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00:20War is full of mistakes, full of incredible loss, tragedy, heartbreak, hardship, and casualties.
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. We 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 conclusion of an epic three-part series.
01:13Why did we fail on our mission? And who was responsible?
01:16America and the Taliban.
01:40This program contains graphic imagery. Viewer discretion is advised.
02:03We've seen fighters.
02:06We've seen fighters.
02:07We've seen fighters in Afghanistan.
02:09We've seen fighters.
02:10We've seen fighters in Afghanistan and the Taliban.
02:13Should we use fighters for our nation?
02:14We've seen fighters in Afghanistan.
02:15were able to attend school.
02:17They could dream of careers as doctors and lawyers,
02:21seek office in government,
02:23become engineers or journalists,
02:25become leaders.
02:28For a while, the American project brought real progress.
02:42Initially, after taking power,
02:44the Taliban said they also supported girls' education.
02:52But then, in short order,
02:54they banned girls from attending school above the sixth grade.
02:58They said it was temporary.
03:01And in March 2022,
03:03as a new semester was about to begin,
03:06the Taliban announced that schools were going to open.
03:10After waiting nearly seven months,
03:12teachers and students headed off to school on a Wednesday morning.
03:17Upon arrival, they learned that the Taliban had reversed their decision.
03:22Everyone was ordered to go home.
03:29This is the minister here?
03:30Yeah.
03:31As-salamu alaykum.
03:33A month later, I met with Kandahar's director of education.
03:38There was the expectation that girls would go back to school.
03:42And then, suddenly, there was a reversal.
03:45I wanted to know why the Taliban had reneged on their promises.
04:12Why are all these decisions made by men?
04:15Why are all these decisions made by men?
04:26Well, we lose.
04:27Restrictions have only gotten worse.
04:30Women are now banned from most workplaces,
04:33should be chaperoned when traveling far from home
04:37and are ordered to fully cover from head to toe.
04:47Defiant women, risking arrest, have taken to the streets.
04:55Monisa Mubarres, who used to work as a policy director
04:58at the Ministry of Finance, is one of them.
05:05She says the risks are necessary.
05:41These women, these heroes I would say, who are demonstrating on the street of Kabul,
05:48they literally put their lives on the line.
05:52Hey, hey, hey, hey, calm down!
05:55But not just themselves, their families, their loved ones.
06:10This is the most heroic act.
06:15In December 2022, the Taliban would go even further.
06:20Women would be prohibited from attending university.
06:25Zahra, a name we are using to protect her identity,
06:28hoped to one day become a doctor.
06:31She spoke out just months after the Taliban took over.
06:35I don't care. I don't care.
06:37I'm going to study. I'm going to study.
06:39I'm going to study.
06:40Inshallah, in the house, there's no difference.
06:42This is a house.
06:44There's a knowledge here. There's a heart.
06:46I'm going to be in the house.
06:48I'm going to be in the house.
06:49In the house, if we don't have a house,
06:52we're going to study.
06:53If we don't have a house,
06:55we don't have a house.
06:58We don't have a house.
07:00We don't have a house.
07:02We don't have a house.
07:06We don't have a house.
07:10Opposing the Taliban,
07:11protesters wave the flag of the old US-backed government.
07:18The achievements in Afghanistan over the last 20 years, they were not something that the
07:24world did for Afghanistan alone.
07:27It was something that Afghans themselves returned from exile to construct.
07:33This had been a very proud nation for most of the 20th century before it was wrecked
07:38by outside invasions.
07:45This is the most painful aspect of this war.
07:51Nobody believed that the entire thing would fall apart overnight, that all our gains would
08:00be lost away.
08:26By 2016, a growing number of Americans had lost patience with the war in Afghanistan.
08:32It was too expensive and no longer in America's best interest.
08:44This was a sentiment that candidate Donald Trump drew upon.
08:48No more nation-building, he said.
08:50America first.
08:52Afghanistan is a total and complete disaster.
08:55What are we doing?
08:57We can't even run our own country.
08:59We don't build our schools.
09:01We don't build our highways.
09:02Money should be spent in our country.
09:04Trump was determined to cut a deal and bring home all remaining U.S. troops.
09:14He tapped a former ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, to reach out to the Taliban.
09:20My overall goal is not to seek a withdrawal agreement, but a peace agreement.
09:27Now, you're given a big assignment here.
09:30Because a peace agreement can allow withdrawal.
09:31All the talks have failed for the last eight years.
09:34Yes.
09:34Now, the mood of the president, Trump, is that we've got to get out.
09:38Right.
09:39President Trump would like to withdraw the forces from Afghanistan.
09:45He thought that it was time to get out.
09:50To achieve this, Khalilzad began secret negotiations in Doha, Qatar, with Taliban representatives.
09:57The Afghan government wasn't informed until the news leaked.
10:02Is it fair to say that President Ghani was furious?
10:05He was furious, absolutely.
10:07Hamdullah Mohib was President Ashraf Ghani's closest aide and head of the National Security
10:13Council.
10:13We didn't just feel like we were being cut out.
10:16We felt that our government was being delegitimized.
10:19The signal was the Taliban are the key player now, and that is who is coming.
10:25The Afghan people have been speaking about peace for a long time.
10:30In Washington, a newly appointed Afghan ambassador to the U.S. met with President Trump, imploring
10:36him to maintain the U.S. commitment to the people of Afghanistan.
10:40A meaningful peace process.
10:42It was, I believe, January 11, 2019, when I was presenting my credentials to President
10:49Trump.
10:50I was obviously nervous because I have very little time.
10:56The talks had already started in Doha.
10:59The government was excluded.
11:01Taliban were gaining more territory.
11:04So, there was an opportunity.
11:07But you knew that he wanted to see an end to the war.
11:11Yes.
11:11That he was anxious and eager and impatient for an end to the war.
11:15Yes.
11:15So, what were the options?
11:18To just say, no, everything is going bad.
11:21Let's pull out.
11:23Or try to work on it.
11:26I was a proponent of the negotiations.
11:29I encouraged President Trump to find a way to resolve this, to resolve this in a way that
11:36we do not lose all that we had worked so hard for.
11:43Rachmanine had tried, but Trump was unmoved.
11:47Trump was quite indifferent to peace in Afghanistan, even more indifferent than the previous presidents.
11:53He didn't care what happened in Afghanistan.
11:55We're like policemen.
11:56We're not fighting a war.
11:57If we wanted to fight a war in Afghanistan and win it, I could win that war in a week.
12:02I just don't want to kill 10 million people.
12:04Does that make sense to you?
12:06I don't want to kill 10 million people.
12:06What he wanted was to get the troops out of there, say he got the troops out of Afghanistan.
12:11It would be over in literally in 10 days.
12:13And if he could get a photo up making peace and get the Nobel Prize, just like Obama did,
12:18so much the better.
12:20In a matter of months, with the Afghan government still on the sidelines, U.S. and Taliban representatives
12:27agreed on an outline for an eventual peace deal.
12:31Included were proposals for a ceasefire and troop withdrawals and eventual intra-Afghan talks
12:38to hammer out some kind of power-sharing arrangement.
12:42But soon after agreeing, the Taliban introduced new conditions.
12:47Not only are the Taliban stubborn, but they start introducing new and outrageous demands.
12:55At a certain point, they say, oh, and by the way, before we'll consider talking to those illegitimate
13:01puppets that you've installed in Kabul, you've got to release 5,000 of our prisoners.
13:20President Ghani rejected any massive prisoner release out of hand.
13:25President Ghani's reaction was that the prisoners is not something the Americans can give.
13:32These are prisoners in Afghan prisons, not in American prisons.
13:35And the Afghan government should be using this as its own leverage in negotiations with the Taliban.
13:41And so the Americans did not have the right to negotiate this on our behalf.
13:49Despite Ghani's objections, the U.S. pushed ahead.
13:53We are back now with an historic agreement between the United States and the Taliban
13:57that could bring peace to the region and ends America's longest fought war.
14:01On February 29th, 2020, at a grand ceremony in Doha, the U.S. and Taliban signed a deal.
14:11This was one of the strangest scenes you could imagine. American diplomats in business suits
14:16and badges sitting down with the Taliban, an Islamic fundamentalist group which hosted
14:21Osama bin Laden before 9-11. But that is what diplomacy looks like.
14:26The U.S. agreed to a full withdrawal by May of 2021.
14:30And the Taliban pledged to no longer harbor any foreign terrorist groups.
14:35But they would not agree to denounce al-Qaeda.
14:38The Taliban refused to repudiate al-Qaeda to condemn Osama bin Laden.
14:45As it is mentioned in the Doha agreement, we will not allow any party, any individual,
14:52to use the side of Afghanistan against other countries. That is our criteria. So anyone,
14:59any party, kills civilians, we are condemning.
15:04The U.S. also agreed that Ghani would release 5,000 prisoners within two weeks.
15:11The terms of the agreement was way more favorable to Taliban. There is no question.
15:17So who's accountable for that agreement, handing so much power to the Taliban?
15:24I raised that with Ambassador Khalilzad directly myself. But he kept insisting all along that the
15:30negotiations had four elements. And nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. And this was
15:36the mantra that was being sung all along. But then, at the end, that did not materialize.
15:43The agreement was supposed to lead to a ceasefire that was described as comprehensive.
15:50But while the U.S. and Taliban agreed not to attack each other, the Taliban did not agree to a
15:56ceasefire
15:57with Afghan forces. They're getting a pretty good deal here. They're not having to put down their
16:03weapons. The United States is agreeing not to go to war against them. We're agreeing to release their
16:09prisoners. Ghani remained adamantly opposed to the terms of the deal.
16:27Negotiations for a prisoner release continued. And so did the war, largely on Taliban terms.
16:38New violence in Afghanistan just days after that landmark truce.
16:42During this time when we are negotiating prisoner release, the Taliban were targeting
16:46Afghan government officials and killing them. And at the same time, not claiming responsibility.
16:54At this time, the Taliban were carrying out an average of 55 attacks a day,
16:59a spike that had doubled the casualties among Afghan security forces.
17:05They are asking us to release prisoners who had been imprisoned because they had killed Afghan
17:12civilians or government officials. In other words, to release them, you would be strengthening the
17:17hand of your enemy. The hand of our enemy.
17:19So you objected. Correct.
17:21President Ashraf Ghani has finally relented.
17:23But under major diplomatic pressure from the U.S., Ghani acquiesced.
17:28The President has issued a decree for the conditional release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners.
17:34With the release of the prisoners, the Taliban were finally willing to talk to Ghani's representatives.
17:41The Afghan government and Taliban met today in Doha, Qatar, for the historic negotiations
17:45aimed to form a power-sharing government. Mike Pompeo was on hand.
17:49U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrived in Doha to kick off the intra-Afghan talks.
17:56Seize this opportunity. Protect this process. Respect each other. Be patient. Remain focused on the mission.
18:06We're prepared to support your negotiations, should you ask. But this time is yours.
18:11This time is yours. I pray that you will seize the moment.
18:18The Afghan government was there as well as the Taliban. It was a big ceremony.
18:25Many ministers were present there. So it was a significant achievement that for the first time
18:30in 40 years, Afghans on the two sides fighting each other met and started negotiations.
18:38The talks were supposed to get Afghans on both sides to come together
18:42and, in good faith, jointly decide on the future of Afghanistan.
18:47But the talks went nowhere.
18:50After a month and a half negotiating, I reached to this conclusion that the Taliban
18:55are not believing in a shared future. They would not accept a political settlement.
19:01They are only looking for a military takeover.
19:05Nader Naderi was one of President Ghani's top negotiators in those talks.
19:10He says issues like freedom of the press, inclusivity in the government, and women's rights
19:16were foremost on his team's agenda.
19:18Nader Naderi was one of President Ghani's top negotiators.
19:19The Taliban played so smartly. They presented the soft view of the Taliban.
19:25They had said that we respect women rights according to Islam.
19:29And then everybody was excited. Oh, Taliban have changed. Taliban have changed.
19:33When we were negotiating, we were pressing on them. Would a woman be part of the government?
19:39Never a clear answer, mostly no.
19:43The Taliban had no real reason to make concessions.
19:47The Americans were leaving in a matter of months, and their prisoners were free.
19:53They already had everything they wanted.
19:57The criticism that's directed at you is that you lean towards the Taliban.
20:01That you were soft on the Taliban.
20:03Not at all.
20:04But that's the criticism.
20:06I mean, people can say a lot of interests have been affected by what we have done.
20:11You reject the idea that you handed a good deal to the Taliban.
20:14Not at all. Not at all. I got a good deal for the United States.
20:19We wanted out. We wanted out safely. We got out safely.
20:23What about the Afghan people that are now living back under the Taliban?
20:26Well, I mean, it's clearly a very mixed picture.
20:29On the positive side, 20 years of war has ended.
20:33But I regret that the Afghans didn't reach an agreement.
20:36I regret that very much.
20:43You know, what we did was we got the Taliban to agree to let us
20:47do what we wanted to do, which was leave.
20:50We didn't allow our allies at the table to discuss the future of their country.
20:57We signed it without their assent.
21:00We forced them to do something they didn't want to do,
21:03which was to release 5,000 detainees from their detention facilities who went right back to fighting.
21:09It's an instrument of surrender, not a peace agreement.
21:12And certainly, it didn't achieve peace in Afghanistan.
21:22It's an instrument of surrender, not a peace agreement.
21:22When I came into office, I inherited a deal that President Trump negotiated with the Taliban.
21:28When President Joe Biden arrived at the White House, the question loomed.
21:32Would he scrap the treaty signed by the Taliban and the Trump administration?
21:38Three months into his presidency, Biden announced he would stick to the deal.
21:43I've concluded that it's time to end America's longest war.
21:47It's time for American troops to come home.
21:50We'll not conduct a hasty rush to the exit. We'll do it responsibly.
21:55To accommodate an orderly withdrawal, Biden moved the date of the pullout from May 1st to September 11th.
22:02The 20th anniversary of that heinous attack on the United States.
22:05There was no legal or even really political reason why Joe Biden had to hold to Trump's deal.
22:11The question for him was, if he didn't hold to it, what would the Taliban do?
22:16And then what price in blood and expenditure would the United States have to pay in order to go back
22:23to war, as it were, with the Taliban?
22:27With Biden's withdrawal, the fuse was lit on what would within four months lead to a complete Taliban takeover by
22:35August 15th.
22:37Any hope of a coalition government was doomed to fail.
22:43It began with rural areas and taking control of highways.
22:47The Taliban quickly seized territory throughout April and May.
22:52And by late June, they had captured more than 150 of Afghanistan's 407 districts.
22:59As U.S. troops leave, some Afghan security units are collapsing.
23:03The Taliban's propaganda channels show Afghan police and soldiers giving up their bases and their weapons.
23:09The Taliban seized thousands of weapons and loads of ammunition, and they began closing in on provincial capitals.
23:17The Taliban are positioning themselves to try and take these capitals once foreign forces are fully withdrawn.
23:26I cannot overstate my concern regarding the present situation.
23:32Deborah Lyons was head of the U.N.'s assistance mission in Afghanistan.
23:37Districts were falling, Taliban saying they were not going to take provincial capitals, having made that commitment to the Americans.
23:43But it was clear that they were, in fact, moving to take the provincial capitals.
23:49Meanwhile, in Doha, intra-Afghan talks were continuing.
23:53The Taliban had signaled they would not attack Kabul or even provincial capitals.
23:59But on the ground, they were not complying.
24:02On this and other issues, the talks proved futile.
24:05I had a hope that we will at least preserve certain parts of the past and the constitution so we
24:12can build upon it for the future.
24:14But I knew that provinces would be lost, and we are very disadvantaged.
24:19We didn't have the leverage to negotiate.
24:20Taliban were occupying all sorts of cities.
24:22All sorts of cities, and they were close to Kabul.
24:27Alarmed by the Taliban's rapid advances, President Ghani and National Security Advisor Mohib flew to Washington to ask Biden for
24:36reassurance of continued U.S. support.
24:39The Afghan nation is an 1861 moment, like President Lincoln, rallying to the defense of the republic.
24:48When the meeting took place, President Biden asked what we needed.
24:53And the first thing President Ghani asked was, we need a friend in the White House.
24:57And President Biden said, you have a friend in the White House.
25:00We're going to stick with you, and we're going to do our best to see to what you have and
25:03tools you need.
25:06For months, the Pentagon had been reassuring the Afghan army that withdrawal did not mean the end of U.S.
25:13engagement and support.
25:15Lieutenant General Sami Sadat commanded Afghanistan's special forces.
25:21The American forces promised that even without the U.S. combat presence, we will continue to fund, equip, and logistically
25:29support the Afghan army.
25:31This is what we were told.
25:33But on July 2, 2021, in the dead of night, the U.S. pulled out of Bagram, its largest air
25:41base in Afghanistan.
25:42The U.S. military, citing security concerns, is not saying when or how U.S. troops are leaving.
25:47The bases are shutting down with hardly a peak.
25:51Were you informed?
25:52We weren't in the discussion.
25:53We knew they were going to evacuate Bagram, but from my understanding, Bagram would be the last place they evacuate,
25:59not one of the first places.
26:01So you never received a phone call saying, we're going to leave Bagram today?
26:05No.
26:05At its peak, 100,000 U.S. troops were stationed there.
26:09Bagram was the epicenter of the U.S. and NATO's war against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.
26:15Over four presidencies, America and its allies had occupied over 700 bases.
26:21All of them, one by one, were packed up and closed down.
26:25A formidable fortress for two decades, where hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent, now looks like a junkyard.
26:32U.S. forces say they've destroyed nearly 15,000 pieces of equipment to avoid hardware falling to the Taliban.
26:38The Americans pulled out all the support elements, all the contractors.
26:42We were low on ammunition.
26:44We didn't have the laser-guided bombs and missiles.
26:47And what did it mean?
26:49Of course, it meant that the Taliban are coming to take over.
26:54No one in the Biden administration agreed to an interview about the final days before Afghanistan's collapse.
27:01Are you worried that the Afghan government might fall?
27:04I mean, we are hearing about the Taliban taking more and more districts.
27:07Look, we're in that war for 20 years. 20 years.
27:12The same weekend that Bagram Air Base shut down,
27:15President Biden was asked about the stability of the Afghan government in the face of a Taliban surge.
27:21I think they have the capacity to be able to sustain the government.
27:25After repeated questions on Afghanistan,
27:30Biden was pressed about whether the U.S. should step in and support Afghan forces.
27:36He seemed to suggest that the advancing Taliban was now the Afghan government's problem.
27:42The Afghans are going to have to be able to do it themselves with the air force they have,
27:45in other words, you're helping them maintain.
27:48I'm not going to answer any more question on Afghanistan. Look, 4th of July.
27:56In July, in the western city of Herat, the government was arming local militias
28:02to help Afghan forces fight off the Taliban, who were now closing in on the city center.
28:11Ismail Khan, a former governor of Herat, is one of Afghanistan's most famous warlords.
28:18He's known as the Lion of Herat.
28:21Khan had helped the Americans defeat the Taliban back in 2001.
28:25And now, 20 years later, he recruited thousands of his supporters to defend his country again.
28:34And now, 20 years later, the President of Herat will be able to defend his country again.
29:00Throughout the country, reinforcements and supplies
29:03were not showing up. And as the Afghan army and police realized they were on
29:12their own, they began abandoning their checkpoints and bases en masse.
29:30The Taliban, they would basically come to the Afghan soldier or policeman who's out in
29:36some God-forsaken outpost and say, hey, look it, we already cut a deal with the Americans.
29:41Why do you want to fight?
29:42The Taliban have even been handing out pocket money to pay for their transport home.
29:46Here, take 5,000 Afghanis, which is enough for a bus ticket, go home and just give up.
29:52The average Afghan soldier knew it was over. So why die for Ghani and the Ghani administration?
30:00By the end of July, the Taliban had taken 223 districts, over half the country.
30:08Afghanistan is unraveling. President Biden remains defiant.
30:12In Washington that month, alarms were going off.
30:16Our reckless rush for the exits is becoming a global embarrassment.
30:21In Afghanistan, the Taliban has made big gains this week. They're surrounding a number of cities.
30:27But into August, the White House was still hoping that a power-sharing agreement would
30:32be hammered out in Doha. And the administration was still insisting that Afghan forces should step up.
30:39The Afghan government and the Afghan National Defense Forces have the training, equipment and numbers to prevail.
30:43And now is the moment for the leadership and the will in the face of the Taliban's aggression and violence.
30:52On August 8th, the first major capital fell, Kunduz, the same provincial capital the Taliban had seized in 2015.
31:01Hundreds of Afghan soldiers under siege of the Kunduz airport reportedly surrendered.
31:06Taliban video purports to show vehicles, weapons, even an attack helicopter now in their hands.
31:12Clearly, the security situation is deteriorating. And just over the last, what, 72 hours, roughly five provincial capitals fell to
31:25the Taliban.
31:26That's deeply concerning.
31:31By August 12th, 17 out of 34 provincial capitals had fallen, including Afghanistan's second largest city, Kandahar.
31:41The Taliban claims hundreds of prisoners in Kandahar are free after they overwhelmed the jail holding the insurgents and flung
31:48open the gates.
31:50As Kandahar fell in the south, Afghanistan's third largest city fell in the west, Herat.
31:57The Taliban have captured warlord Ismail Khan.
32:00The Lion of Herat had surrendered.
32:03By mid-August, the Taliban were controlling or contesting over 85 percent of the country.
32:12Kabul was now in their sights.
32:15The Pentagon was attempting damage control.
32:19Kabul is not, right now, in an imminent threat environment.
32:25But you can see that they are trying to isolate Kabul.
32:28So it still is a moment for the Afghans to unite.
32:35The leadership and in the military, no outcome has to be inevitable here.
32:39Capitals were falling, but there was still this perception that Taliban do not want to take Kabul by force.
32:46Ambassador Khalilzad and other Americans had told us this directly, saying that the Taliban had assured them that they don't
32:53want to take Kabul by force.
33:00President Ghani, who had been relatively quiet over the last two turbulent weeks, was also reassuring the residents of Kabul.
33:08In this country, that now this is a danger, which is a threat of a public system.
33:15I don't know anything that I'm wrong with you for this fear of the people of the Prophet.
33:21I will give you a reason that I haveります that I must be governed by the chairman of the Kingdom
33:25of the Prime Minister.
33:26At least that the further benefit of the weather is far more.
33:32But across the capital, worry was turning to panic.
33:43It's fascinating to be in a moment of collective panic.
33:48When everyone around you is panicking, not outwardly,
33:54but you can feel people's uncertainty and rising fear
33:59and not knowing what's to come,
34:01because no one really knew how this would unfold,
34:05how the Taliban would react once they took over Kabul and so forth.
34:09What was in everyone's mind and heart was,
34:11what does this mean to Afghanistan?
34:13What does it mean to the people?
34:21At the presidential palace, Ghani contemplated his fate.
34:25The last president to face a Taliban takeover in 1996 was castrated,
34:32dragged through the streets, and his body hung outside the palace.
34:36Interior ministry says the Taliban has started entering the capital, Kabul, from all sides.
34:42We've just been out onto the streets.
34:44I can tell you it's the Taliban driving around town,
34:47heavily armed in pickup trucks and Humvees.
34:49The Taliban entered Kabul on the morning of August 15, 2021.
34:53The Afghan president is currently holding emergency talks with U.S. diplomats.
34:58We knew from intelligence that the two factions of the Taliban are competing
35:03to take the presidential palace and execute the president.
35:08And our ally, our belief, was not going to protect and defend him.
35:16Those who worked for Ghani's government also felt particularly vulnerable.
35:21Monisa Mubaras was on her way to the Ministry of Finance.
35:26There were many vulnerable people in the country,
35:29and people were struggling.
35:32They were struggling.
35:34Deocondor, Mucci, Gylkar, Najar, they were struggling.
35:41People who were driving to the motor,
35:43they had a message from my driver,
35:49who was a government member of the motor.
35:51I don't want to go back to my friend.
35:55Repeatedly, President Biden has urged the Afghan army to fight, but it hasn't.
36:00We don't actually have a police force at the moment.
36:02I mean, soldiers withdrew, police officers we know actually got rid of their uniforms and put on civilian clothes.
36:10The collapse started. There is no protective force in Kabul anymore.
36:14The police have abandoned their checkpoints.
36:17When I hear this, that's when I reach the conclusion that this is the time.
36:23The president either leaves alive now or never.
36:28We go to his residence, and I told him that it was time, and he understood.
36:34What did he say?
36:36He asked to go upstairs to collect some of his belongings, and I told him no. I said, forget it.
36:42He wanted to go and put on his shoes, and I said, we will grab your shoes.
36:46You get in the car.
36:49Ghani and Mohib boarded a helicopter minutes later.
36:52President Ashraf Ghani has gone, fleeing to neighboring Uzbekistan.
36:57In a Facebook post, he said he'd left to avoid bloodshed.
37:00The situation is moving so fast, all UN staff confined to their compound.
37:06The Taliban are pulling the noose tighter, if you like, around the city.
37:10Within hours of Ghani's departure, the Taliban had breached the presidential compound.
37:15The Taliban were filmed inside the presidential palace.
37:17Taliban fighters walking the hallways, declaring the restoration of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
37:23These are amazing scenes.
37:25When they reached Ghani's desk, they praised Allah for their victory, reciting from the Quran.
37:35Senior Taliban leader, Anas Akhani, remembers the day.
37:39He said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
38:00Across the country, young Taliban foot soldiers would now be in charge.
38:06Surreal scenes of Taliban taking over ornate homes, lounging on gold-plated furniture, were posted online.
38:13Afghanistan has new masters.
38:16Twenty years after their first experiment in power came to a shattering end, the Taliban are back.
38:22What happened over the next few days would surprise everyone.
38:26It's been a bewildering few weeks, but I don't think even the Taliban could have anticipated the pace of events
38:30over the last 24 hours.
38:32We imagined that this was just a house of cards and it collapsed and there was little warning.
38:38I actually think the fuse here was lighted about 15 years earlier.
38:44And this is the fuse that led to the implosion of the Afghan state.
38:48We want to avoid bloodshed on destruction of properties of the people.
38:53The Taliban initially promised that takeover would be peaceful.
38:57But with confusion and chaos mounting, the Taliban quickly resorted to force.
39:10Right now, the Taliban are bringing hundreds of extra fighters in from neighboring provinces to try and bring security to
39:17the streets.
39:18The airport now overrun as massive crowds surge onto the tarmac, desperate to get out of the country.
39:25The Kabul airport was the only area still controlled by U.S. forces, who had begun the messy process of
39:32airlifting over 120,000 coalition and Afghan civilians to safety.
39:42Young men and women in uniform end up being the hand of God because they pick somebody out of the
39:48crowd and send them through.
39:50They're going to a much better life.
39:54And all the others that are left know that they're condemned to life under the Taliban.
40:01We left many tens of thousands of special immigrant visa applicants and holders, plus their family members.
40:09You know, we have a moral obligation to individuals who fought on the ground with our soldiers as translators, who
40:16shared hardship and risk with them.
40:19And we left them.
40:29We left them.
40:50We left the U.S. personnel left this fiasco behind them.
41:14On the outskirts of Kabul, I met the father of Fada Mohammed, a young dentist who fell to his death
41:21on August 16th.
41:22How old was he when he died?
41:2625.
41:2725.
41:2826.
41:3327.
41:3529.
41:3630.
41:3829.
41:4331.
41:4731.
42:00I'm very sorry for your loss, but thank you for taking the time to sit down and talk to us.
42:09When I saw those kids grabbing onto an airplane, leaving, I mean that brought back memories
42:17of Vietnam.
42:18I'm old enough to remember.
42:20I was embarrassed.
42:22I was embarrassed.
42:25How we handled the withdrawal, it's an embarrassment to say you're an American.
42:33I stand squarely behind my decision.
42:37As the news coming out of Kabul was getting worse, President Biden, in a defiant speech,
42:43placed the blame on Afghanistan.
42:45This did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated.
42:50So what's happened?
42:52Afghanistan political leaders gave up and fled the country.
42:57The Afghan military collapsed sometime without trying to fight.
43:04If anything, the developments of the past week reinforced that ending U.S. military involvement
43:10in Afghanistan now was the right decision.
43:14That was very disappointing to hear Joe Biden blame the Afghans.
43:18These guys believed in us.
43:22And we let them down.
43:24We failed them.
43:26Oh!
43:27F*** off!
43:28Get off!
43:30Get off!
43:31Get off!
43:31Get off!
43:33No!
43:34Ten days after Biden's speech, a suicide bomber slipped into the huge crowd gathered outside
43:41the airport.
43:44Details still emerging on this, but there was at least one explosion close to the abbey gate
43:49entrance to the airport.
43:51Some video being shared online showed piles and piles of dead bodies, so expect those casualty
43:56figures to rise, unfortunately.
43:58Around 170 Afghans and 13 American service members died in the bombing.
44:03After the blast, a U.S. drone records the catastrophic aftermath.
44:08A Taliban rival calling itself ISIS-K claimed responsibility for the attack.
44:13By 20 pounds of explosives on the bomb.
44:15The U.S. responded by striking a parked car in Kabul with a drone.
44:20It turned out that 10 innocent Afghan civilians were killed.
44:25At least one of those people killed was an ISIS facilitator.
44:29So were there others killed?
44:31Yes.
44:32There are others killed.
44:33Who they are?
44:33We don't know.
44:34We'll try to sort through all that.
44:36I don't want to influence the outcome of an investigation, but at this point we think
44:40that the procedures were correctly followed and it was a righteous strike.
44:44The target, a white sedan that had been under U.S. military surveillance for the past
44:48eight hours.
44:49It had just driven into the residential compound with father-of-seven and NGO worker Zamorai
44:56Ahmadi behind the wheel.
44:57The strike didn't just kill the father.
45:00Seven children were also dead.
45:03The Pentagon's investigation revealed that no ISIS militants were at the scene.
45:09Not only did we kill the wrong person and a bunch of innocent kids, but in the aftermath,
45:15in the days that followed, we insisted it was a righteous kill.
45:19And only because we had a free and open media that was in there digging, was the military
45:27ever even forced to confront the fact that maybe we were wrong.
45:38The Taliban has officially declared victory in Afghanistan after all U.S. troops left the
45:45country.
45:45The last U.S. troops left Afghanistan on August 30, 2021, officially ending America's longest
45:53war.
45:57Nearly 2,400 American service members died in Afghanistan.
46:03More than 3,900 U.S. contractors also died.
46:09Over 115,000 Afghan fighters from both sides were killed, as were nearly 50,000 Afghan civilians.
46:21For all the lives and money spent, over $2 trillion, Afghanistan has now regressed to what it was
46:29before America came here in the wake of 9-11.
46:34It's a pariah state.
46:37The only country in the world where women are denied an education.
46:42A country where most women cannot go to work.
46:46Where there are strict dress codes for both women and men.
46:51Where most music is banned.
46:54Where scores upon scores of independent news outlets have been shuttered.
47:00It's a country where homosexuality can be punishable by death.
47:04Where a man can be executed and left to hang in the public square.
47:12Also, the Taliban's ties to Al-Qaeda appear intact.
47:16When a U.S. drone strike took out Bin Laden's successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, last July, Zawahiri
47:23was living in a house owned by a close aide to the Taliban's powerful minister of the
47:28interior, Siraj ad-Din Haqqani.
47:31A clear violation of the Doha peace agreement they signed.
47:37Virtually no promises made by the Taliban have been kept.
47:42But their leaders insist, things are better.
47:46I feel that there are problems in the world, and I hope that there are problems in the world.
48:02By the latest count, over one million Afghans have fled the country.
48:09Thousands more are trying to escape every day.
48:14The Taliban, a small minority, hold the great majority of Afghans in their grip.
48:26The Afghans failed.
48:28We failed.
48:30We failed.
48:31And we failed because of wrong policies of our international partners, because of short-sightedness
48:36of our leaders, because we could not build institutions to stand at times like that.
48:44And we owe it to people to accept that this was, on our part, a catastrophic failure.
48:52And I think it's a catastrophic failure for the U.S. also.
48:59We have a responsibility to understand our role in leading to this tragedy.
49:06And I reject the simple idea, I think overly simplistic conclusion, that we could have just
49:13stayed indefinitely and avoided this.
49:19War and conflict, death and loss, they're part of the American story.
49:27All those we honor today gave their lives for their country.
49:32But they live forever in our hearts, forever proud, forever honorable.
49:39I was a believer in the mission.
49:41I was.
49:41I was a full believer.
49:44There was this idea that we were going to make something happen.
49:46I thought it was possible.
49:48And I'd met enough Afghans that I really respected, that I saw their dedication to their country,
49:53and I thought, wow, we owe it to these guys to give them something better.
49:59But what do you say to those young American marines and soldiers who were willing to give
50:05their lives, who were fighting in Afghanistan at great risk?
50:12Ultimately, what you have to say to the young soldier, sailor, airman, marine is,
50:16thank you for stepping up and believing in America, but we failed you.
50:20Your leaders failed you.
50:22Your military leaders failed you.
50:23Your political leaders failed you.
50:25And let's not say, oh, well, at the end of the day, it was worth it.
50:27It wasn't.
50:28It was not worth it.
50:30We wasted billions upon billions of dollars, thousands of lives, both ours and Afghans,
50:36and we did not achieve what we wanted to achieve.
50:38And let's not pretend otherwise.
50:40But we did do some good things, did we not?
50:42We did.
50:44We did.
50:45We kicked out the Taliban originally.
50:47We ran Al-Qaeda out.
50:50But then, in wanting everything, we ultimately got close to nothing.
51:03This is an English book from school.
51:07I should know English because it's an international language and it can help me become a doctor
51:13in the future.
51:15Secondary schools for girls have remained closed for over a year and a half.
51:2115-year-old Arifah began studying in her living room after the Taliban takeover.
51:27During this time, we could help students and help them put together,
51:34we don't have to learn how to teach them,
51:37and we don't understand who they would like to teach them.
51:41And the rest of us would like to teach them to the people who would like to teach them.
51:43And what they would like to teach them to different positions,
51:47for example, a doctor or a teacher.
51:52When my brother came to school, I thought that we are not in Afghanistan, and we are not in Afghanistan.
52:34Go to pbs.org slash Frontline for more on the impact of the Taliban's restrictions on women.
52:42Nobody believe the entire thing will fall apart overnight.
52:47And the state of the Afghan press under the Taliban.
52:51See all of our reporting on Afghanistan over the years.
52:55Connect with Frontline on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and stream anytime on the PBS app, YouTube, or pbs.org slash
53:03Frontline.
53:31For more on this and other Frontline programs, visit our website at pbs.org slash Frontline.
53:53Frontline's America and the Taliban series is available on Amazon Prime Video.