>> 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 qureishi had been negotiating for an interview with a taliban 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 mujahid and his 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 )çifn+zu7k >> narrator: najibullah doesn't >> i went to mirwais. i said, "will you allow me to go to their operation?;njicvm6ñn

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 for the coalition 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. >> 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 of him 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.

>> and now, a frontline world special report. >> montero: what is that? >> that is waste water. >> montero: it's basically a cesspool right near to the school. >> in pakistan, reporter david montero investigates the ticking time bomb of pakistan's failing schools. >> montero: 300 students are supposed to sit in this. >> montero: it's morning in lahore, the capital of pakistan's biggest province, and the country's next generation of children are headed to school. but what 12-year-olds like fatma find when they get there is of increasing concern for those who

want peace in pakistan's future. fatma's school is this abandoned brickyard. >> ( children reciting alphabet ) >> r-e-s-p-e-c... >> montero: each day, the kids bring in a few chairs for the teachers, and they set up the school's one blackboard, which six classrooms share. the headmaster, khaled, showed me around. so your students they actually have no rooms, no desks. >> montero: this is a nursery? yeah.

this is one. nursery one. >> montero: so two nurseries you have? >> yeah. >> montero: what is that? >> that is waste water. >> montero: it's basically a cesspool right near to the school. it's a mountain of garbage. sadly, this school is not an exception. there are some 20,000 "shelterless" schools throughout pakistan. and even when there are buildings, 60% have no electricity, 40% have no drinking water. because schools are so bad, pakistan has the lowest enrollment rate in all of south asia. ali hassan is roughly the same age as fatma, but he's recently decided to drop out of the third grade. >> montero: ali hassan now helps out at a local gas station.

>> montero: for his toils, he makes the equivalent of 12 cents a day, money his mother says the family now can't live without. >> today there are 68.4 million children between the ages of five and 19 in this country. so i want to repeat this number: 68-and-a-half million kids between the ages of five and 19. less than 30 million of those kids are in any type of school. >> montero: this is mosharraf zaidi. raised in pakistan and educated in the west, zaidi is a long-time advocate of reforming pakistan's schools. >> you look at the consequences of these kids not going to school-- like i said, let's set aside the fear-mongering and the

scare mongering of, you know, what if all these kids become terrorists. but setting that aside, the real problem is that if you aren't capable of participating in the global economy, you will be very, very poor. and, desperate and extreme poverty has some diabolical consequences for societies and for individuals. >> montero: zaidi reminded me about the long time problem of "ghost schools", where teachers fail to show up except to collect their paychecks. at this one, after the only teacher stopped coming, it was left to vandalism. in fact, there are thousands of abandoned school buildings across the country, while schools like fatma's have nothing. the local school council is outraged.

>> montero: in pakistan, public education has become a battleground. the council says the elite only care about themselves and keep the poor illiterate in order to hold on to power. >> montero: the council takes me to a construction site where the government has promised them a new building but has failed to deliver. it's supposed to house the 300 students from fatma's school, but i was shocked by what i found. this is the only room? >> yeah. this is the only room. >> montero: 300 students are supposed to sit in this? >> yeah. the government prepared its own design, but the teachers say and the school council members say

that they did not consult the teachers. "what are your requirements?" >> montero: the government blames the contractor, the contractor blames the government. with winter approaching, the teachers are worried. >> montero: the school council wanted to visit the local education official to ask what had gone wrong, but he threatened to fire them if they showed up with me. so i went myself. this is the education district officer of lahore. his workload is so big that he rarely gets away from his desk. he insisted that the teachers shouldn't be complaining and that, according to his paperwork, the school would be big enough. >> this is not one room. it's basically... and teachers are actually not in the knowledge of this whole plan. >> montero: i asked him why the children were shelterless while the school was being built. can't they be moved temporarily into some building? i mean, right now they have no building.

>> we... we will consider this. i'll ask my deos and deputy deos to visit, and we'll find out some place. we will definitely shift there. no problem. >> montero: while public school officials make empty promises, across town, i find another kind of school that's functioning quite well. it has a nice new building with plenty of room, and it even provides free tuition and a hot meal. it's one of the country's many madrassas. increasingly, poor parents are sending their children to religious schools like this. >> ( madrassa student chants the quran) >> montero: although madrassas

are often criticized in the west, many conservatives, like the school's headmaster, believe what's being taught here will make pakistan a stronger state. >> montero: that's a message which, to my surprise, is also taught in the country's public schools, where it can influence far more children. >> pakistan is... >> pakistan is... >> ...our... >> ...our... >> ...dear home land. >> montero: for decades, pakistani schoolchildren have been learning that their country is in a battle for survival. >> montero: and fatma's heard about a new enemy.

>> montero: you once said to the los angeles times , "i have been arguing for the longest time that, in fact, our state system is the biggest madrassa." why do you say that? >> i feel that a great deal of the ideology that we think madrassas are producing is, in fact, being produced in state schools. >> montero: rabina saigol is an academic who's studied public school textbooks for years and found that public schools have quietly been feeding extremism. >> and i say that it's the biggest madrassa because it has the widest outreach. it reaches every town, village, small hamlet. it's... the biggest bureaucracy is the educational bureaucracy. it reaches every nook and cranny of the country. >> montero: i wanted to talk to the ministry of education about what it's teaching in the schools. i finally got an appointment at the curriculum wing.

for months, the staff has been working on removing the militaristic tone of the curriculum. as they themselves told me, it's more sensitive than nuclear weapons. it involves the very core of national identity. >> montero: i've been to the market. i bought a textbook. i confronted them with some textbooks i'd found. do you think that for the past three centuries europeans have been working to subjugate the countries of the muslim world? do you personally believe that? >> i can't say that this statement is right or wrong, but this has been prepared by the specialists. >> montero: but would you personally say this is wrong? >> i have already said that i am not a student of history. >> montero: "the christians and europeans were not happy to see the muslims flourishing in life. they were always looking for opportunities to take possession of territories under the muslims." >> so, these textbooks are prepared under the basis of the old curriculum which was prepared in 2002. now we have replaced this

curriculum with the new curriculum. so, in new curriculum, we will address all kinds of these issues. >> montero: the new, more tolerant curriculum has been attacked by many religious fundamentalists, like this man. do you support secular education in pakistan for children? >> no, there is no demand in the pakistan. no demand from any section, from... not from students, not from teachers, not from parents. >> montero: this is fareed paracha, a leader of a religious party with views similar to the taliban. he blasts the west for trying to secularize pakistan's curriculum. >> they have started a clash between western and islamic civilization. they claim western, secular democratic civilization now is the fate of humanity. >> montero: just a few months ago, paracha lead this protest against the latest american aid package, which includes hundreds

of millions of dollars earmarked for education reform. >> montero: the religious parties say the u.s. is using the aid to try to hijack pakistani society, but ironically others fear the money will never reach the schools anymore than it has in the past. >> there is nothing to show today on ground that $100 million u.s. dollars over the last three years had come, you see? >> montero: so that money, you can't show... >> you can't show it. only few areas... somewhere you will find a classroom, you may find some swings there, you see? so... but i would say that learn from that. and, you know, so that... this is big money for us, for the people of pakistan. i just hope sincerely that it is utilized in the right ways to make a difference, you know, in the lives of all those children wherever they are. >> montero: reformers believe the problems that pakistani children face are so deep that

money alone will not be enough to fix them. >> i think it's generous of the american taxpayer, and i think it's important that congress and the president and the administration have made this kind of a long-term commitment. but it is not going to make the difference between a functional and dysfunctional pakistan. that choice of whether pakistan is going to be a functional country is a choice that has to be made by pakistanis. and pakistanis haven't made that choice yet because government after government fails to make the investments that it needs to make. >> montero: still, i asked fatma how she would feel if new u.s. aid money would help to finally fix her school. >> montero: in fact, her school building has just been finished, but the headmaster says it's nowhere near what the government promised. it's still only one room for 300

students. some even have to study on the roof, and the headmaster says the construction is shoddy. >> montero: but fatma says she won't give up. today, she's going to take her final primary school exams. if she passes, she can go on to junior high. and if she survives pakistan's public schools, she may one day help to fix them herself.

>> there's more on our web site, where you can watch the program again online. read an extended interview with najibullah quraishi, with more details of his ten days with the insurgents. and join the discussion at pbs.org next time on frontline: a story about choosing to live... >> i love you. >> i love you, sweetheart. >> ...and deciding to die. >> if you drink this, you're going to die. >> "the suicide tourist", on frontline. ( flatlined heart monitor )

>> frontline's "behind taliban lines" is available on dvd. to order, visit shop pbs.org or call 1-800-play-pbs. captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org >> frontline is made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. with additional funding from the park foundation. 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. >> this is pbs.

mark welter has been a teacher all his life.

no one gets rich teaching, but no one leads a richer life. and public tv and education are undeniably linked. and part of my motivation is to pay back some of this. that's why mark included his public television station in his will. consider joining the community of people who want public television to span generations.