PBS’ Frontline Presents Kill/Capture

Tuesday, May 10, 2011, at 9 p.m. ET on PBS

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Behind the strike that killed Osama bin Laden on May 1st was one of the US military’s best kept secrets: an extraordinary campaign by elite US soldiers to take out thousands of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters. A six-month investigation by Frontline has gone inside the “kill/capture” program to discover new evidence of the program’s impact — and its costs.

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Gen. David Petraeus, since he took command of troops last year, has ordered a major expansion of these “manhunt” missions that rely on highly classified intelligence, cutting-edge technology and Special Operations forces.

In Kill/Capture, (check local listings), Frontline producers Dan Edge (The Wounded Platoon) and Stephen Grey (Extraordinary Rendition) explore the logic behind the kill/capture policy, and ask if this unremitting pursuit of the enemy will help end the war in Afghanistan. “If you are trying to take down an industrial strength insurgency, you take away its safe havens, you take away its leaders, by detaining them or in some cases killing them,” Gen. Petraeus tells Frontline of his decision to step up kill/capture missions after he took command in Afghanistan last summer. The military say these operations have led to the death or detention of more than 12,000 Taliban insurgents over the last 12 months.

Petraeus and his advisers argue that a ruthless, accurate and relentless campaign against enemy leaders will paralyse the insurgency and force them to the negotiating table. “The intent is to do so much damage to the network that it becomes more viable for the enemy to negotiate than to continue to fight,” says David Kilcullen, an influential military advisor and counterinsurgency expert.