Documenting America’s 20 Years in Afghanistan

The FRONTLINE Dispatch

GBH

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4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 20 April 2023

⏱️ 22 minutes

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Summary

Drawing on decades of on-the-ground reporting in Afghanistan, the new three-part series America and the Taliban traces pivotal moments in America’s longest war, and how it culminated in Taliban victory.

Award-winning producers Marcela Gaviria and Martin Smith join FRONTLINE editor-in-chief and executive producer Raney Aronson-Rath for a discussion on their decades of reporting in Afghanistan, and what it was like to revisit people and places from past coverage for this new series.

"There's one basic thing that they all knew, and that was that the Taliban were not going to go anywhere permanently," Smith told Aronson-Rath about many of the Afghan people he met, "but the Americans were eventually going to leave."

Parts one and two of America and the Taliban are available to stream on FRONTLINE’s website, FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel and the PBS App.

Part three premieres on PBS and online Tuesday, April 25, 2023.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Twenty years after American forces invaded Afghanistan and moved the Taliban from power,
0:08.3	the Taliban rules over Afghanistan once again.
0:11.4	How did we get here?
0:12.8	This is how it happened.
0:13.8	What were the real underlying issues that allowed it to collapse so spectacularly?
0:18.4	Frontline looks back on America's longest war and how we lost it, and the new three-part
0:23.3	series America and the Taliban.
0:25.9	We weren't successful in it and I think it's a matter of willpower.
0:29.0	It was unrealistic what the Americans were trying to do with young men and fatigues.
0:34.7	The Taliban were going to have a role and at the end of the day, they got a role.
0:39.4	It's just not the role we imagined.
0:41.4	Award-winning producers Marcella Gavaria and Martin Smith join me to talk about their
0:46.0	many years of reporting on the ground in Afghanistan and their conversations with both US and
0:51.4	Afghan sources, including the Taliban themselves.
0:54.8	I'd like to ask you what you believe are the reasons for your victory.
0:59.9	The Khamel-Beed was the reason.
1:00.9	I'm Rene Erensen-Rabh, Editor-in-Chief and Executive Producer of Frontline, and this is
1:05.8	the Frontline Dispatch.
1:10.3	The Frontline Dispatch is made possible by the Abrams Foundation, committed to excellence
1:14.9	in journalism and by the Frontline Journalism Fund, with major support from John and Joanne
1:20.3	Hagler.
1:21.6	The award for Frontline Dispatch comes from the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer
	...

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