-- >> Frontline is made possible by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.
Thank you.
With additional funding from the Park Foundation.
Committed to raising public awareness.
Major funding for Frontline and Frontline World is provided by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world.
Frontline World is made possible by Shell.
Supporting freedom of the press... >> As you can see, people are gathering around... >> ...and the independent journalists... >> How do you respond to these charges?
>> ...who tell the stories of our time.
And by the Skoll Foundation.
With additional funding from Scott Fearon.
>> Tonight on Frontline: In Afghanistan.
Extraordinary access behind enemy lines.
The insurgents' strategy, their expertise, and their determination to kill and outlast the Americans.
Afghan journalist Najibullah Quraishi journeys deep into the insurgents' territory as they attempt to sabotage an important new American supply route and open up a dangerous new front in the north.
And then, across the border in Pakistan.
>> Your students, they actually have no rooms, no desks.
>> No, no.
>> The ticking time bomb of Pakistan's failing public schools.
>> Less than 30 million children in this country are in any type of school.
>> Reporter David Montero investigates one of the worst education systems in the world, and what the United States has been doing to stop the threat.
>> NARRATOR: This is a story that begins with the crossing of a river in northern Afghanistan.
The plan was to make contact with the Taliban.
Veteran Afghan journalist Najibullah Quraishi had been negotiating for an interview with a Taliban spokesman for a story he was reporting for Frontline when he received a call.
>> I was thinking that I'm going to meet a group of Taliban.
I was thinking, this is the time which I came myself to enemy.
>> NARRATOR: He was given a location in the hills of Baghlan province and told to wait.
>> I didn't know where I am.
Then, I saw motorbikes.
Two guys were coming towards me.
>> NARRATOR: The man who came to meet him was a commander in the growing insurgency in this northern province.
>> NARRATOR: His anti-Western statements were predictable, but what Najibullah hadn't expected was an unusual offer he made before leaving.
>> He said, "Would you like to come and see our mujahidin's life?
I said, "How?"
He said, "I will talk with my boss, big boss.
Then, if he agreed, then we can invite you."
>> NARRATOR: For the last nine years, most of the fighting against the Taliban has been taking place in the south, in Helmand and Kandahar provinces.
But the new battlefront which has opened up in the north is in Baghlan and Kunduz, and the reason is this highway.
In a country with few main roads, it's a major overland supply route for coalition forces, running from neighboring Tajikistan, via Kabul, all the way to the southern provinces.
It would take two months before Najibullah heard back from the Taliban.
He was told to meet a Taliban intermediary, who would take him deep into the hills of Baghlan province.
They arrived at the insurgents' base just before sunset.
This was not a place where journalists had traveled before.
>> On that night, when I reached the guesthouse, I was thinking, "What shall I do?
What did I done?
Why I came here?"
>> NARRATOR: For the next two weeks, Najibullah would be given permission to live among the insurgents as a guest, and to document their daily lives.
Over the course of several days, he began to film-- at first, being shown mainly what the men wanted him to see.
>> NARRATOR: The men told Najibullah they had ambushed this American armored personnel carrier, which they referred to as "a tank."
>> NARRATOR: Najibullah found no evidence nearby to support these claims.
Indeed, little here was as he expected.
It turned out that only a few of these men were mainstream Taliban fighters.
Most belonged to an extremist group called Hezb-e-Islami.
They're controlled from the mountains near Pakistan by this man, Gulbaddin Hekmatyar, a complicated figure who fought the Soviets in the 1980s, was a prime minister of Afghanistan briefly in the '90s, and has now made an alliance among Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and his own Hezb-e-Islami fighters.
>> NARRATOR: Commander Kalakub is part of a hard-core group of fighters called the Central Group.
>> NARRATOR: A farmer's son, Kalakub says he was born in northern Afghanistan.
He left home at the age of 14 to fight the Russians when they invaded his country in 1979.
>> NARRATOR: This time, he says the fight here is global.
>> NARRATOR: The special mujahids he's not supposed to mention are mainly Arabs from Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
Najibullah is told that they're members of Al Qaeda who team up with Hezb-e-Islami cells for operations.
One of the Hezb-e-Islami fighters he focuses on is named Arif.
>> NARRATOR: Arif is an Islamic scholar whose role, when not fighting, is to make sure everyone prays five times a day and learns the Quran by heart.
>> ( reciting from the Quran in Arabic ) >> NARRATOR: When they fail, he's quick to let them know.
18-year-old Fazl is one of the Central Group's newest recruits.
>> NARRATOR: And this is Fedayee.
He says he went to study at an Islamic madrassa in Peshawar, Pakistan, for ten years, and only recently joined the group.
Although young, he's already an admired fighter among the others, who say he's daywana, "crazy."
>> NARRATOR: Fedayee is nephew to this man, Commander Mirwais.
He's the overall leader of the northern battlefront and claims to have all 4,000 Hezb-e-Islami fighters under his control.
In a former life, Mirwais was a millionaire businessman importing cars from Europe before becoming Hezb-e-Islami's top man in the north a few years back.
>> NARRATOR: The insurgents train daily.
They claim to control over a thousand villages in this area alone, and say that the Kabul government has power only near the main towns.
In one district, there's a hospital and a school, built and paid for by the United Nations, but now under the control of the insurgents.
And throughout the region, the villagers pay their taxes directly to the insurgents, not the government.
>> NARRATOR: Some villagers seemed wary of speaking freely around the fighters, but others here have formed militia groups of their own to support the insurgents.
>> NARRATOR: With local support, the men of the Central Group head out.
>> NARRATOR: The next day, the men tell Najibullah they are preparing to go on a mission against the "infidels."
>> NARRATOR: But Commander Mirwais won't say where they're going.
>> NARRATOR: Meanwhile, he and the others prepare for possible martyrdom.
>> NARRATOR: Arif, Fedayee and the others have been ordered to another location for a briefing.
They travel freely, despite the Afghan army and police bases nearby.
>> NARRATOR: For the men of the Central Group, it's not hard to acquire weapons.
During the years Afghans resisted the Russians, many here buried guns, shells and ammunition, which they've saved and now turn over to the insurgents.
On this day, they receive weapons, sometimes decades old, that might still be used in the upcoming attack.
>> NARRATOR: As Commander Mirwais finalizes his plans, some villagers come out to feed the fighters.
Later, there's news about the mission.
The men of the Central Group have been ordered to leave the following morning.
>> ( chanting ) >> NARRATOR: Najibullah doesn't know the target or whether he should film the mission.
>> I went to Mirwais.
I said, "Will you allow me to go to their operation?
He said, "You are a journalist, you'll be killed.
What do we do then if you're killed?
You are my guest."
I said, "That's okay.
That's my job.
I have to go."
So he said, "As you wish."
>> NARRATOR: The next day, the fighters begin a six-mile trek down from the hills.
>> NARRATOR: Commander Kalakub and the others form one party... >> NARRATOR: ...while another group of Hezb-e-Islami fighters splits off for the same target.
Najibullah now learns that they're going to plant roadside bombs on the highway through the north that's become increasingly important to the U.S. and NATO.
Until recently, the main overland supply route was this road in from Peshawar, but convoys from the east were constantly attacked by the Taliban, so the coalition started looking more to the north for its supplies.
The coalition troops responsible for northern Afghanistan are the Germans.
There are over 4,000 of them, mainly tasked with development and reconstruction.
But neither they nor the Afghan police patrol the area with any regularity.
Not far from the target, senior commander Mirwais discusses tactics for the attack with his explosive experts.
>> NARRATOR: Apart from the commanders, the most important members of each section are the bomb makers.
This man from Uzbekistan tells Najibullah he was trained by Al Qaeda and just joined up with Central Group for the operation.
>> NARRATOR: As darkness falls, the bomb maker and his assistants set to work, but they don't want Najibullah to record the process.
>> NARRATOR: Still, he manages to keep his camera running as the men fill the shell casing with gunpowder.
>> NARRATOR: Now, they prepare the blast cap and remote control trigger device using the bomb maker's instruction codes.
>> NARRATOR: With two bombs, or IEDs, readied, the men move out under cover of darkness.
( whispering ) >> NARRATOR: The bombs have been placed 50 yards apart, on opposite sides of the road.
A network of spotters is in place up and down the highway to tip them off about the movement of military convoys.
Now, at a gas station they've commandeered for the operation, they wait for the call.
>> NARRATOR: But they're too late.
>> NARRATOR: For another hour, they wait, the deepening fog restricting their view of the road.
>> NARRATOR: Meanwhile, Commander Kalakub and his group have positioned themselves behind some sacks of rice straw a few yards from the road.
>> NARRATOR: The plan is to attack the convoy after the bombing, but he senses something's wrong.
>> NARRATOR: Then, an angry phone call from base.
>> NARRATOR: Around a hundred yards away, close to the main road, the bomb team is hiding in the cotton fields.
>> NARRATOR: As Arif and Fedayee wait, Najibullah decides to join the bomb team in the cotton fields.
But they're worried he could give away their position.
>> NARRATOR: Then they receive a message that more vehicles are on their way-- a truck carrying an American armored personnel carrier, followed by a Jeep Ranger filled with Afghan police.
>> NARRATOR: But as they continue to try to detonate the bombs, they worry they've mixed up the two remote controls.
>> NARRATOR: The target vehicles are getting close.
>> NARRATOR: But just as they prepare to attack, a group of villagers appear right where they've planted the roadside bombs.
In the rush to get them out of the way, they miss the American transport, so they try to hit the Afghan police jeep instead.
( explosion ) The remote detonator fails once again, but someone had fired a rocket-propelled grenade.
The police shoot back.
>> NARRATOR: It soon becomes clear that their rocket attack entirely missed the Afghan police, who quickly sped away.
And none of the roadside bombs exploded.
>> NARRATOR: Afraid to return to base unsuccessful, the men begin to blame one another.
( explosion ) >> NARRATOR: Finally, it detonates.
>> NARRATOR: When they return to base, there's a debriefing with their leader, Commander Mirwais.
It seems as though his men may have told him mainly what he wanted to hear.
>> NARRATOR: The commander gives his men a day off, and they head to the mountains along with some foreign fighters who join them along the way.
>> NARRATOR: Over the next week, Najibullah would continue to live among the insurgents of the Central Group, moving with them from guest house to guest house as they target coalition forces and help impose strict Islamic law throughout the north.
In this village, Najibullah witnesses a Hezb-e-Islami council brought in to judge what appears to be a simple civil dispute between two businessmen.
But there's a twist: It's alleged that one of them has made a fortune recently from drug running.
>> NARRATOR: Even though it's well known that the Taliban are partly funded by drug money, some insurgents still abhor profiteering from the narcotics trade.
The accused is led away, under guard, to a small prison cell.
And Najibullah hears talk of death by beheading.
After nine days among the insurgents, Najibullah runs into a problem.
Some have begun to question his presence and to accuse him of being a spy.
One comes up behind while he films.
>> NARRATOR: They decide to test him.
>> NARRATOR: Tension inside the group is growing.
Two men have arrived from Pakistan and are now confronting Commander Mirwais for letting in an outsider to film.
>> Mirwais came to me.
He took my hand, he took me aside.
He said, "Brother, I invited you here as a guest.
I know your plan is to be here for 14 days, but I'm really sorry."
He said, "That two guy, one is Arab, one is Pakistani, and they keep telling me that you're a spy, we have to behead you."
>> NARRATOR: Mirwais swiftly ushers Najibullah into a minibus, advising him to leave immediately and, for his own sake, not to return.
Three days later, Najibullah returned to the highway where he'd witnessed the insurgents' attack.
He found the local police at the gas station, the same one the militants had used as a forward operating base on the day of the failed attack.
He couldn't tell the police that he had spent almost two weeks with Hezb-e-Islami fighters nearby.
They insisted that the area was safe.
>> NARRATOR: After Najibullah left the country, violence in the northern provinces increased.
In the aftermath of this firefight, a policeman stands over the bodies of insurgents killed in an ambush that went wrong.
But a few days later, our cameraman was able to film the result of another shoot-out.
This time, the same policeman lies dead.
Then, recently, news from the embattled road where Najibullah had filmed.
This police outpost was overrun, and all eight Afghan officers inside were killed.
Najibullah learned it had been the work of the men of the Central Group.