você não sabe como uma comunidade é a comunidade pública.
44:45Isso é a água que revela a luz do mundo, o mundo é co-estido.
44:49Nós nos ajudamos a fazer isso.
44:53Nós nos empurramos para Helmand Province,
44:56onde nós nos abedimos com os marinos em 2009.
45:01A capital, Lashkarga,
45:03foi uma das últimas cidades antes de Cabo
45:05para deslizar para os taliban em 2021.
45:11Há uma guerra aqui e muita cidade foi deslizada.
45:19I made an appointment to meet with the governor of Helmand.
45:23I needed permission to return to the areas we had visited years earlier.
45:32Governor Malvi Abdul Ahad Talib fought for many years in Helmand to expel, as he put it, the foreigners.
45:40I'd like to ask you what you believe are the reasons for your victory.
46:08Eventually, I steered the conversation towards what I had come for, permission to head further south.
46:14And we were in a town named Mian Poshtey.
46:17I can show you this video.
46:20I showed the governor the scene of the villagers we had filmed when we were following the Marines.
46:27So our purpose in going down there is to meet the people that we met,
46:32understanding that history has to be told from two sides, not one.
46:36You all are not cooperating.
46:45I really thank you.
46:48A day later, our crew was granted permission to make the four-hour drive to Mian Poshtey.
47:13When we arrived, local Taliban were waiting for us.
47:17This guy over there is sitting over the bridge.
47:21Yeah, I think it was right down here on this corner.
47:25This all looks familiar to me.
47:27The shooting makes it harder for the Marines and the people to trust.
47:30Yeah, that gate is behind us.
47:32I know there's no problems, but you're still going to see the Marines around here like every day, every other
47:36day.
47:37You see this gate here, the same gate.
47:42Let me show you.
47:46This gate, same place.
47:51So you were told the Taliban was going to shoot you if you go to the market?
47:54Who told you the Taliban was going to shoot you if you go to the market?
47:56You were in here?
47:58Yeah? Oh, I recognize your face.
48:17So the Marines said they came here to make your lives better, they were going to get rid of the
48:21Taliban, they were going to keep them away.
48:23And did they do any of that?
48:31Is life better now?
48:44Are you just saying all these things because we're surrounded by Taliban with guns, or is this what most people
48:50feel?
48:54We know that we're not going to get rid of the Taliban, and they were not going to get rid
48:55of the Taliban.
49:00It was clear to me that for these Afghans, the war could not have ended soon enough.
49:17The Marines stayed in Helmand for five years.
49:21350 died here.
49:22Roger, we still have about 200 metros
49:25until we reach that first compound.
49:27But after clearing and holding places like me and Poshtey,
49:30the Taliban kept coming back.
49:35In late 2009, the Pentagon requested even more troops.
49:41Obama obliged.
49:42I have determined that it is in our vital national interest
49:46to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan.
49:49The U.S. troop level rose to 100,000.
49:53Thank you. God bless you.
49:54And God bless you, United States of America.
50:00But doubling down was a controversial decision.
50:04Even Vice President Biden counseled against it.
50:08In a memo sent to Obama at the time, Biden wrote,
50:12I do not see how anyone who took part in our discussions
50:15could emerge without profound questions
50:18about the viability of counterinsurgency.
50:21Biden was worried about sustainable surge numbers
50:24and the competency of the Afghan government
50:27and its security forces,
50:29all of which he wrote are essential to the success of COIN.
50:34I know we brought school supplies last time.
50:36We're still trying to get the concrete and the pipes,
50:38but they keep shooting at us on the roads
50:40and shooting everywhere.
50:41Nobody wants to bring stuff.
50:42It was unrealistic what the Americans were trying to do with young men in fatigues.
50:47Hello.
50:48Where are you going with your cows?
50:50And it was a crazy sort of way to plan a war
50:53because it was fitting the topography of the war with the Taliban
50:58to a theory without stepping back and asking,
51:01what is the big picture here?
51:03Why is the Taliban come back working?
51:05Those were the questions that might have been asked.
51:07They generally weren't.
51:08There was this blind faith in counterinsurgency doctrine.
51:15Why do you think we lost?
51:17I think we demonstrated a lot of willpower being there for 20 years
51:21and losing a lot of people
51:22and spending a lot of time and resources
51:24to try and make it a place that would be better and freer in the long run.
51:28There were still guys milling about in that tree line
51:30we were taking fire from, huh, copy?
51:32But we weren't successful in it,
51:34and I think it's a matter of willpower.
51:37We didn't have the will.
51:40Correct.
51:40We had a good amount of it, but they had more.
51:43There were definitely guys in that tree line.
51:45There were definitely guys deep out there.
51:47Yeah, the left hay bale, you come about one finger to the right
51:49and you go straight back,
51:51and he's hanging out right there in between the trees.
51:54In his 2009 interview,
51:56General McChrystal had this to say.
51:58The Washington Times said the other day
52:01that you've cleared Helmand three times.
52:04Yeah.
52:04Never hold it.
52:05Yeah, and once you clear something and don't hold it,
52:08you probably didn't really clear it.
52:10It has no staying power.
52:12In fact, I would argue that it's worse.
52:15Because you create an expectation and then you dash it.
52:19And so I think that you're almost better
52:21to have not gone there at all.
52:34Afghans will take full responsibility.
52:37Next time, America looks to withdraw.
52:40The military was always saying,
52:41we should wait till we're in a stronger position.
52:43And I used to say,
52:44why do you think you'll be in a stronger position if you wait?
52:47And the Taliban gained ground.
52:49There were large swaths of the country
52:51turning towards the Taliban.
52:53They were not going to be denied.
52:55They got a role.
52:56It's just not the role we imagined.
52:58Part 2 of America and the Taliban,
53:01next time on Frontline.
53:04Go to pbs.org slash Frontline
53:07for more of Martin Smith's coverage.
53:09After 12 years,
53:10I decided to go back to southern Afghanistan.
53:13Do you expect them to attack you today?
53:15I do.
53:16So why do the Americans tolerate
53:18their ally making these deals with the Taliban?
53:21And see all of our reporting on Afghanistan
53:23over the years.
53:24Connect with Frontline on Facebook,
53:27Instagram and Twitter
53:28and stream anytime on the PBS app,
53:30YouTube or pbs.org slash Frontline.
54:01For more on this and other Frontline,
54:03programs, visit our website at pbs.org slash Frontline.
54:23Frontline's America and the Taliban
54:25is available on Amazon Prime Video.
54:52Frontline is available on Amazon Prime Video.
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