RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Twenty years after American forces invaded Afghanistan and removed the Taliban from power, the Taliban rules over Afghanistan once again. 

NEWS ARCHIVE:  How did we get here? This is how it happened.

COL. JASON DEMPSEY: …what were the real underlying issues that allowed it to collapse so spectacularly?

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: FRONTLINE looks back on America’s longest war, and how we lost it, in the new three-part series, America and the Taliban. 

TED HUBBARD: We weren’t successful in it and I think it’s a matter of willpower. 

STEVE COLL: It was unrealistic what the Americans were trying to do with young men in fatigues.

DOUGLAS LUTE: The Taliban were going to have a role. And at the end of the day, they got a role. It’s just not the role we imagined.

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Award-winning producers Marcela Gaviria and Martin Smith join me to talk about their reporting on the ground in Afghanistan, and their conversations with both U.S. and Afghan sources — including the Taliban themselves. 

MARTIN SMITH: I’d like to ask you what you believe are the reasons

 for your victory.

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: I’m Raney Aronson-Rath, editor-in-chief and executive producer of FRONTLINE, and this is the FRONTLINE Dispatch. 

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Marty, Marcela, thanks so much for joining me on the Dispatch.

MARTIN SMITH: Thank you for having us.

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: So you have both been covering the conflict in Afghanistan for years now. I wanna go back to the very first time you went and I’ll start with Marty, and then I’m gonna come to you, Marcela. Tell me about your first time going to Afghanistan and reporting from there.

MARTIN SMITH: Well, it was just after 9/11 that I went into the Pakistani tribal areas. One thing that people have to understand is that the Taliban are Pashtuns. Uh, two thirds of them live in Pakistan and they live mostly in the west. And that part of Pakistan is deemed, uh, by many Afghans as really part of Afghanistan. So I was traveling in and around those tribal areas. Uh, that was my first real glimpse of, uh, the Pashtun culture, the Pashtun, uh, politics, worldview. Um, and a lot of them were arming themselves and crossing the border in Afghanistan to fight the Americans. Many of these guys were going in there with swords and, and old muskets from World War I practically, um, uh, thinking somehow that they could defeat the US.

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: That’s just, that’s incredible. So that was the start.

MARTIN SMITH: That’s right. That was my first, uh, glimpse and I did see these guys, uh, arming up and going across the border and to fight the jihad against the United States. Um, but the war was going on inside, um, Afghanistan, so I didn’t cross in at that time. 

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: And Marcela, what was your, what’s your origin story with Afghanistan?

MARCELA GAVIRIA: Well, it, it was at the same time that I was with Marty back in 2003 when we were along the tribal belts that effectively is recognized by Pashtuns from Afghanistan and Pakistan as one entire country, although it isn’t, you know, these are all borders that were manufactured later. But the first time I ever set foot in Afghanistan was in the summer of 2009, and it was very tense back then compared to what it was this last time. But I’m jumping ahead, so…

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: No, it’s, it’s great to jump ahead because my next question was, you both have covered Afghanistan for years now. You’ve done multiple films for Frontline. How did this really become the work that you’ve collectively done together? 

MARCELA GAVIRIA: I think it’s a country that really gets under your veins, you know, the topography, the people, the, the politics of it. And, you know, it was quite quickly an obsession for us. Um, and of course the war was lingering on for 20 years, so we had reason to go back again and again. Oftentimes we would send our very brave cameraman, Tim Grucza, who would go and embed and film things and send it back to, at least to me to cut it. Marty was quite often more on the front lines of the war and um, you know, but I can’t claim much bravery for a lot of the amazing footage that you see over the years.

MARTIN SMITH: Early on, I remember having a conversation with Steve Coll, who wrote, uh, famously the Ghost Wars and, and more recently Directorate S and is a leading authority on Afghanistan. And he just gave me a tip many years ago. He says, follow the Haqqanis. And so I, um, I remember going in, in 2005, 2006 and actually, uh, asking if I could go into, uh, I was asking the Pakistani authorities if I could go into the tribal area, uh, to Miram Shah, which was the headquarters of the Haqqani Network. Uh, they refused. They refused. Uh, finally I just looked at my budget and decided I was gonna have to spend some money and charter a helicopter and take it into Miram Shah. And that was a fascinating uh, trip, um, to be on the ground. Just a few footsteps from where Haqqani was living, uh, and saw the fear with which the Pakistani, uh, army felt towards him. And Haqqani, of course, uh, headed the, um, faction of the Taliban that was most famous for its lethal use of suicide bombs and now is in the, the Haqqani family. The old man died some years back, but the sons are now in positions of great power within Afghanistan.

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: So, Marcela, you know, you mentioned the first time you went it was actually much more like hostile feeling. It was more, it was more menacing than recently, and I think most of our listeners will be surprised about that. Can you just talk about that a little bit more?

MARCELA GAVIRIA: Well, um, back in the day or over the years, the sense that you would get was that you were part of the occupation, even though you were a Western journalist. You were seen as, um, an invader and therefore you just felt uncomfortable. You’d get a lot of steely looks. And then, um, there was always, of course, the risk that they would bomb the building you were in or there’d be some attack on Westerners. So it was quite scary this time around, you got a sense when we went, after the, the Taliban takeover, that the Taliban didn’t want any bad publicity. So, they wanted to make sure nothing would happen to any foreign journalists, uh, while they were in power. And they just took extraordinary care of you, almost minding you everywhere you went. Which was annoying for sure, but, uh, clearly, uh, it made you feel very safe and you, we got to see the country in a way that we had never in the past. We literally, uh, crossed the entire country by car and it was something that we had just never been able to do in the past where we were literally seeing it from a bulletproof window or from a helicopter. 

RANEY ARONSON-RATH:  So Marty, I’m gonna shift to the Taliban leaders you were able to sit down with. You know, when I saw the early cut of the film, I was really surprised at how many Taliban leaders you did get to speak to, and many of whom, or at least some of whom had not spoken before. Um, tell me how that process went and what you found most surprising.

MARTIN SMITH: It’s interesting that you were surprised by all the Taliban who sat down and talked to us because of course, when you’re doing your reporting, you’re always more aware of the people that are not talking to you and you’re banging your head against the wall, writing letters, making, you know, going to people’s offices and trying to get, uh, more permissions granted for interviews. But, um, you know, I think when we went there after the fall, the first trip we made, uh, they were gloating on their victory. They were very pleased with what they had accomplished, of course. So they had fought for 20 years and here they were on, you know, as far as they saw it on top of the world. And so they, there were a number of them that wanted to come forward who had not really spoken to any Westerners before because they were in the trenches, if you will. Um, and so, you know, when we talked to Haji Mali Khan, who’s a member of the Haqqani clan, um, he had not really spoken to anybody before and here I was sitting down him, glowering at me, um, and having an honest conversation as much as we could about his fighting his use of suicide bomb attacks and whatnot.

MARCELA GAVIRIA: One thing that I thought was sort of interesting about all these guys though is, they’ve gotten pretty sophisticated. Like you could tell that on certain occasions they would have talking points cuz they would all repeat the same thing. Um, and so it was sort of fascinating to see that they are getting on message because there’s a big division between them. The Haqqanis and the Kandahari clan don’t see eye to eye on anything. And, but they were trying very much to sort of portray a united message on issues like women’s education and, um, the burqa ruling. And of course, what was really surprising was to hear the fact that they really are not that concerned with the day-to-day issues that affect people the most, which is like improving the roads and the hospitals and um, you know, just getting food on the table. They seem a lot more concerned about religious edicts.

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Right, and at one point Marty asked a question, he says, ‘this is not our issue.’ Like, this is not what we care about. And so let’s talk about what they’re saying now. What is their main priority right now running Afghanistan.

MARTIN SMITH: Well, I think that it’s different depending on the faction. Uh, and they do try to present this unified message cuz during the war, that was their mantra that we’re all one. Um, and we all, uh, are focused on expelling the foreigners. And, uh, that was their focus and that’s where they succeeded. But now the Kandaharis were more characterized by sort of some of the older mullahs, um and originally led by Mullah Omar, uh, who’s something of a household name, even in, uh, abroad. Um, they’re much more concerned with these religious, uh, edicts with strict interpretation. It’s almost like a, an experiment in Islam, um, that they come up with these, um, ideas. The, the Haqqanis, also favor a sort of a closer relationship with Pakistan, um, whereas the Kandaharis are trying to distance themselves somewhat from that. Um, so on a number of fronts, there are these tensions, uh, and they’re not exactly what you would expect. You would expect that the hardcore Haqqanis would be the stricter when it came to religious edicts. That’s not the way it is.

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: One of the things about the series, and a lot of the reviewers pointed this out, is that we watch you through all of these years, and of course, one of the most remarkable aspects of it is that you were able to reconnect with so many of the same subjects that you spoke to in all those years passed. Right? So let’s talk about the American troops first that you embedded with in 2009. Let’s first talk about, um, Colonel Christian Cabaniss.

MARTIN SMITH: yeah. You know, he gave, um, a speech to a group of Marines that he was sending. Uh, to a small village in the south, uh, southern part of Helmand, uh, which really was really the tip of the spear. And it was the beginning of our efforts to, um, to execute a counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan. And he gave a speech that reminds me of, you know, something out of like Henry V, um, rousing the troops to fight. You know, we, we spent time with him then, but I looked him up afterwards. I looked him up just this, uh, just for this, uh, program and talked to him about that a little bit. Um, you know, like a lot of these guys that were fighting, um, they were following a prescription that was designed in the Pentagon and they had, you know, real, I mean these are thinking marines, thinking soldiers, thinking men. And they, they’re, they’re not just blindly doing this stuff and they, they have their own, um, doubts, but they follow orders.

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Yeah, and I mean, watching them reconnect with their selves, almost, is one of the most remarkable parts of the film for me is just seeing this throughout time. How about Captain Ted Hubbard? Tell me about that.

MARTIN SMITH: Yeah, Hubbard is an extraordinary Marine. Uh, and you know, it was by chance that, um, he and I, uh, became somewhat close during the time that I was there. And then again, when I looked him up more recently for this film, he, he had a lot of time to think about it. He said that he’d put a lot of it. Out of his mind, he’d compartmentalized and this brought it all back. I mean, he’s written me since. Um, but he, he said he was happy to represent, uh, but it was by chance. It was just that on the day I went on a patrol, he happened to be the leader of that patrol. We came into a firefight for about 20 minutes or so. We were pinned down by Taliban fire. And so you go through that with somebody um, you, you have to trust them. You’re trusting them with your life. All I had was a camera. They had the guns. Um, it, it was, he’s, uh, he’s had enough time to think about this and, you know, he has real criticisms of the whole counterinsurgency, effort that they were making as to whether or not it made any sense.

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: It was really poignant watching him and, and the other people you spoke to really look as if they were looking back at their lives, but also their assessment and their perspectives on their mission. So Marty, you’re able to visit the town of Miam Poshteh, where you had filmed in 2009. Tell us about 2009, and then why did you decide to go back to that place?

MARTIN SMITH: So we were following the Marines that were being sent to this point very far south. There was nothing between where Miam Poshteh was and the Pakistani border. There were no American combat outposts or any of any kind. So we were at the tip of the spear and we went down there in order to, um, as Christian Cabaniss said, uh, win the hearts and minds of the people. Um, it was very much Taliban country. And all the Taliban had to do that were in that area if they needed to regroup, was just to go a little further south, go across the border to Pakistan, um, and, and regroup. Um, so they had a great advantage. Um, and the local people really didn’t see any, uh, advantage in siding with the Americans. Um, the Taliban had the upper hand and all of them, there’s one basic thing that they all knew, and that was that the Taliban were not gonna go anywhere, um, permanently, and they could go and come back, but the Americans were eventually gonna leave. And this sort of, this sort of underscores the futility of the whole exercise because if you’re going to leave, the Taliban just have to wait.

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Right. It really feels like a waiting game, especially when you go back. So how is it feeling? You’re walking back there so many years later? It’s, it’s an incredible moment.

MARTIN SMITH: You know, I thought I might be wasting some good production days because I thought, how the hell am I gonna find these guys in this remote part of Afghanistan? Um, surprisingly, you know, we went down there and I said, uh, to the local Taliban that were there, I said, take me to the police station. They took me there, I showed them the video that we had filmed with the Marines in 2009, and they immediately crowded around these policemen and the police captain and he said, ‘oh yeah, I know that guy. He lives over there.’ And so was, it was remarkably easy, um, to then go find all these guys. I mean, the fact is they don’t move around a lot. So I, I meet them. They’re there. I’m, I mean, they, they, the guy says, yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember, uh, when the Marines were here, not only does he remember when the Marines were here, he remembers verbatim what the Marines told him. Which we had, um, filmed, um back in 2009. And, you know, they rounded up, as he said, round up the elders. And out, out come the elders. And they spoke to us and, uh, it was quite, uh, it, it was quite a remarkable moment. I really was sort of saying to Marcela as we were driving down there and the road is a horrible, horrible road. Um, I said, this just may be a waste of time. But we spent two days down there and, um, turned out that we met the same guys that we had met in 2009. And it was a trip that was worthwhile.

MARCELA GAVIRIA: What was crazy was that the, the Taliban refused to let us spend the night. So we had to drive four or five hours there, interview them and drive five hours back to the, to the town, and then do it all again the next day. And you know, it’s, we inhaled a lot of dust.

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: The two of you work together, you’re partners, you go into the edit, you wrangle things together. What is it like to have three hours now on Afghanistan? How, how are you both feeling? Marcela?

MARCELA GAVIRIA: I have to say I’ve never enjoyed working on a project more than this one. It was an incredible ride to go back to Afghanistan, to see the country under the Taliban and to have the, the immense support that you’ve given us to tell this story in three hours. It’s just been incredible. We have also an incredible team that’s been working around the clock and our producer Brian Funk and, um, Scott Anger. I, it’s just been a joy. So I think I’m gonna have postpartum depression come April 26th.

MARTIN SMITH: I echo what Marcela said, that we were blessed with the support that we got to be able to have a big canvas to tell this story with, with enough time, um, both in the edit and on the screen.

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Thank you so much for your dedication to the subject. You know, the work that you both have done is just, it’s just really inspiring and, and I think is seminal work. Thanks for being on the Dispatch.

MARTIN SMITH: Thank you. 

MARCELA GAVIRIA: Thank you, Raney.

RANEY ARONSON-RATH: You can watch parts 1 and 2 of America and the Taliban on frontline dot org, FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel, and the PBS Video App. Part 3 premieres April 25th.