I'm heartbroken about the way things went
in Afghanistan.
Powerful armies invaded this country
with slogans about peace,
democracy, women's rights.
It was a disaster.
Now the foreign troops are withdrawing.
Whatever they leave behind, so
far, it's nothing like what we promised.
My name is Graeme Smith.
Canadian w*r correspondent
more than 15 years ago.
I followed troops into battle.
Spent years smelling the death.
The charred flesh of su1c1de bombers
got stuck in the treads of my shoes.
I returned one more time
before the Taliban swept back into power.
I needed to find out how
it all went wrong.
I was also looking for a way
to reconcile myself
with the terrible things that
we, the foreigners,
inflicted on this beautiful country.
I've just come back to Kabul
and one of my first evenings out,
I looked at my phone and I heard that
an analyst that I knew a little bit,
he'd been gunned down in the streets.
Probably because of the things
he was saying on television.
That was a good reminder
about the dangers these days
that, I guess, face everyone
who dips their toe
into politics in Afghanistan.
I first came to Afghanistan in 2005
as a reporter for The Globe and Mail.
And I stayed for many years after that
as an analyst for NGOs
and the United Nations.
It was exciting for a kid in his twenties
What felt like the edges of civilization.
- I had no idea
- what I was getting myself into.
When I first arrived,
it felt like a cowboy frontier town.
It wasn't unusual to hear people saying,
"Oh, this is like
the opening scene in Star Wars.
You know? With all of the crazy
characters walking around."
- everyone you can possibly
- imagine was crowding into Kabul
In the early years of the w*r.
Today, so much has changed.
I've never seen the city so on edge.
The Taliban, once defeated, can
now strike at any time.
People try to go about their daily lives
but there's always the danger
of a truck b*mb or a su1c1de att*ck.
And when we venture outside
to talk to local people
and do some filming,
we time ourselves to make sure
that we don't linger.
There's a lot of kidnappings
by criminals, the Taliban,
and other armed groups.
Kabul used to be crowded with foreigners.
Now the diplomats and aid workers
mostly stay behind the blast walls
and the barbed wire
that you see everywhere.
- In the sky, surveillance blimps
- float powerful cameras
To watch for trouble.
In the streets, posters urge citizens
to dial a hotline to stop terror att*cks.
You know, it's the first time
coming to Kabul
that I've hired a B6 armoured vehicle.
- We've got the bulletproof glass,
- the armour-plated doors,
- We've got the bulletproof glass,
- the armour-plated doors,
You can spray the tires with b*ll*ts
and it'll keep driving.
In some ways it feels like overkill
but that's the reality now.
I happen to know the man
in charge of all this security.
I met Hamdullah Mohib years ago
when he was an aid
to a presidential candidate.
Now only 37 years old,
he is the National Security
Advisor to the President.
att*cks here
have caused massive casualties,
people feel fearful.
It has a psychological impact
when you live like this.
Every day, my heart is pumping
worried about my children
until they come back from school.
Like many young Afghans
in positions of power today,
Mohib fled his homeland as a child.
He lived in a refugee camp in Pakistan
but was one of the lucky ones
who got an education
in the west.
Then he returned home
to try to rebuild his country.
The Afghan people have been
desiring stability ever since I was born.
My generation grew up in this w*r
and all we want to see
is to be able to do the normal things
that everyone else takes for granted.
Mohib gets daily
briefings from his generals
who tell him
that they are winning the w*r.
This is a different kind of warfare.
We have the conventional warfare
that most militaries
are prepared to fight.
Yeah.
And they're trying to do that.
And then there's
this gorilla type of warfare
mixed with terrorism
and tactics used by the Taliban.
These tactics are bringing the w*r
right into Mohib's backyard.
20 years of fighting has settled nothing.
When I first started
coming to Afghanistan
the Taliban were just ghosts.
You would never see them.
I mean, even on the b*ttlefield
just the occasional muzzle flash
or a bit of movement in the foliage.
They were very good
at removing their dead
from the b*ttlefield
so you didn't see the corpses.
They were a myth more than anything else.
The Taliban started as
conservative religious students
based in the southern province
of Kandahar.
Many had taken up arms
against the Soviet troops
that occupied Afghanistan in the 1980s.
But once the Soviets were driven out,
a vicious civil w*r erupted
among rival political factions
in the 1990s.
The Taliban emerged as the dominant force
in this chaos.
Sweeping the country
and capturing Kabul in 1996.
Once in power,
they closed girls' schools,
banned music and television.
They forced women to wear the burqa
and ex*cuted people
for minor transgressions.
But they offered an alternative
to the rampant unrest of earlier years.
That made the Taliban popular
in some places
especially in the southern villages.
But a lot of educated people
fled the country.
Then, in October 2001,
the Americans invaded.
- The Taliban had been harbouring
- Al-Qaeda leaders
Who plotted the 9/11 att*cks
in New York City.
On my orders,
the United States m*llitary
has begun strikes
against the Al-Qaeda
t*rror1st training camps
and m*llitary installations
of the Taliban regime
in Afghanistan.
The name of today's m*llitary operation
is Enduring Freedom.
I don't know now if there is such a thing
as a good w*r.
But definitely, at the time,
there was a feeling
that the w*r in Afghanistan
was noble somehow.
Not just the foreign troops
but everybody who came
with the foreign troops.
The aid workers, the journalists.
- Almost all of them felt
- as though they were pushing back
The forces of darkness in Afghanistan.
They were pushing back the forces of evil
and barbarism.
I was swept up in this fantasy
that gripped everyone in Afghanistan.
All the foreigners,
and frankly the entire western world
at that time.
It was a kind of romantic notion,
a flawed romantic notion.
That belief inspired Canada
and dozens of countries
to more than 100,000 foreign troops.
One of the soldiers I came to know
was Ayesha Wolasmal.
Born in Norway, she often
visited family in Afghanistan.
She joined the Norweigan Army in 2006.
We arranged to meet one morning
in the garden of a heavily
protected compound in Kabul.
What was that like
putting on the uniform?
Fantastic.
It was very emotional.
Even though I was very young,
I immediately had this feeling
that I can,
you know, be a bridge maker somehow
because I grew up in a very conservative
traditional Pashtun family.
And I picked up
on a lot of cultural nuances,
that whole kind of tribal thinking.
I have to admit, I wasn't that
intellectually invested
- in the whole peace and democracy
- aspect of it.
It was more the immediate, you know,
relief for the population, as I saw it.
You're sort of saving
the people from the Taliban.
Yeah, exactly.
So that was a very strong sentiment.
At first it all seemed easy.
In a little more than two months,
the western armies
drove the Taliban from power.
And I remember music playing,
Afghans love music.
As soon as the regime
was toppled, I felt that,
"Okay, now the world
has access to Afghanistan.
And Afghanistan has access to the world,
to all the impulses that help a country
move in the right direction."
Practically, that meant
development projects coming in.
Girls going to school,
something as basic as that.
Much has changed
especially for the lucky few
that live in cities.
Foreign troops and foreign aid
brought new freedoms
and new opportunities.
But when you leave Kabul,
things get more complicated.
Especially here in the south in Kandahar
where I spent most of my time
as a reporter.
For me it was really important
to cover all sides of the conflict.
So spending time
with Afghan Security Forces,
trying to hear
what the Taliban had to say.
They'd go... well they stayed
outside the wire
beyond the razor-wire fence
that surrounds the m*llitary camps
and just listen to ordinary people.
Kandahar is where
the Taliban first emerged
and it remains very conservative.
Women in public
pretty much always wear
the traditional burqa.
And yet, here is where,
with Canadian Aid money,
a friend of mine tried something bold.
In a quiet corner of the city,
these girls escape behind the high walls
of this private school.
They take off their burqas
to attend classes in English
and learn computer skills.
Life is good.
Life is good and we see you again.
You're welcome.
- It's so nice to see you.
Ehsanullah Ehsan for years.
Thank you so much. You look
even younger than before.
- Oh yeah!
- How is it possible?
We wanted to give you a little surprise.
So good, it's so good.
It is a surprise.
But you're still here.
I'm still here, I'm still surviving.
It's definitely hard.
It's very risky here
to help all these women get education
and especially modern education.
To go out and work,
to be self-sustained, to be independent,
this is something unacceptable
for extremists.
For example, you are developing
a magazine, right?
Writing a magazine.
So in the magazine,
you need to put some photos
or you are doing a report.
But foreign money has dried up
for his school as Canada
and other western donors
lost interest in Afghanistan.
His school has gone from
more than 2000 female students a year,
to 200.
And he struggles
to give the young girls hope.
There is v*olence
against women in some countries
and Afghanistan is one of them.
These girls are here
to get a broad education.
In today's English class,
Soraya and her classmates
have an assignment
on v*olence against women,
a radical topic
here in the traditional south.
Now it's the turn of 12-year-old Shabnam.
Islam has given women the right
to work, study, and get education.
I request every family
to let women study, work,
and get education.
To shine one day
and achieve their dreams.
Let them fly like a bird
and be honoured one day.
Thanks a lot.
It's not safe outside
for women or anyone else, really.
- Canadian troops fought and d*ed
- to protect this city
And yet now it's under siege
once again by the Taliban.
Police are constantly on the lookout
for insurgents and su1c1de bombers.
They guard the city
but they can barely protect themselves.
Three police officers are
assassinated here in Kandahar
every week.
And across the country, in some weeks,
hundreds of security personnel
are k*lled.
So just now, 20 minutes ago,
another target k*lling.
Yet again, some gunmen on a motorcycle
sh*t and k*lled
an off-duty police officer.
It's amazing the pace of these things.
Even if the police are targets,
we have no choice.
We still need to rely on them
for our safety.
With two truckloads of armed men,
we drive less than 30 minutes
to the frontlines
in the Panjwai Valley.
This is where
I first started to understand
that there would be no
m*llitary solution to this w*r.
Canada took command of NATO operations
here in the south back in 2006.
It was the country's biggest
deployment since World w*r II
and, eventually, one of its bloodiest.
I think I slept in that shelter
over there.
This used to be a Canadian base.
It's called Masum Ghar.
And now, there's hardly anything left.
It's like a ghost town.
This landscape haunts me.
I almost d*ed in this valley.
I remember the bone-jarring
intensity of the explosions.
Just over there in the hazy distance,
you can see Taliban territory.
The Canadians, the British,
the Germans, the Americans,
they all fought to defeat the Taliban
and they failed, essentially.
Everybody okay?!
I was just over there
listening on the radio
as Canadians on this hillside
were trying to move north
at Taliban positions.
Year after year, battle after battle,
I witnessed the same pattern.
Foreign troops hammering away
with modern fire power,
the Taliban coming back again,
and again, and again,
with nothing more sophisticated
than stubbornness.
NATO's top commander
- had great words of praise today
- for Canadian forces...
Canadian troops here
have been very successful.
The Taliban...
- ...defeating
- a significant Taliban presence.
...declaring
the recent operation there
a clear m*llitary victory.
Canadian politicians and generals
kept hailing the Afghan mission
as a spectacular success.
But looking back,
it was really a string of failures.
They just retreated
and then launched
a renewed insurgency that grew
and engulfed the whole country.
In my reports back then,
I tried to sound a note of caution.
But I often felt like a lonely voice
in a crowd of media cheerleaders.
I really questioned
my own sanity sometimes
in Afghanistan.
I could see things
were happening in front of me
and I was trying to write them down
and put them in the newspaper,
and then m*llitary officers
and government PR people
would sort of tell me,
"No, no that's not
what you saw."
It was a head-spinning experience.
And I think that's what happens in a w*r
where countries get swept up
in this fervour.
And they don't care what's true.
They want to know,
"How great are our boys?
How true is our cause?"
And I think that's the madness of w*r.
For Canada, the madness would go on
for five more years.
We started to withdraw
from Afghanistan in 2011
with 158 soldiers dead
and at least 2000 injured.
I began to question
whether those sacrifices were worth it.
I also began to realize
that while fighting what we saw as evil
that we ourselves had sometimes
crossed the line into darkness.
I had to go back
to where I first saw that darkness.
Maybe more than any other single place,
where I really started to lose faith
in the w*r in Afghanistan
was inside the crumbling
jail cells of Sarpoza prison
on the west side of Kandahar City.
Some of the stories
I heard inside these walls...
I can't forget.
They're still with me.
The prison has always housed
common criminals
but also plenty of political prisoners.
You can hear the murmuring of men here
inside the political section
of the prison,
that's where they keep the Taliban.
We're not allowed
to film inside there right now
but the last time I was here,
I spent a number of visits
inside the political section here,
and they told me terrible stories
about t*rture and abuse
at the hands of the security forces.
And it really started to change the way
that I thought about the w*r.
This was kind of a turning point for me
in my whole thinking about the conflict.
When I first came here in 2007,
I interviewed 30 detainees,
the majority of them suspected Taliban.
Many of them
captured by Canadian soldiers
- and transferred
- over to the Afghan authorities.
I spoke to men who showed me
the scars on their bodies.
They told me they were beaten,
choked, frozen, whipped.
There was one guy
who'd been beaten so badly
that he'd forgotten who he was.
There was one young man
who had a very vivid memory
of being electrocuted
and he showed me how
he was flopping around
on the ground like a fish.
Terrible things
happened to these prisoners
when they were being interrogated.
This shook me because it wasn't
an accident of w*r.
It was deliberate.
It was a part of the design of the w*r.
On a daily basis,
prisoners transferred
from Canadian custody
into cruel hands.
...have no evidence
of the specific allegations
in the global...
Why was this information
not brought up in this house before?
My stories caused uproar, debate,
and investigations.
The Afghan and Canadian governments
tried to deny that t*rture was happening.
...evidence
there is any access
blocked to the prisons.
Pourquoi n'avez-vous pas eu
les mêmes exigences?
To confirm the truth.
Ansari Baluch, an investigator
for the Afghanistan Independent
Human Rights Commission.
He wasn't afraid to call out abuses
by both the government and the Taliban,
angering the Taliban all the more
because he worked with people like me,
western journalists.
Working with foreigners can taint you.
Everyone in your community
thinks that you are a spy
for the Americans.
So I was worried about the fallout
and how that was going to affect Ansari.
Several months after my stories appeared,
Ansari disappeared.
I found out later
- that the Taliban
- had kidnapped and beheaded him.
I always felt bad
about dragging Ansari into the spotlight
because he was trying to do
his human rights work quietly,
behind the scenes,
and I was trying to make a headline.
In Afghanistan.
But I think how you feel about that
depends on whether you feel responsible.
And that's why today's meeting
is going to be tough.
I've tracked down Ansari's family.
Mokhtar is his nephew.
Anargul is his daughter.
They say that the human rights advocate
- wouldn't listen to the family's
- concerns about his safety.
When the Taliban snatched Ansari
and asked for a ransom,
to meet the kidnappers.
You started digging in the earth.
Yeah.
Ah, the clothes.
Yes.
I'm sorry, my friend.
That must have been incredibly hard.
And his hands.
I'm sorry, my friend.
And Shahid in red is a martyr.
Yeah.
- I think what happened
- to my friend Ansari Baluch
Is symbolic of the ways
that we as foreign journalists
put our friends into danger.
It's something that
we really have to grapple with
about whether or not the things
that we ask people to do
are worth it.
Ansari was just one
of the many people I've known
k*lled in this endless w*r.
A journalist who worked
with Canadian reporters,
a tribal leader who helped me
to understand local politics,
A Canadian soldier
who protected me in battle.
Like so many others who d*ed,
they wanted a better Afghanistan.
One of the things
is how much of that striving was wasted.
In part because of the abuses
and the corruption
of our supposed allies.
A lot of the western aid money
for schools and hospitals
In recent years, poverty's gotten worse.
More than half the population
now lives
These days, what separates
squalor from splendour
are guards and gates.
Inside wealthy enclaves,
the elites enjoy
their parks and fountains.
None of this existed
when I first came here
to Kandahar.
Certainly not this fountain.
I mean, this is a dry country.
It's one of the poorest
countries in the world.
And so to see this, it's pretty stunning.
And it really gives you a sense
that some people are doing
pretty well for themselves
in this w*r.
And it's actually, you know,
this is part of the reason
why the w*r goes on
because it's good business.
Not all of the wealthier
is from corruption,
but this is not the kind of neighbourhood
where it's safe to ask people
how they made their fortunes.
The drug trade, stolen aid money,
all kinds of schemes
have made Afghanistan
one of the world's
most corrupt countries.
A problem so big, so obvious
that government leaders
don't really try to deny it,
as National Security Advisor
Hamdullah Mohib told me.
To get quick fixes,
we empowered some of the very warlords
that people were fed up with.
We put them in positions
of ministries and governors.
As businesses, they were given
lucrative contracts.
Police chiefs.
Vice presidents.
Governors.
Men who have been accused
by international
human rights organizations
of gross violations.
Many of them warlords of the past
still have a grip on Afghanistan.
I think there has been
a lot of injustices
in the last 18 years
conducted by our government or people,
and I think whether willingly
or unwillingly,
however it has happened,
but I think it has led to people
joining the Taliban.
There has been a lot
of corruption in the government
and I think we should not
free ourselves from that.
Own it and fix it.
Widespread corruption
has not been the only thing
driving people to the Taliban.
There have also been
mounting civilian casualties
in the US-led w*r.
This is where they count the numbers
and track the abuses,
the Afghanistan Independent
Human Rights Commission.
It says a lot about the situation
that any sort of official building
looks like a fortress
with intense security checks.
It's so tight that they took
my chocolate away from me.
They think I'm going to k*ll someone
with a chocolate bar.
They took the pills too.
Oh yeah, the cough drops.
My good friend Shaharzad Akbar
heads the commission.
Akbar's family spent the Taliban years
in a refugee camp.
Her parents firmly believed
in education for women
and she went on to become
the first Afghan woman
to study at Oxford University.
The future of human rights...
At 33 years old,
she's probably the leading
human rights advocate
in Afghanistan.
...for our international
partners.
What bothers Akbar
is the sheer level of carnage
inflicted by both sides.
You can really see that footprint of w*r
on the most vulnerable, the children.
Over the years, I've seen far too many
of the w*r's youngest victims.
This generation has grown up
in a world shaped by v*olence.
Recent years have been
because of increased fighting
on all sides.
One of my friends
is trying to do something
here at an orphanage
just outside of Kabul,
home to 150 children
from toddlers to teens.
Mariam Wardak takes in
as many orphans as she can.
We have people
coming to our door every day
saying that we have another orphan.
We can't accept it
because we have exceeded our capacity.
Everybody has become numb
to the children of w*r.
How can you become numb
to something like that?
Wardak comes from a prominent family.
Her father was a famous rebel
against the Soviet invaders,
she recently worked
as a senior security official
for the Afghan government.
And now, she's dealing with
the human consequences
of rising insecurity.
The children at Wardak's orphanage
have suffered at the hands
of all sides of the w*r.
The Taliban as well as the Americans
and the Afghan government.
In the fighting.
Hamidah saw her mother gunned down
by the Taliban.
His family was k*lled in crossfire.
Do you know who fired
against your family?
w*r is blind.
They don't know who to be angry with,
they don't know who to look forward to,
they just understand
that there is v*olence
and that they're afraid that
they can get in the crossfire
between the Taliban
or the Afghan National Defence
and Security Forces
that could cost them their life
like it has cost their parents' lives.
They know that they need to fear both.
But they don't understand
who's the good guy and who's the bad guy.
- It can be hard
- at times to tell the difference
Between the supposed good guys
and the bad guys.
That's what Ayesha Wolasmal discovered
once she took off her soldier's uniform.
When I was in a uniform,
my entire understanding of the situation
was a very kind of
security-based understanding.
But it was only when I actually came back
to Afghanistan as a civilian, you know,
as Ayesha, Masuma's daughter,
that I got a reality check
and I think the strongest symbol of that
was when we took a taxi like a Corolla
between Kabul and Kandahar.
And I'd say it's like 45 degrees
and it's really, really hot
and we're both in our burqas.
- And there was an American convoy
- passing.
And I'm sitting there
for the first time not in a convoy
but just like a normal civilian.
And I sat there and I felt...
Suddenly I felt that I witnessed
the occupation in action.
Even though I had been
part of these convoys myself
but we ended up waiting
three and a half hours
for this convoy to do whatever
they were supposed to do.
And me and my mom were fine
but there were tons and tons,
long lines of cars with women,
small children.
For them it was a full-blown occupation,
for them it was seeing
people that don't look like them
control their cities,
control their check post,
control their movement.
In the villages,
people told her about being terrified
of foreign troops
or Afghan government forces
as they hunted for the Taliban.
I remember so many stories
about my relatives
telling me about how their sons
were just like taken out
in the middle of the nights,
you know?
In front of their mothers.
Black paper bags
were placed on their heads
and they disappeared.
Even two weeks ago,
I met with people not faring
night raids by the Americans
but the Americans have trained
the Afghans that well
that now the Afghans are doing it.
Sadly that's everyday life.
The bloodshed, uh...
I mean, the sons,
the husbands, the fathers,
but also the young children.
I mean, it's absolutely devastating.
The numbers are staggering.
Since the w*r began in 2001,
hundreds of thousands have been k*lled.
No one knows the exact count.
A cemetery for bodies that are unclaimed,
unidentified, unknown.
It was a sad enough place
when I visited a dozen years ago
and today it is unbelievably bigger.
More people are k*lled
in this w*r every year
than in any other conflict in the world.
Sometimes memories drift back to you
in unexpected ways.
I remember one night
I was attending a play
and I started crying,
and I wept, and I wept.
I hadn't cried like that in years.
I really, really want this w*r to end.
NATO is the most powerful
alliance in human history
by some measures.
But m*llitary efforts
to bring peace and stability
have failed.
The Taliban have only grown stronger.
In propaganda videos
posted on their website,
the Taliban claim they are
well armed, well trained,
they can strike anywhere
and they do.
To find out how the Taliban
are pulling it off,
I went to see my good friend
Rahmatullah Amiri,
one of the country's most respected
political analysts.
Taliban are not just only
getting stronger,
they're getting organized,
they're becoming
some sort of a conventional
kind of army.
If you compare the Taliban of today
versus the Taliban of 2014,
you see a much different group.
Amiri barely survived
a Taliban att*ck
on the American University
in Kabul in 2016.
13 people were k*lled
and more than 40 injured
including Amiri.
Four b*ll*ts hit me,
two in the abdomen
and one in the leg, one in the arm.
I was pushing myself against the ground
to get to the police
because the police was probably
10 metres away from me.
They could hear my voice
but they could not come
because the attackers
were pretty close by.
Then I thought,
"Okay, let's try a bit more."
Because my mom lost four sons.
I knew that if she lost me,
I don't think she would survive
because I am the solo
breadwinner of the family.
And...
And she's very close to me.
So I didn't give up.
Amiri slowly recovered,
rebuilt his strength,
and he believes the Taliban
were doing the same.
By 2019,
from safe havens in Pakistan,
expanding their control across
Afghanistan.
From experience travelling
across the country,
I would say in terms of terrain,
Taliban control between
50 to 60 percent of the country
under their full control.
That's what I would say
their full control is.
If you add the contested area,
I would say 60 to 70 percent.
That is not
what National Security Advisor
Hamdullah Mohib told me.
He seems confident of victory.
We have broken the back
of the Taliban.
They will lose their capacity
to take and hold territory.
We have a m*llitary part
to victory in this conflict.
That's not true.
If the back of the Taliban
could be broken,
that would be from 2009 to 2014.
Where hundreds of thousands
international trips were there
- and billions of dollars
- were poured into reconstructions
And nation building and everything.
That was the only times
where the Taliban were on the back foot.
When the government
talks about that, you know,
breaking their back,
I'm telling them they haven't
reached their peak yet.
Wow.
The government needs to accept
Taliban as a very strong, powerful force.
They cannot treat them
as a bunch of, you know,
insurgents who are outside there.
No, they have a very strong system,
both a civilian and m*llitary system
that is right now running
almost half of the country.
It's hard to get a sense
of the Taliban's real power
because it's dangerous
for an outsider like me
to travel into the vast territory
they control.
One night in Kandahar,
we arranged to meet Abdullah,
a former Taliban commander
who grew weary of fighting
but who still stays in touch
with his former comrades.
For his own safety,
we are concealing his identity.
We hire him to take a cellphone camera
into a Taliban region
not far from Kandahar City.
You have to keep everything
on this little chip here.
It'll be good.
Local fighters allowed him
to film these images.
They want to show the outside world
how secure they feel
in their strongholds.
These days, the Taliban allow girls
to join the boys in study
at the local religious school.
- But many families
- pull their girls out of classes
When they reach puberty.
And these students are just memorizing
verses from the Quran,
not really getting a broad education.
Farmers don't seem to mind being filmed
as they finish harvesting
the hashish crop.
Drug cultivation is the biggest source
of cash income for these people.
Other farmers plant poppy seeds
for the next season's opium.
Both sides of the w*r
earn tens of millions of dollars a year
from illegal dr*gs.
The profits allow them
to buy more weapons,
seize more territory.
The dr*gs fuel the w*r.
Wants to hide his face
but he has a message
to broadcast on television.
This is not an empty boast.
Intelligence estimates say
that by early 2021, the Taliban
already dominated
much of the countryside.
With only major cities
under government control
and under constant thr*at.
The Taliban have shown their strength
with spectacular att*cks
like this car b*mb in 2018
in the southwestern province of Helmand.
But this att*ck was different.
Instead of suffering quietly,
ordinary citizens decided to speak up.
In all my years in Afghanistan,
people usually debated how to win the w*r
and now they started to argue
about how to make peace.
I came to this neighbourhood in Kandahar
to find one of the organizers
of a new grassroots peace movement.
A young father of five children
Bismillah Watandost
makes his living
as a freelance journalist
and full-time activist.
The Helmand blast
inspired Bismillah and others
to launch a people's peace march.
They started with just
a handful of people
but grew to a few hundred,
trekking more than 700 kilometres
across deserts, through villages,
for almost two months.
Bismillah even took the risk
of arranging to meet
with local Taliban leaders
face to face.
As the peace marchers
were making their way to Kabul
in June 2018,
the government and the Taliban
declared an unexpected ceasefire.
For three days,
Afghans got a glimpse
of what peace could look like.
Mujib Mashal covered this story
for the New York Times.
Born in Kabul,
he is one of the best
journalists in Afghanistan.
The miraculous thing
about those three days was
it was completely peaceful.
To me, that was a sign
that everybody's really tired.
I remember we reported
an episode from Kunduz
where some of these Taliban
fighters would come in,
so we kind of chronicled their day,
you know, where they had kebabs,
where they had their ice cream,
at the kebab shop they listened to music,
and as they were riding back
on their motorcycles...
it was dusk time
and the ceasefire was ending
and they were crossing a bridge,
and they were actually
hugging goodbye with the people
including the soldiers
on this side of the line.
They were hugging the same guys
they were going to be sh**ting
the next day.
They sh*t at three days before
they were going to go back
to sh**ting them,
and probably a bunch of those guys
are dead by now.
There was something about that moment,
I think we have lost
even the power to imagine
that there could be a moment
where everybody feels like
they can breathe
and they don't have to sh**t.
And as short as that period was
and as insignificant
in the larger loss of the w*r,
it kicked a sense of possibility
into people, you know?
- It kicked a sense of possibility
- into people, you know?
And no matter how it came about,
it was for the first time in a long time,
not just in this conflict,
in the spectrum of 40-year conflict
at least for my generation,
to think that the two sides can say,
"Okay, we'll stop"
and that it actually stops.
- But even as
- that dream of peace took shape,
Afghans started asking questions.
And at what cost?
Resistance to any compromise
with the Taliban
has always been especially strong
within the urban middle class.
Many women are fearful
of losing their hard-fought freedoms.
And I was curious about
the young generation of people
who grew up surrounded by foreign troops
and foreign aid.
So I came here, to Kabul University.
Mariam and her friend Adiba
study photography
in a country where the Taliban
had once banned cameras
and they have no intention
of letting anyone turn back the clock.
Despite these struggles,
this generation dreams big.
And also small
with personal goals
that are breathtakingly modest.
What clothes would you want to wear?
I, myself?
Like men's clothes.
Mini skirts?
Men's clothes, suits.
Men's clothes.
Oh, okay, okay.
Something like this.
You want to wear colourful clothes?
Why can't you wear colourful clothes now?
I want to go
for many of these young women.
She's the most famous feminist
in the country.
Your phone just pinged?
Something just happened?
Another expl*si*n?
Yeah, in PD 12, there was a blast.
And we still don't know
if it has harmed anyone or not.
This kind of security
it used to be only embassies
that did this.
We're in what's known as an airlock,
heavy steel doors
that are closed
on both sides of the driveway
and they're never open at the same time.
And so, you're in a little
metal box, basically,
just in case the car explodes
while it's being checked.
Farahnaz Forotan is only 28
but she is one of Afghanistan's
best-known television journalists.
I noticed you have Frida Kahlo
everywhere. Here...
Forotan revels in provocation.
She decorates her office
with the work of Mexican artist
Frida Kahlo,
selecting images
that would shock most people
in this conservative society.
That's like you.
She used her fame
to launch a social media campaign
called My Red Line.
Asking people to talk about the lines
that they are not willing to cross
for the sake of peace.
She has travelled across the country
collecting videos
with messages of defiance.
My Red Line
has generated dozens of videos
with tens of thousands
of followers on social media.
But it is mostly an urban phenomenon
in a country that is mainly rural.
Obviously there's a lot more at stake
for women here, you know?
They've come a really long way
and they're right to be really scared
of what a Taliban government
would look like.
I would struggle to sleep at night
if I was one of them.
Raised in the western world,
Ayesha Wolasmal understands
the fears of urban women.
She's no longer a soldier.
She now works with rural women
in the villages
and that gives her
a different perspective.
That fear is very different
from the fear that women
in the rural areas have.
Because they haven't
had the same level of progress there,
they haven't gone from their mud house
- to become parliamentarians.
- Yeah.
They're still in that same mud house.
Illiteracy rates are extremely high,
there are still girls
being married off at age 14.
So life hasn't changed.
And I always noticed this
throughout my travels.
The more remote places you visit,
the more it becomes evident
that the discussion at central level
is very removed from the realities
of rural Afghanistan.
I wanted to meet women like that
but local traditions make it
very hard for a foreigner,
let alone a man.
So I asked Wolasmal
to introduce me to her friend
Dr. Aziza Watanwall Azizi
and I went to see her in Kandahar.
Azizi was part of
an older generation of women
who came of age in the 1970s
before Afghanistan plunged into w*r.
She studied and practised
medicine in Europe
and then she came back
at a clinic in Kandahar.
Walk through her doors.
Dr. Azizi invited
a group of women she knows
to a tea party at her home,
- a rare occasion for these women
- to talk to a foreign man
And an even rarer opportunity
for me to hear their point of view.
In Kabul, we interviewed some women
who don't wear burqa
and they don't wear hijab even.
They say this w*r
is about freedom against peace.
If peace comes
and the Taliban come back to Kabul,
they will lose their freedom.
And I want to know if the women here
feel the same way.
I think in foreign countries,
people think if Taliban come back
to take a share of power
that it will be bad for women,
that women are afraid
of the Taliban coming back.
But these women are not afraid, I think.
Can we ask why?
Even here under anonymous burqas
behind high walls,
everyone has their own ideas
about the key to peace.
Over the mountains,
more than 1000 kilometres away,
those divergent ideas
about peace in Afghanistan
were being debated
in a city that feels like
a different world.
Doha, the capital of Qatar.
I've been sh*t at by the Taliban,
nearly kidnapped a couple of times,
so it feels strange
to come here and arrange
interviews with them.
You can find something remarkable.
A kind of unofficial embassy
and headquarters
for the Taliban
with the support
of the Qatari government.
They've been here since 2013,
a sign of how far they've come
diplomatically.
The Taliban meet openly
with visiting delegations,
plan their political strategy,
I was curious to meet
the younger Taliban thinkers.
Amar Zmarak is 35 years old.
Like a lot of new leaders
who work in the Taliban's
political office,
he's well-educated and worldly.
He works diligently to spread
the movement's message.
The Taliban once banned television
but now they have
a sophisticated web presence,
active on social media
in Pashto, Dari, English, and Arabic.
We are the age of technology.
In our elder time
even all over the world,
there was not as much
technology as we have now.
So due to technology,
there is more knowledge,
there is more education,
there is more progress in any field.
So we are more progressive
than the past generation.
When the world gives an opportunity to us
to prove ourselves to the world,
what we are and what we want,
they will be surprised
and they will find us
very different.
Zmarak dreams of returning to a homeland
that he has never seen.
I was born in exile.
My children are now living in exile.
So exile is now kind of life for us.
Every day and every night
even in sleep we have dreams.
Every night we live
in Afghanistan in our dream.
He and his fellow
Taliban comrades in Doha
now sense that they have a chance
of getting back home.
The United States waged w*r
against the Taliban
for almost two decades.
Some not even born
when the w*r started in 2001.
And now the Americans also
wanted to go home.
A desperate America
needed to change strategy.
After decades of refusing
the US began to do just that.
In 2018, the Americans came to Doha
to start official negotiations
with the Taliban...
without the Afghan government.
Mujib Mashal of the New York Times
says the stunning reversal came about
because the Americans felt trapped.
The noose had tightened too much.
- The m*llitary noose.
- The m*llitary noose.
- The Taliban's gain of territory,
- the Taliban's confidence.
- The Taliban's gain of territory,
- the Taliban's confidence.
There's an acknowledgment
of the fact internationally
that they are a power to reckon with.
So the Americans were forced to reckon
with Taliban's stalwarts
like this leader, Khairullah Khairkhwa,
who was the Taliban's interior minister
and a provincial governor.
Captured shortly after the fall
of the Taliban regime in 2001,
- Khairkhwa spent 12 years
- in the American m*llitary prison
At Guantanamo.
His detention file describes him
as a trusted and respected
Taliban official,
a high risk to US interests.
But he was set free by the Americans
in a prisoner exchange.
Khairkhwa went from
wearing a prison jumpsuit
to more dignified clothing
at five-star hotels.
Khairkhwa became a key player
in the Taliban's talks
with the Americans,
surrounded by lush gardens
and palm trees.
The Taliban negotiators,
and tortured,
found themselves face to face
with US m*llitary commanders.
It's a really, really odd, bizarre image
around the table.
You have people in uniform at the table,
people who have been involved
in special operations,
people who are very well-known
for the k*ll/capture missions
and things like that.
On the other side
you have pretty much
half of the Taliban delegation,
some of the most key negotiators
who've spent a decade in orange jumpsuits
in Guantanamo.
Now the two of them
sitting across as equals.
But by negotiating
directly with the Taliban,
the Americans outraged
many of their allies
in the Afghan government.
National Security Advisor
Hamdullah Mohib,
who spent his life fighting the Taliban,
felt betrayed.
I think what the Taliban
would achieve out of this was legitimacy.
And that's goal number one.
Establish yourself
as the legitimate saviour of Afghanistan
who has defeated a superpower
and freed the country
from their invasion.
Once you've legitimized yourself
and delegitimized everybody else
then you want to negotiate.
That is not a negotiation,
that is a surrender.
The Afghan government, the Afghan people
stand no chance, no fighting chance
once that deal is struck.
Because like I said, moral is gone.
I mean...
Perception is reality.
The perception there would be
is the Taliban defeated the United States
and all its allies, NATO allies.
Who in their right mind in Afghanistan
would stand in their way?
Activist Farahnaz Forotan
is doing her best to stand in their way.
Her My Red Line campaign
has mustered a lot of opinion
against compromise with the Taliban.
This poses a dilemma for Shaharzad Akbar.
As the head of Afghanistan's
human rights commission,
she has always
advocated for women's rights.
But she is also in favour of peace talks.
Interesting.
And what did you say?
Akbar went to Doha
along with other prominent Afghans
to meet the Taliban.
She pushed Khairkhwa and his comrades
on where they stood on women's rights.
- But his answers were too opaque
- to reassure her.
So when the Taliban say
they're committed to protecting
the rights of women
- that have been given to them
- by the sacred religion of Islam,
What does that mean?
Despite the tensions and mistrust,
by February 2020,
the Americans and the Taliban
managed to pull off a deal.
The Taliban paraded
to the signing ceremony,
triumphant.
Maybe they didn't win the w*r,
but the Americans had failed
to defeat them.
And the United States
was finally admitting it.
It doesn't show our victory,
but definitely shows
the loss and the weakness
of the Americans
and all other foreign troops
and foreign countries
who have troops in Afghanistan.
Inside a Doha hotel ballroom
packed with dignitaries
from around the world,
a historic handshake
between the US Special Envoy
for Afghanistan
and a Taliban leader.
Something hard to imagine
in previous years.
But this was not a peace deal.
There was no ceasefire on the horizon,
no vision for the future Afghan state.
The Taliban promised to
prevent Al-Qaeda or other groups
from using Afghan soil for terrorism.
The Americans promised
to pull out of the country
if the Taliban started talking
with the Afghan government.
The US hoped that somehow
the two sides could reach
a compromise across the battle lines.
But that hope vanished
once the Americans
withdrew the last of their troops.
A corrupt government and
its demoralized forces
collapsed in a matter of weeks.
By August 2021, the victorious Taliban
had swept back into power.
Hamdullah Mohib remained
to the President until the very end.
I think the word peace
gives warmth to everyone's heart.
People immediately assume
that we will have stability.
Unfortunately,
that's not always the case.
If you strong-arm us
into accepting whatever deal you strike,
you're going to banish us
from our own country.
We would be seen as traitors.
There would be no space,
there would be no room for us.
The Taliban are extremists
so you may see a bloodbath
on the streets of Kabul.
So this was not
a simple matter of negotiation
in a difference of opinion over policy,
this is about the future
of my country, my people,
quite literally, our lives.
Those left behind will live
under Taliban rule, something
they could not ever have imagined.
Already, threats to her life
had forced Farahnaz Forotan
to flee the country.
Shaharzad Akbar chose to stay
until the last minute,
even as she saw her dreams
for the future vanish.
People want peace,
that's one thing.
How they want it
is subject to different interpretations,
different groups, different ethnicities,
different areas.
Most of the people in Afghanistan
want international troops
to withdraw from this country.
Having said that,
they also want the Taliban to compromise
with the other Afghans.
That's the two things.
Nobody wants to go to the Taliban Rule
of 1994 to 2001.
And nobody wants the current
corrupt government options either.
So there must be some story in between.
That dream of an "in-between",
of a compromise at the peace
table that would include all Afghans,
crumbled with the Taliban victory.
At the time, this journey inspired me,
because I felt, however briefly,
that there was a chance for some
kind of negotiated end to the w*r.
Now very little remains of the
foreigners' plans for Afghanistan
and the dreams we inspired,
except for painted
slogans on fortified walls.
Soon, even those will disappear.
Now girls are putting
their burqas back on,
and venturing out, like so many others,
into an uncertain future,
once again under Taliban rule.
Ghosts of Afghanistan (2021)
Moderator: Maskath3