What’s Worth Watching: ‘Frontline’ on PBS for Tuesday, November 17

FL_ISISInAfghanistan
Courtesy of FRONTLINE

Frontline, “ISIS in Afghanistan” and “Taliban Hunters,” Tuesday, Nov. 17, 10/9c, PBS (check local listings at pbs.org)

Another week, another riveting piece of TV journalism on Frontline, going deep into dangerous territories to reveal the scope of the ongoing war against terrorist factions in the Middle East. The majority of this week’s program is devoted to a report titled “ISIS in Afghanistan,” in which reporter Najibullah Quraishi accepts a risky invitation to take his camera inside regions of Afghanistan under ISIS control. Setting aside worries of kidnapping or worse, he manages to embed himself inside a “school of Islamic State,” where the chilling curriculum includes teaching the meaning of “Jihad” to schoolchildren and demonstrating the use of weapons including Kalishnikov rifles and “hand bomb” grenades. Quraishi also interviews Taliban leaders who’ve come under fire from ISIS insurgents, and citizens choosing to flee these embattled villages to avoid being caught in the deadly conflict.

The hour concludes with a segment on “Taliban Hunters,” as a Pakistani counterterrorism police unit is known. Reporter Mobeen Azhar rides along on a harrowing raid into a slum of Karachi, where the capture of Taliban militants is interrupted by the sound of alarms that necessitate an immediate exit. The interrogation that follows provides a look into the extremist mindset that reminds us how far this war is from being over.