This week on "Vice,"
is Afghanistan losing the war against the Taliban?
The Taliban know that this is
the time to show that they are here to stay.
What do you think will happen over the next few years?
And then, religious tensions
spiraling out of control in France.
When politics gets very emotional, that's when it gets very dangerous.
We must train our people
to defend themselves.
So this is the Green Zone with the Taliban.
Apparently, they're just 500 meters north of here.
The remaining staff of "Charlie Hebdo"
operated out of this office.
This could be a new target.
By the end of next year, America's war in Afghanistan will be over.
Afghan forces will take the lead
for security across the entire country
and our core objective,
the reason we went to war in the first place,
is now within reach.
At the end of 2014,
America began withdrawing our combat troops
- from the longest war in U.S. - Afghanistan.
But even with the American-trained Afghan security forces taking over,
large portions of the country
are still controlled
by the Taliban.
Now, Vice correspondent Ben Anderson
has been covering the war there for the last eight years.
So we sent him back to Helmand,
the most contested province in Afghanistan,
to get an on-the-ground look at the state of the country that we're leaving behind.
So this is Marjah, which five years ago
was the scene of the biggest military operation
of the entire Afghanistan War since the initial invasion.
And the idea was that U.S. Marines would land here
and clear the Taliban out and then hand over to the Afghan government.
They called it "government in a box."
Very quickly the Afghan government would not only provide security,
but also run basic services for the people here.
The security situation here is still very precarious.
Billions were spent here and many lives were lost.
I didn't expect things to be perfect.
But five years on, what I found was shocking.
The "government in a box" never really arrived,
so these boys, aged 10, 12 and 14,
have to fight and defend their village.
So can you describe what happened recently when the Taliban were very close?
Were you fighting as well when they attacked?
Do you find it hard to be brave when there's fighting?
Well, you're much tougher than me. Good luck.
We can do the big one. Ah!
These child soldiers, along with their entire family,
are part of a U.S.-created force called the Afghan Local Police.
The commander is a 53-year-old woman named Ajani
who is also their grandmother.
Ajani and her family fought the Taliban and were then put on the U.S. payroll,
although they never became part of the official Afghan National Security Forces.
And the Taliban are still here.
How much support are you getting from the Americans
or from the Afghan government now?
So we've left Ajani's home
and we're walking towards just fields...
No cover, no buildings.
So if they attack, where do they come from?
The whole point of the whole policy in Afghanistan
was to clear out the Taliban and hand over to the Afghan government.
And here this isn't a government force, this is a paid militia.
Lots of things were promised as a result of the invasion,
and lots of those promises now look like they were very idealistic.
But were certainly supposed to be a lot better than this.
Two weeks after we left, two of these boys were taken by the Taliban.
Ajani responded by taking several family members of the Taliban herself.
And a few days later, they exchanged hostages.
We headed to Gereshk,
also the scene of major U.S. and UK operations...
and promises.
But since the withdrawal,
the violence has increased here as well.
Here the Afghan National Police have more of a presence
and work alongside another group of local police.
But the situation is equally as volatile.
And the Taliban are everywhere.
Oh, yeah.
So there's a Taliban flag 300 or 400 meters away.
They're saying don't spend too much time looking through these holes
because of the snipers.
And the snipers are good here?
Oof. This is very close to your heart. It went...
This was shrapnel?
You're lucky to be alive.
That's too many.
Yeah. Hopefully, there'll be no seventh time.
- Yeah. - Hopefully.
So we're walking to the frontline with the local police chief.
So this is the Green Zone,
which is the exact opposite of the Green Zone in Baghdad.
There it's the safest place in the country.
This is one of the most dangerous places,
because this is a perfect place for guerrilla fighting.
There are irrigation ditches and tree lines.
It'd be so easy to bury an IED.
Cover it with mud, pour some water on it,
and then within a few hours it looks exactly the same
as all the other earth around it.
Bullet holes everywhere.
That's the Taliban.
You talk back to them or you just listen?
And how much support are you getting
from the British or the Americans?
Nothing at all? Not even airstrikes,
or equipment or intelligence?
Because they said that when they left,
they would leave the Taliban weakened
and you in a strong position to fight against them.
How often do they attack?
So, who's... who's that firing now? Mm-hmm.
Yeah. That's artillery.
So we've only been here five, 10 minutes.
And there's heavy fighting happening
at the patrol base just in front of us.
This is where we're exposed?
So he's saying that when they attack one patrol base,
they tend to attack all of them.
So he thinks this one's going to come under attack soon.
And we'll be stuck here, so he wants us to leave.
Back at the police patrol base,
we sat down with Commander Hekmatullah and his men,
thinking we were safe.
So could each of you just explain what the security situation is today?
What was that? That a shot we heard?
That was a sniper shot to this building?
And you didn't even stop talking.
You're a police force, but you seem to be more like an army.
You know, you're actually fighting a war every day. How does that happen?
And if the situation stays the same as it is now,
what do you think will happen over the next few years?
Two days after we left,
Commander Hekmatullah and 21 other men
were killed by a massive IED.
And the patrol bases we visited
are now under the control of the Taliban.
In the first year since the U.S. combat troops withdrew,
Afghan army, police, and civilian casualties
were higher than they've ever been since the start of the war.
And this summer looks set to be even bloodier.
We spoke with Dr. Vanda Felbab-Brown,
a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
An expert on insurgencies and illicit economies,
she frequently testifies about Afghanistan before Congress.
What do you think the next few years hold for Afghanistan?
There is no doubt that the intensity
of the military campaign by the Taliban
is probably more intense than anything we have seen.
The Taliban know that this is the time to show
that they can reverse the momentum,
that they are here to stay,
to bloody the Afghan security forces,
to break their will.
The withdrawal has already happened.
In your view, did that happen because the U.S. had achieved its goals
or because the U.S. had given up on achieving those goals?
One of the biggest criticism
the White House, President Obama, has received
is the decisions about troop levels, about withdrawals
have not been based on what's happening on the ground
but have been based on timelines set in Washington,
timelines that were often insufficient.
The Obama administration came to power
talking about governance, accountability,
sustained structures, institution building,
but very quickly resorted back to very narrow counterterrorism goals...
"Kill this Taliban commander,"
"hunt down this Al-Qaeda operative"...
Over trying to pressure for better governance.
This lack of pressure means that corruption
has reached spectacular levels.
One of the best examples of this is the opium trade,
which has flourished despite the U.S. spending an estimated $8 billion
attempting to eradicate it.
One-third of Afghanistan's GDP comes from poppy.
It's totally unprecedented in history.
We have never seen such overwhelming dependence
on an illegal economy.
That means that a tremendous amount
of people, on all sides of conflict,
will be linked economically to the opium poppy.
There were poppy fields everywhere I went in Helmand,
even inside a police base.
In fact, the only fields I saw being destroyed
were the ones that used to be controlled by the Taliban.
But they don't give up their land that easily.
Just two days after we filmed with them,
the counternarcotics police were still destroying fields in the same area.
But the Taliban detonated an IED
when Commander Abdali's men were close.
The two survivors were taken to a hospital
in the provincial capital.
This hospital is run by an Italian NGO called Emergency.
People like him, even government security forces,
still have to come to a foreign-run charity hospital to be treated,
which just shows how successful the development and reconstruction
really was.
At this point in time, if things stay roughly as they are...
Hundreds of billions of dollars spent, thousands of lives lost...
The end result was almost the exact opposite of what was promised.
And that's, unfortunately, how many Afghans see it.
They feel betrayed and disappointed.
The Afghans I know talk and at
as if they're facing a terrifying future.
And indeed, the President has been saying
that we are ending the war in Afghanistan.
And what he really should be saying is,
"We are ending our part in the war in Afghanistan."
For the Afghans, the war is still very, very much on.
In January 2015, two armed Islamic militants
stormed the offices of French satirical newspaper "Charlie Hebdo."
They opened fire on an editorial meeting,
killing 12 people, injuring many others,
and creating a solidarity movement around the globe.
Now this attack underscored the deep religious
and ethnic tensions within France.
The country is increasingly polarized,
with growing distrust between France's Muslim and Jewish populations,
and the rise of a far-right political part,
famous for its opposition to diversity.
So we sent Vikram Gandhi to Paris to try to understand
the deep-seated religious divisions that are tearing the country apart.
So we're on the block where the "Charlie Hebdo" attacks happened.
The street is pretty eerie, because you can see that there's little memorials
for the staff members of "Charlie Hebdo" that were killed in the attacks.
We're about to go into the offices of "Libération."
After the attacks, the remaining staff of "Charlie Hebdo"
operated out of this office.
And as you can see, this place is well guarded,
because many people believe this could be a new target for extremists.
After passing through security, we spoke with Johan Hufnagel,
deputy chief of the daily newspaper "Libération,"
about why "Charlie Hebdo,"
a fairly unknown satirical newspaper,
became such a flashpoint.
What does "Charlie Hebdo" do on its cover with cartoons and other images?
Could you, I mean, could you explain what this... I don't know...
Um... would you...
Are you... Are you nervous to be holding that?
Yeah.
Fear of Muslim extremism is just one aspect
of the social unrest that has been spinning out of control in France.
In the past year, reported racist attacks and threats
have spiked more than 30%.
To learn more about the increasingly tense social divisions in France,
we spoke with historian Andrew Hussey,
Professor of Cultural History at the University of London.
Right now, France is full of very dangerous tensions.
You've got this thing called jihad, which is a kind of global thing,
and then all of a sudden it plays out at a very local level.
Everybody who talks about "Charlie Hebdo"
has got to say, "We do not condone in any way these massacres."
Of course we don't condone them,
but you've got to get into the mindset of the killers.
France has got a Muslim population
of about five to six million people.
Most of them are from North Africa,
and that's important because North Africa was colonized by the French.
The fourth and fifth generation of Muslims in France,
which is the generation you're dealing with now,
are the angriest, most dispossessed.
A lot live outside the big cities in what are called "banlieue."
They're not connected to the center of French cities,
because the transport is bad, and they're out in these places
that are being badly constructed and so on.
So you've got a group of people, immigrants to France,
who feel disconnected, actually physically,
from the center of French life.
We went to one of these suburbs called Grigny,
where the unemployment rate is as high as 20%...
More than double the national average...
To see what it's like to be a Muslim living in the outskirts of Paris.
Here, we found a distinct lack of solidarity
with the "Je suis Charlie" movement.
Many in the French Muslim community
also feel discriminated against,
because while laws protect freedom of the press,
other laws crack down on religious expression
in ways that make Muslims feel like they're being targeted.
There's a ban on face coverings in all public places.
And a ban on religious clothing in government-funded schools.
How do you feel about having to remove your headscarf when going into school?
If you're young, angry, unemployed, and Muslim,
living out in the banlieue,
it may well be that the only part of your identity
that feels authentic, that feels real,
is actually your religious identity.
So when the French government has said,
"And do you know what? We're going to take that away from you as well,"
that's the breaking point.
And while these rules govern all religions equally,
there's a French law that many Muslims feel protects only one.
The Gayssot Law, meant to crack down on race discrimination,
makes Holocaust denial illegal,
but it doesn't ban cartoons like the "Hebdo" cover,
which many here see as hate speech.
This feeling of grievance deepened last summer
when the Paris police temporarily banned
a protest against Israeli actions in Palestine.
We visited a protest that was advertised as anti-racist
in order to avoid a new ban.
Boycott Israel!
So is it right that pro-Palestinian protests
have been banned in France, is that right? Yes.
Here we saw how a growing anti-Israeli sentiment
was turning into a new form of anti-Semitism
among France's Muslim youth.
Reports of anti-Semitic actions in France
have risen sharply since the 1990s,
and in the past year they've more than doubled.
One of the more infamous attacks occurred two days
after the "Charlie Hebdo" shootings,
when Amedy Coulibaly, another Muslim extremist,
attacked a Kosher supermarket demanding that the "Hebdo" attackers not be harmed.
So this is the entranceway where Amedy Coulibaly walked through.
Four were shot and killed,
people were hiding out in different areas.
One of the employees brought down about 15 people into a freezer.
And you can imagine, these people were huddled, in fear,
waiting until the police were able to come and save them.
After the January attacks,
the French government deployed 10,000 troops to sensitive areas in France
at a cost of about a million euros per day.
And after only a couple of days in Paris,
it was clear that most of these places were Jewish institutions.
According to the Jewish Community Security Service,
Jews are the targets of 51% of all reported racist acts.
I went to meet an Orthodox family as they picked up their kids
from a Jewish preschool that was surrounded by armed military.
How do you feel about seeing these guards outside?
In response to this wave of anti-Semitism,
in February, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
publicly endorsed mass immigration
of Europe's Jews to Israel,
otherwise known as Aliyah.
And in Paris, pro-Israeli organizations
hold informational conferences for those seeking to make Aliyah.
As many as 10,000 Jews are expected to leave France
this year in what can only be described as a mass exodus.
And some of those who are staying behind
are taking a more militant approach to their safety.
The Betar, a 90-year-old Zionist youth movement,
is training to defend Jewish communities in France.
Are you extremist?
As the Betar movement prepares to defend its own,
an ultra right-wing political party is seizing on fears
about extremism to promote their harsh anti-immigrant agenda.
The National Front has a long history of xenophobia,
and its founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen,
is a notorious Holocaust denier.
Once a fringe party, the National Front
is now headed by Le Pen's daughter, Marine,
and is one of the most powerful political parties in France.
We dropped in at the National Front's headquarters
on the night of the first round of departmental elections,
which determined control of the local government councils.
So the results just came in, and the National Front
has the second most votes out of any party.
It is gaining popularity, and Marine Le Pen,
the president, is about to speak.
After Marine's speech,
we had a chance to speak with her
about the situation her country is facing.
Would you say that there is a problem with radical Islam in France?
Some in France are taking a stand
against sentiments like these, as we saw directly outside
the National Front's headquarters.
But when we spoke to the party's founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen,
it was clear that he wasn't worried at all.
So outside there are people that are screaming "Fascist,"
and there are many people here that sound like they believe
that your opinions are anti-Muslim.
The mood, the politics of atmosphere right now
is very similar to the 1930s.
One of the things in the 1930s that's important
is that people didn't know what was gonna happen in the 1940s.
So when we look backwards, we say, "Well, it's obvious now"
"that fascism was on the rise."
Right now Marine Le Pen is saying
France is under threat as we used to know France.
And that is the same message that fascists carried in Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
If the National Front in France comes into government,
then I think you're not only seeing severe violent divisions in France,
but actually across Europe.
Nobody is making any rational decisions.
Everything is very emotional,
and when politics gets very emotional,
that's when it gets very dangerous.
So this is why you've got the rise of the far right,
and that's why you've got the rise of anti-Semitism,
that's why you've got people going off to Syria.
What do you think about the National Front?