Tonight, a Landmark 3-Part Series Begins: ‘America and the Taliban’

Since 2001, FRONTLINE has aired more than 20 documentaries about Afghanistan — the equivalent of at least one for every year of America’s longest war. These have included prize-winning journalism, stunning filmmaking and courageous reporting from our global network of documentary filmmakers. Each piece of our coverage has been fair, deep and probing.

America and the Taliban marks the culmination of all this work.

Starting tonight on FRONTLINE and continuing on April 11 and 25, this series is the definitive story of how the U.S. lost the war in Afghanistan. It is the work of award-winning producers Marcela Gaviria and Martin Smith, who over the last two decades have accounted for roughly half of FRONTLINE’s documentaries about Afghanistan. Drawing on years of on-the-ground reporting and conducting new interviews with leading U.S. and Taliban officials, Smith and Gaviria dug deep into the causes and consequences of the war’s outcome — and responsibility for the Taliban victory.

“For all the lives and money spent, over two trillion dollars, Afghanistan has regressed to what it was before America invaded, a country where women are denied an education, music is banned, beards for men are mandatory and homosexuality is punishable by death,” says Smith, who has been covering Afghanistan and the Middle East for FRONTLINE for 20 years. “Our new series traces the mistakes, miscalculations and hubris that allowed this to happen.”

Over the last 18 months, Smith pressed former U.S. military leaders and officials — including retired Gen. David Petraeus — about America’s approach in Afghanistan, and sat down with U.S. soldiers and Marines who carried that approach out. He spoke with U.S. diplomats, among them former ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad, who negotiated the 2020 deal with the Taliban to end the war. And he interviewed former Deputy National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute. 

On the ground in Afghanistan, Smith met and asked tough questions of numerous Taliban officials, among them senior members of the powerful Haqqani clan and the governor of Helmand, Afghanistan’s largest province. Smith also interviewed former high-ranking members of the Afghan government, the former commander of Afghanistan’s special forces, and numerous Afghan civilians — including, in powerful split-screens, people he first met while reporting in Afghanistan years earlier and tracked down again now to see how their lives have changed.

“In previous reporting trips to Afghanistan,” explains Smith, “the ongoing war prevented us from crossing battle lines. Now with the war over, we gained access to the Taliban that we couldn’t have achieved before. It has now allowed us to trace the history of the conflict from both sides.”

The result, from a team that also includes producer Brian Funck and co-producer Scott Anger, is a gripping and incisive account of how America’s defeat in Afghanistan became inevitable — and the ongoing human cost.

Watch Part One of America and the Taliban tonight at 10/9c on PBS stations (check local listings) and on FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel, or stream it starting at 7/6c at pbs.org/frontline and in the PBS App. 

And stay tuned as this truly epic saga continues throughout April.