Original subtitles

This week on Vice:

the Taliban rise again in Afghanistan.

Just rows and rows of white tents,

full of families who are fleeing violence.

This is a war which is barely getting a mention anymore.

Go! Go! Go!

We are not animals!

Sync & corrections by honeybunny www.addic7ed.com

America's invasion of Afghanistan in 2001

was supposed to prevent the country

from becoming a safe haven for terrorists.

However, after 15 years, nearly a trillion dollars,

and thousands of American lives lost,

the Taliban now control

or contest more territory

than they have since the invasion,

and civilian casualties are piling up.

Now, Ben Anderson has been covering the war there for 10 years,

and he recently traveled back to Afghanistan

to check the status of America's longest-running war.

They're saying, there are six IEDs laid on the road.

One of the Humvees got hit by a mine

about 300, 400 meters back there,

so they're walking along this ditch.

They're saying there are also mines here,

so we've got to watch where we step.

Try and stay...

Here?

You can tell because the ground is disturbed?

Jesus.

These policeman are trying to reach

an army base that's surrounded by the Taliban.

They want to retrieve the body of a soldier killed four days earlier,

so they can give him a proper burial.

It was too dangerous to continue,

so they head back to the base.

Even though they knew the Taliban placed

at least six IEDs on this stretch of road,

the police decided to drive slowly towards the army base...

...dismantling each IED as they went.

So he's trying to either detonate or expose a mine,

using nothing but a very long stick...

This is the independent, able, fully-equipped,

Afghan security force we've left behind.

As they discuss how to proceed,

bullets hit the Humvee we were walking alongside.

Yes, sir.

We inched along the road

while one man, crawling on his belly,

dug up the IEDs with his bare hands.

Jesus.

He pulls the jug full of explosives to the side of the road

and separates it from the pressure plate designed to detonate it.

So, this is a pressure plate IED.

Two pieces of wood put together like that...

the metal... not quite touching

but almost touching.

Plastic to make it waterproof,

and when something goes on top

and push the two together,

the two bits of metal connect,

it completes the circuit.

There's a power source on one end

and a detonating charge on the other, which is attached

to the yellow jug full of explosives,

and that's what sets it off.

The pressure plates, they need to put a lot of weight on top of them to set them off,

but still...

Yeah.

It was then I realized I had met this man before,

almost two years ago.

Shoot me in the...

Even then, he seemed lucky to still be live.

Oh! This is very close to your heart.

This was shrapnel?

You're lucky to be alive.

Yeah.

- Hopefully there'll be no seventh time. - Hopefully. Yeah.

After dismantling all six IEDs,

they finally reached the base.

Outside were the remains of a rickshaw

that had just been blown up by another IED.

You're too brave. You'll get... You'll get killed.

You have to be careful.

You...

Ev...

He told me what happened to his wife

just three weeks before he arrived.

So, this is an Afghan army unit...

who have been surrounded by the Taliban and cut off for four days.

This is the first support they've had in four days.

But they lost one of their guys, and apparently they're gonna remove him now.

Ehh...

That same morning, just 15 kilometers away,

the Taliban drove a Humvee laden

with explosives into a police base...

killing the local police chief and at least 14 others.

Later that night, the police withdrew

to one of the main HQ's in Lashkar Gah.

The news was not good.

So, the attack we saw today was

from the north of the city,

there was an attack later in the day from the west,

and then he's listening to the Taliban on their radio

who have just launched an attack from the Kandahar gate, east of the city.

So, in the space of less than 12 hours,

three major attacks from three different directions

around Lashkar Gah.

The next night, we saw the remaining security forces

abandon the area.

This road is where we were yesterday.

And it did have ANA, Afghan army vehicles all along here,

but they, for some reason, have pulled back.

It looks like they're abandoning the entire area.

So, can you explain what... what just happened?

You're smiling slightly, but this must be very frustrating.

With Afghan forces unable to stop the Taliban advance,

civilians often have to take up arms to defend their homes.

On my last trip to Helmand,

I filmed with a family who had formed a local militia.

Every member... including three boys

age 10, 12, and 14... had to fight.

How much support are you getting from the Americans

or from the Afghan government now?

Were you fighting as well when they attacked?

Do you find it hard to be brave when there's fighting?

Since then, their home district had largely fallen

and they'd been forced to flee to the provincial capital.

So, we were hoping to spend some time with Ajani,

the commander who we spent time filming with last time we were here,

but she's gone missing.

She went to Marjah for a day,

hasn't been heard of for three or four days.

They think she made it to a police base somewhere...

and is stuck there, trying to get back.

But her husband, who we're following now,

was terrified that she'd been captured or killed.

So, that's three of the family members they've lost so far.

Those two are his son, and that's his nephew.

That's Zahair, who last time we had lunch on the roof with him and Ajani.

How much of Marjah do the Taliban now control?

And how are your three grandsons?

The boys we spent time with last time?

Then, his grandchildren returned home from school.

How are you? Good to see you again.

So, how are you? Tell me how you are.

Yeah, you look good with a school bag instead of a AK.

Your grandfather said you still have to provide security at night.

And can you describe what happened,

that meant you had to leave your home and come here.

Do you think there'll be a time when you can just go to school

and not... not have to do security like this?

Helmand took more US resources

and was the scene of more US casualties

than anywhere else in Afghanistan.

Today, apart from a few district centers,

most of it is back in the hands of the Taliban.

Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital,

is the only major town the government still controls.

But the Taliban are also making gains

elsewhere in the country,

even in places where, historically,

they haven't had a strong foothold.

In Kunduz, I met up with Major Hamid Saifi,

an Afghan soldier I'd spent lots of time with before.

He'd managed to hold on to his district

in Helmand for nine years, but it soon fell after he left.

He is now stationed in Kunduz,

where the fighting is constant.

So, the current Taliban operation to try and take Kunduz City

is being led from right here?

They're just knocking holes in people's walls,

using the houses as bases.

The fighting here is often house-to-house.

They shoot from this close? Yeah. yeah.

It's very close. 50, 60 meters.

Yeah. Yeah.

This building here with the black around the door?

How often do they come to these positions and attack?

I saw you fighting very hard in Helmand.

Billions of dollars are spent, an effort was made

training Afghan security forces,

but today, almost all of the province is in the Taliban's hands.

Why do you think that happened?

After you were sent from Helmand,

do you know what happened to your unit?

At a meeting with local elders,

Major Saifi heard stories and sentiments he had heard often in Helmand.

While we were there,

the Taliban took the provincial capital of Kunduz province

for the second time in 13 months.

These recent gains are unprecedented

and the Taliban now control more territory

than they have at any point since being overthrown.

This increased violence has caused

hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes.

So, this is a camp for internally displaced people,

people who've had to flee from Kunduz, the neighboring province

because of the fighting there.

When the government was unable to help

the provincial governor,

Dr. Zia contacted wealthy friends,

and within a week, they'd provided food, shelter,

and medical care for the people who fled here.

In just four days, 75,000 people had come

and were now living on the side of the road,

miles away from the nearest town.

In some ways, this feels like the scene of our decade...

you know, just rows and rows of white tents

full of families who are fleeing violence.

But this isn't Syria, Jordan, or Greece.

This is a war which is barely getting a mention anymore,

even though it's getting rapidly worse.

Afghanistan returned

to the headlines in early April

when the US dropped a 22,000-pound bomb...

its largest non-nuclear bomb...

on militants operating close to the border with Pakistan.

But the target was fighters from ISIS,

not the Taliban, who, despite 15 years of war,

are now resurgent.

Four thousand Americans have been killed in Afghanistan,

and the financial cost so far is $783 billion.

Afghan civilian casualties continue to rise each year,

with well over 30,000 killed so far,

although no one knows the exact figure.

The number of internally displaced is now more than 1.2 million.

Lashkar Gah remains surrounded,

and there is fighting around Kunduz daily.

America's longest but now largely forgotten war,

has no end in sight.