>> Tonight on Frontline, "Confronting ISIS."

Correspondent Martin Smith takes us on an epic journey deep inside a region on fire.

>> Socially, economically, politically, it's a region that's going through a once-in-a-century convulgence.

>> On the ground in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iraq, and Syria.

>> The strategic consequences of the war in Syria are becoming almost unsustainable.

>> Inside a White House reluctant to send Americans back to war.

>> The Congress would have never gone along with that.

The American public would have run away.

>> And struggling to manage conflicted allies.

>> The Saudis in essence are telling the president, "We've had enough.

We don't believe in your coalition."

>> They have their own priorities.

They think that this White House is naive.

>> Shot and reported over the course of two-and-a-half years.

>> SMITH: What's the situation there?

>> Russian and Syrian warplanes... >> SMITH: So this whole idea of a coalition is a myth.

>> You're not going to get the buy-in of the region when you don't have any solution for the day after you destroy ISIS.

>> This is the story of escalating global tensions, enemies and allies, and the ultimate cost of America's war on ISIS.

>> Iraqi forces have been moving closer to retake that key northern city of Mosul.

It's an ISIS stronghold.

This is a major prize in this effort to unseat ISIS from Iraq.

>> MARTIN SMITH: I have been covering the Middle East for 15 years.

For the last few, I have followed ISIS closely.

Earlier this year, I was in northern Iraq, headed toward the front line.

>> This road takes you to Mosul.

>> Oh, it does?

>> Yeah, it goes straight to it.

I mean, you can tell there are no cars coming.

>> SMITH: This trip was part of a much larger journey across the region.

On this day, I was traveling with Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers to an area that had seen heavy fighting.

The Kurds are considered America's best fighters both here and in nearby Syria.

>> SMITH: Whoa, that's really destroyed down in there.

>> And how was this village destroyed?

>> Mostly air strikes and booby traps.

>> SMITH: When was the battle?

The Kurds drove ISIS out of this town, Tal al Reem, in February 2015.

They had a lot of help from U.S.-led coalition air forces.

How many coalition airstrikes hit this area here?

>> Dozens.

>> SMITH: Dozens.

>> SMITH: So you pushed them out of this town.

How far are they from here now?

>> SMITH: How far?

>> Like 1,500 meters.

>> SMITH: Like a mile.

>> He says, "Do you want to go talk to them?"

>> SMITH: You gonna go with me?

>> ...transport the weapons to Kurdish forces fighting against Islamic State militants in Syria.

>> SMITH: I was taken to a nearby bunker which overlooked the ISIS-held town of Qayarah.

>> SMITH: When is the last time you've had mortars fall here?

>> SMITH: One mortar fell while we were there.

So how many fighters does ISIS have out there?

>> SMITH: Qayarah and its airbase were among the first targets ISIS hit in June of 2014.

There's a truck moving on this side of the river.

>> (men talking on radio) >> SMITH: I could hear ISIS fighters chatter on the base radio.

>> SMITH: Since my visit here, Iraqi security forces, with coalition support, attacked and seized Qayarah.

The Peshmerga are now awaiting orders to advance up the Tigris to the main ISIS stronghold of Mosul, about 40 miles to the north.

It promises to be a hard fight.

>> SMITH: The push to retake Mosul is now thought to be just days away.

What I want to understand is why has the fight against ISIS taken so long?

Who are America's allies here?

This is the Middle East.

There are no simple answers.

>> SMITH: Our story begins more than two years ago when ISIS seized Mosul, Iraq's second largest city.

This is a home video made by an ISIS supporter.

>> SMITH: At the time, many Mosul residents welcomed them.

>> SMITH: Meanwhile, broadcasters around the world expressed shock.

>> The Iraqi military tried and failed to fend off ISIS.

>> SMITH: American officials were hard pressed to explain what had happened.

>> It wasn't that we were blind in that area.

We had drones, we had satellites, we had intelligence monitoring these groups.

But when two divisions of Iraqi regular forces drop their weapons and run, and leave then barren the cities and the banks and the territory, I'm not sure how you predict that.

>> SMITH: Americans had spent eight years, many lives, and $25 billion training and equipping the Iraqi army.

Now hundreds of U.S.-made armored vehicles and weapons were in ISIS hands.

(rapid gunfire) >> The situation was dire.

ISIS leaders were making claims: "Baghdad, we are coming."

>> It is becoming a matter of some urgency to push ISIS back.

>> The country is in serious danger of being overtaken by these fundamentalist, extremist ISIS, who will kill everybody who will not convert to their religion.

>> The Iraqi government's begging for the Americans to help.

>> SMITH: But the president refused to launch a full-scale military campaign.

>> Given the recent U.S. history there, are you reluctant to get involved again in Iraq?

>> I think that we should look at the situation carefully.

We have an interest in making sure... >> SMITH: Before he would act, President Obama wanted a new Iraqi prime minister.

>> I mean, the president was clear.

He didn't want to launch that campaign until there was something to defend that we were willing to defend, and that wasn't Maliki.

>> The administration has signaled they'd like to see a change in Iraq.

>> SMITH: Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, an Iraqi Shiite, had been a deeply divisive politician.

>> They don't have confidence in Maliki because he's shunned the Sunni.

>> SMITH: He had excluded Iraqi Sunnis from government jobs, purged them from Iraq's military and police forces.

He jailed and tortured Sunni dissidents.

His sectarian policies fueled the rise of the Sunni extremists of ISIS.

(explosion) >> (shouting) >> SMITH: President Obama insisted Maliki had to go.

>> And to that effect, we thought that was an impossible task of us.

And even if we can get it right, we can't get it in time to deal with this immediate threat.

>> Things are changing here rapidly as militants from ISIS are approaching Baghdad.

>> ISIS fighters now just eight miles outside the city.

>> SMITH: U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Brett McGurk was at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad at the time.

>> The entire apparatus around Baghdad was potentially disintegrating and fraying.

And potentially, you know, Baghdad itself falling.

>> SMITH: Maliki continued to resist calls for his resignation.

McGurk argued time was running short.

>> There's a political component to everything.

But without a military response to what is an army, we couldn't possibly succeed.

>> Yesterday the State Department announced plans to partially evacuate the American embassy in Baghdad.

>> You know, I'm a civilian in Baghdad.

I was advocating as aggressive a response as possible just given how dire the situation was.

So those who were responding, as some were at the time, that this needs a political solution I just thought were completely out of their minds.

>> SMITH: Brett was calling from Baghdad and saying, "We need to respond militarily," wasn't he?

>> Brett certainly was, I think, an advocate for military action at that time.

>> SMITH: So why couldn't they have been struck at that time?

>> Because in our view, it doesn't work.

There is a limit to how effective we can be in our own military action absent the right conditions, political conditions inside of a country.

>> SMITH: Why couldn't there have been a simultaneous military response while continuing to pressure Maliki to step out of office?

>> I think that would have allowed Maliki to sort of have his cake and eat it, too.

To be able to stay in power and still have the United States fight his battle for him.

>> SMITH: It seemed pretty clear that they were moving openly across open countryside, that it wouldn't have been hard to knock them out in those early days.

>> It's certainly true that in those early days, should the policy have been different, we would have had targets to go after.

>> SMITH: I was in Baghdad just a few weeks after the fall of Mosul.

I found the situation extremely tense.

There were checkpoints everywhere.

ISIS was on the city's outskirts.

The police were nervous.

ISIS was sending in suicide bombers nearly every day.

>> (men chanting) >> SMITH: In Baghdad's Firdos Square, Maliki's supporters clung to the prime minister as their best defense.

>> SMITH: Iraqis I interviewed at that time warned about the consequences of removing Maliki.

>> If Maliki is forced down, I can assure you an open civil war will take place in Iraq.

Even I will carry a gun and go and fight.

This is the will of a million people in Baghdad.

>> (chanting): Nouri al-Maliki!

>> This is the people talking.

They will protect their prime minister.

(gunfire) >> Allahu akbar!

>> SMITH: ISIS continued to take more ground.

>> (woman singing) >> SMITH: And they began releasing slickly produced videos on YouTube.

(explosion) >> (man singing) >> From the mujahideen came the believers who would rebuild the caliphate.

>> SMITH: With an apocalyptic appeal, they recruited fighters from all over the world.

>> The few of the few from all corners of the world who answered the call of the Prophet... >> SMITH: And they had a thirst for extreme violence.

Then, ISIS directly targeted America.

>> This is James Wright Foley, an American citizen of your country.

As a government, you have been at the forefront... >> SMITH: Two days after the video of James Foley's execution was released... >> Good afternoon, everybody.

>> SMITH: ...Secretary Hagel held a press conference.

He was questioned as to whether the administration needed to reassess the threat of ISIS.

>> Is it the calculation that ISIL presents a 9/11 level threat to the United States?

>> Jim, ISIL is as sophisticated and well-funded as any group that we have seen.

They're beyond just a terrorist group.

>> SMITH: Up to then, the White House had been more measured.

Hagel was going off message.

>> Oh, this is beyond anything that we've seen, so we must prepare for everything.

>> SMITH: Were you asked to tamp down that speech?

>> Oh, I think the White House was not particularly pleased with that speech.

They were uncomfortable, the White House, with me maybe overstating the threat.

I didn't think I overstated it; I think I said it exactly right.

>> (Arabic radio broadcast) >> In Baghdad, the political deadlock over who will be the country's next prime minister is finally over.

Nouri al-Maliki has agreed to step down.

>> SMITH: Finally, three months after the fall of Mosul, a new Iraqi government was formed.

>> The new man in charge will be Haider al-Abadi.

The challenges he faces are huge.

>> SMITH: It was then that President Obama issued his pledge.

>> President Barack Obama is gearing up to give a highly-anticipated primetime speech tonight.

>> President Obama will lay out his plan to address the ISIS threat in a televised speech tonight.

>> Obama has been criticized for having a timid response thus far to dealing with ISIS.

>> My fellow Americans, tonight I want to speak to you about what the United States will do with our friends and allies to degrade and ultimately destroy the terrorist group known as ISIL.

>> SMITH: "To degrade and ultimately destroy."

The words have been repeated over and over again.

>> "Degrade and ultimately destroy."

>> His policy is to destroy ISIS.

>> No, no, no, it's to degrade and ultimately destroy!

>> There was a big debate about those terms: defeat, destroy, degrade.

Professionals wanted to argue for containing it initially and then degrading its capability and ultimately defeating it.

>> They understood that the odds of being able to simply wipe away ISIS were pretty minimal.

So degrade became a way of saying, "Look, we're gonna knock 'em back into the point "where they're not really a big threat.

We can't promise to make 'em go away altogether."

Destroy is, you know, sort of an ultimate, "Wouldn't it be nice if...?"

>> SMITH: Who came up with "ultimately"?

>> I don't know.

There were a lot of discussions about whether it should be contain, defeat, destroy, degrade, you know, ultimately, and it gets more nuanced as it goes along.

The recognition was this was a group that was going to be around for some time.

The initial strategy looked at a 36-month timetable to degrade and ultimately destroy ISIS.

>> SMITH: Immediately, the U.S. moved to stop ISIS from advancing on Baghdad.

At the same time, U.S. warplanes struck at ISIS sanctuaries over the border in Syria.

>> Strike after strike after strike, and of course the vast majority is American.

But it wasn't just the United States, it wasn't just the West; it was regional powers right there in the Middle East that were taking those strikes.

>> The overriding imperative was to limit U.S. engagement in this and to try to get countries in the region and actors in the region to deal with this threat.

>> Military officials say more than two dozen airstrikes have been carried out in both Syria and Iraq.

>> The Pentagon says it appears these strikes were very successful.

>> President Obama said help from Arab allies is proof that the world is united to defeat ISIS.

>> SMITH: Over 60 nations around the world signed onto the fight.

And there were ten regional partners, including Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey.

The problem they faced was considerable.

ISIS held sway over large parts of Iraq and Syria.

In Iraq, the U.S. hoped to resuscitate the Iraqi armed forces.

In Syria, they faced a much bigger challenge.

>> In Iraq, I think there was a fairly coherent strategy crafted by the administration.

But the big, gaping hole in the strategy that was debated vociferously inside was Syria.

>> SMITH: This is Raqqa, a city of over 200,000 people.

Seized months before Mosul, Raqqa was capital of the Islamic State's self-declared caliphate.

>> SMITH: It was clear that routing ISIS from here would require a large ground force.

Bombing alone would not work.

>> (man shouting) >> SMITH: ISIS was intermingled with the local population and was attempting to build a state.

>> SMITH: They fixed roads, collected garbage, repaired phone lines, ran the banks, and carried out justice.

>> SMITH: The question was who would fight them here.

>> So then do you do an Iraq-style invasion, or Afghanistan invasion?

President Obama was not going to do that.

The Congress would've never gone along with that.

The American public would've run away.

We've never been in this spot before.

>> Everyone knew that we needed to have boots on the ground.

The question was always whose boots would they be?

No one wanted large numbers of American boots.

There weren't many Europeans who wanted their boots on the ground, and nor did any of our Gulf Arab partners want their boots on the ground.

So the only answer therefore is to build up an indigenous force.

>> President Obama meeting with his national security team about ISIS.

The terror group has continued their march in Syria and Iraq.

>> SMITH: In Washington, they met to discuss what to do.

>> President Obama will meet today with his national security team to discuss ISIS strategy.

>> SMITH: The President was cautious.

He didn't want any more Americans to die in another messy Middle Eastern war.

>> I was elected to end wars, not start them.

>> SMITH: And there was nothing messier than Syria.

>> In Syria certainly, President Obama is a second- and third-order thinker.

He keeps saying to his staff, "Okay, then what?

"You want to put troops in.

"Then what?

"You want to make a no-fly zone.

Then what?"

>> Syria is probably the most complicated issue that anyone in government has faced.

I recall one Situation Room meeting where one experienced government official said, you know, "This is the hardest problem we've faced."

And then somebody else piped in, "Ever."

>> SMITH: The Syrian War was already into its fourth year by the fall of 2014, and Syrian president Bashar al Assad's relentless air campaign had already killed around 200,000 civilians.

(explosions) (car alarm blaring) (people shouting) >> SMITH: His use of barrel bombs and chemical weapons had devastated whole communities.

In all of the chaos, ISIS had benefited, flourishing in Syria's ungoverned spaces and drawing recruits who were motivated to join the fight.

Assad provided ISIS with a cause.

>> SMITH: For this reason, many people in the region had been urging the United States to do more to bring the war to an end.

>> A lot of people in the Middle East will tell you that there is no dealing with ISIS without dealing with President Assad.

That is a view that many people in the region hold very strongly.

>> We're all talking about fighting terrorism.

Who is the biggest terrorist in Syria?

Who has killed more than 300,000 Syrians?

Who has dislocated millions of Syrians to leave and become refugees and create a situation in Europe and in other places of receiving these refugees?

It is Assad.

For us to defeat ISIS, Assad has to go.

>> SMITH: President Obama had approved a very small CIA program backing some anti-Assad rebels in 2013.

But Obama opposed launching a major new overt military campaign in Syria.

>> Our policy has been very clear that Bashar al-Assad needs to leave power, but that we are not going to militarily remove Assad because in fact, doing so would draw the United States in in a significant way, and because we cannot impose a change on these countries militarily from the outside.

>> I will not hesitate to take action against ISIL in Syria.

>> SMITH: The president wanted to focus much more narrowly.

>> ...to train and equip these fighters.

>> SMITH: He asked the Pentagon to train and equip a force to fight only ISIS.

>> We must strengthen the opposition as the best counterweight to extremists like ISIL.

>> SMITH: They would be recruited from anti-Assad rebel groups like the Free Syrian Army.

Many, including the president, had doubts.

>> Some lawmakers sounding off about President Obama's plans to deal with the growing threat of Isis.

>> There were many doubts that everybody had, I had, whether this could work, but we were in a position where we really had very few options.

But you can't afford the luxury of just standing back.

>> So now they're going to focus their efforts on established units there on the ground, try to train and equip them.

>> We always knew it was going to be a challenge.

You know, fighters in Syria at the time were involved in a life-and-death struggle against the Assad regime.

ISIS wasn't their primary fight.

>> I understand, according to your testimony, that we will be training and equipping approximately 5,000... >> SMITH: Hagel was called to the Hill to explain how he thought the program would work.

>> This group of 5,000 was fighting against Bashar Assad for a number of years before ISIL was ever a significant factor.

If one of the Free Syrian Army is fighting against ISIL, would we take action to prevent them from being attacked by Bashar Assad?

>> Well, we're first of all not there yet, but our focus is on ISIL, and that is the threat right now to our country.

>> SMITH: You were asked, "What would happen, what would you do if they're attacked by somebody else?"

>> Not somebody else-- it was Assad.

If they were attacked by Assad, then would you come to their defense and go after Assad forces, because our policy was that we're not at war against Assad and Syria.

>> SMITH: You looked as if you were put in a difficult position.

What was going on?

>> Well, essentially we had not made, the administration had not made a decision on that question.

>> SMITH: So you're hanging there without a script?

>> I am.

>> I take it from your answer that we are now recruiting these young men to go and fight in Syria against ISIL, but if they are attacked by Bashar Assad, we're not gonna help them.

>> They will defend themselves, Senator.

>> Will we help them against Assad's air...?

>> We will help them and we will support them as we have trained them.

>> How will we help them?

Will we repel... >> SMITH: Once again, Hagel would go off message.

>> ...assets that will be attacking them?

>> Any attack on those that we have trained who are supporting us, we will help them.

I just took it upon myself to say, "Yes, we'll support 'em," because any other answer would've sent, in my opinion, an absolute wrong message to, first of all, the people we were trying to recruit and train and arm.

To try to bifurcate and say, "Well, you can kill these guys, but you can't kill these guys," was just, I thought, unreasonable.

>> SMITH: Did you raise that objection to President Obama?

>> Well, we talked about it in different principals meetings and National Security Council meetings, but we never... it was never really resolved.

>> SMITH: The matter soon erupted into public view.

You sent a two-page memo to... >> To Secretary Kerry and Ambassador Rice.

>> SMITH: Ambassador Rice, and you copied the president on it.

>> Yes.

I was very concerned about... we were losing credibility everywhere in the world.

My point was that we have spent no time focusing on a political strategy in Syria.

>> Secretary Hagel apparently sent a letter blasting parts of the Syria policy.

>> The blame game as to who's responsible for trouble in Obama's foreign policy?

>> SMITH: Hagel had criticized the president for failing to have a strategy for removing Assad.

>> He wrote this memo saying, "Listen, the war can't be all about ISIS because inadvertently, you're helping Assad by degrading ISIS because ISIS of course is one of the Assad regime's key enemies there.

>> SMITH: Within weeks, Hagel would be gone.

It's not long after you write the memo in October to Rice and Kerry and Obama that your star is fading.

>> I'm not going to get into that.

I think it's been out there, it's pretty clear we had some disagreements.

>> SMITH: Publicly, the White House denied that Hagel's Syria memo was a factor.

>> It did not have any effect, and in this matter, Secretary Hagel has demonstrated clearly in a variety of public settings that he believes in the strategy that the president has laid out and it will be successful over the long term.

>> SMITH: While in Washington they debated Obama's Syria strategy, the first big battle of the war was already underway.

It would be a major test of Obama's ability to rely on regional partners.

>> This is the town of Kobani.

This town has been surrounded by ISIS, it has been under attack by ISIS militants.

>> Fighting intensified today around the Syrian town of Kobani.

>> SMITH: Trying to seize a key border crossing, ISIS was moving into Kobani in northern Syria.

Kobani's defenders were badly outmanned and outgunned.

ISIS was winning.

But just over the border, Turkey, America's NATO ally and an anti-ISIS coalition partner, stood idle.

>> In a clear rebuff to the U.S. administration, Turkey refuses to actually send troops into Syria.

>> SMITH: Turkey also refused to allow coalition jets to use the critically important U.S. airbase at Incirlik, Turkey.

U.S. warplanes were forced to fly long distances to reach their targets.

>> U.S. officials are deeply irritated that the Turks won't even allow the U.S. to use Turkish airbases.

>> SMITH: The problem was Kobani's Kurds, a minority group that Turkey fears.

(gunshot) >> The Kurdish element is where the rubber hit the road in the difference between the two sides.

>> The Syrian Kurds are linked to the PKK, and the PKK is a Kurdish organization that's been waging a war against Turkish state since 1980s.

>> SMITH: The PKK, or Kurdistan Workers' Party, is a militant Kurdish separatist organization listed by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist group.

Their Syrian affiliate, known as the YPG, was leading the fight against ISIS in Kobani.

Turkey wanted nothing to do with them.

>> Turkey has sat on the border watching Kurds get slaughtered by ISIS, doing nothing about it.

>> Turkey perceived greater threat from the Kurdish groups that were defending Kobani.

And because of that, they wanted the Kurdish insurgency in northern Syria to be extinguished via ISIS.

>> SMITH: The U.S., on the other hand, chose to side with the Kurds.

>> We were desperate for allies.

So, you know, this is the backdrop that makes it so complicated for the Pentagon.

They desperately need an ally.

They know they cannot win without it.

And we choose the partner that is the enemy of Turkey, which is our NATO ally.

>> The fighting is absolutely fierce.

I don't think I've seen or heard anything quite like it... >> SMITH: Raising the stakes for both the U.S. and ISIS, reporters gathered on the Turkish side of the border.

>> So this is Media Hill, where people come to watch the war.

It's a strange feature of this conflict because you can come just a few hundred meters from Kobani which you can see over there, the smoke rising from attacks.

>> All eyes were on Kobani.

This was almost a PR war.

So if the Western world let the Islamic State win this war, it would be a major blow to the image of the coalition against the Islamic State.

>> SMITH: American officials made frequent visits to Turkey to try to enlist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's cooperation.

Erdogan refused.

I wanted to talk to Erdogan himself about this.

He lives and works from a massive new palace in Ankara with 1,000 offices and meeting rooms.

After several requests, Erdogan refused to sit for an interview.

Instead, he had me speak to his chief foreign policy advisor.

So you're a NATO ally of the United States, and you had a really fundamental difference in opinion about what should happen.

The war in Kobani then just ground on and on and on.

>> Yes, and it's difficult for us to understand why, you know, our ally, United States, a NATO ally with which we have a model partnership, will support an organization that directly or indirectly attacks Turkey, targets Turkish security forces inside Turkey.

>> Diplomatic tensions between the U.S. and Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan.

>> Turkish officials want their Western allies to sever their links with the Kurdish fighters.

>> SMITH: What does it tell us that immediately, we're engaged in this squabble with Erdogan, supposedly a chief ally in the region?

>> It's indicative of the entire problem, because while most of our regional allies understand that ISIS is a problem and many of them feel deeply threatened by ISIS, it's not the top priority of almost anybody except for us.

>> SMITH: A month into the battle, things looked bad in Kobani.

Turkey had sealed its border to prevent any shipments of weapons, ammunition, or medicine.

The loss of Kobani looked imminent.

At the eleventh hour, the U.S. drew up a plan to resupply the Kurds by air.

>> Our friends in Ankara were strongly opposed to this, told us so, told us it would be a grave mistake and damaging to the relationship with Turkey.

>> SMITH: Gordon was worried about the long-term consequences of U.S. intervention.

The airdrop still remains a difficult subject.

Were you in favor of that particular move before the president decided to do it?

>> Was I in favor of the airdrop?

Uh... (laughs) That's a tough one to... Let me see if, how I want to handle that.

>> SMITH: Were you in favor of the airdrop of arms and ammunition to the YPG?

>> No, I never...

Ultimately, I framed and analyzed and underscored the potential consequences for the relationship with Turkey.

I wanted the president to understand that there could well be very severe consequences.

They might close Incirlik, the airbase, entirely.

President said, "Fair enough, I see those points, but I think if I talk to Erdogan, I can get him on board."

>> There were folks on both sides of that equation.

I think the president was ultimately persuaded by the Pentagon's argument that unless we did something urgently, there was the real risk of Kobani being defeated.

>> President Obama called President Erdogan to explain exactly what we were doing, that we recognize Turkey's very legitimate security concerns against other threats, including the PKK, but we could not allow this town to fall.

>> SMITH: Did Erdogan approve the airdrop?

>> When President Obama called him, we weren't asking for permission.

We were saying, "This is what we're going to do."

>> SMITH: Did you get any warning?

>> It came very late.

And there was no time really to coordinate it properly.

>> SMITH: The airdrop delivered tons of badly needed weapons, ammunition, and medical supplies.

The Turks then appeared to soften.

>> The Turkish government started to realize that it has to give in to the U.S. in some regard.

Why?

Because Obama administration chose to support the Kurds, and the YPG was doing perhaps better than anyone expected.

And Turkey felt that it was losing ground.

>> SMITH: Reluctantly, the Turks agreed to allow a force of Iraqi Kurds, or Peshmerga, to come out of Iraq, across Turkey, to the aid of their Kurdish brothers and sisters in Kobani.

ISIS resisted for another few months, but in the end, ISIS lost.

Over 1,000 of its fighters were killed.

>> It is a big victory for the Kurds and the U.S.-led coalition.

>> It has been one of the most visible and symbolic locations in the fight against ISIL.

>> IS have been defeated, but the costs of the conflict are now there for us to see.

The city is devastated, empty, and in ruins.

>> So by intervening on behalf of Kobani and partnering with the Kurdish forces there, this really did succeed in stopping the momentum of ISIS, and it dealt them their first strategic setback.

(men chanting) >> SMITH: But in the process, U.S. relations with Turkey were badly damaged.

Incirlik air base remained closed for another six months.

>> It seems that when it comes to combatting ISIL, Turkey is determined to play by its own rules.

>> I think if one has to write the history of relations between Turkey and the United States under Obama and Erdogan, that would be almost a breaking point in bilateral relations.

(engine roaring) (radio transmissions) >> SMITH: While the U.S. and Turkey faced off, the air campaign continued, and most of America's Arab allies were participating.

But there was more to this fight than planes and bombs.

The Obama administration wanted their Arab allies to do much more.

>> Arab nations play a critical role, the leading role, really, in the effort to repudiate once and for all the dangerous, the insulting distortion of Islam that ISIL propaganda attempts to spread throughout the world.

>> SMITH: The United States asked its Arab partners to play a role in a crucial part of their anti-ISIS strategy-- what's called counter-messaging.

Especially Saudi Arabia.

>> Far more important than having a Saudi airplane in the air campaign, the Saudis have to be the vanguard of the counter to the ideological message that is spread by not just ISIL, but by all the preachers who spread a very similar message of incitement and hatred.

What matters is what the Saudis are doing in the ideological struggle against Daesh.

>> SMITH: I went to Saudi Arabia to better understand what Kerry and McGurk were talking about.

The U.S.-Saudi alliance is an awkward one.

For over 70 years, the U.S. has depended on Saudi Arabia for oil.

But this is also the birthplace of the ultra-conservative Wahhabi branch of Islam from which ISIS springs.

>> (man chanting) >> SMITH: It is an extremely strict interpretation of Islam.

Moderate Muslims accuse Wahhabis of sanctioning violence against Christians, Jews, as well as all non-Wahhabi Muslims.

>> (man speaking Arabic) >> SMITH: In a rare interview with a reporter, I asked Saudi Arabia's highest religious authority, the Grand Mufti, to comment on Saudi Wahhabist teachings and Islamic extremism.

What do you say to those Americans who think that it is Saudi society and Saudi conservative Salafist beliefs that have led many to take up weapons?

>> SMITH: The Mufti, who is blind, insisted there is no connection between Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia and terrorism.

>> SMITH: Next, I went to speak to former intelligence chief Prince Turki al Faisal.

He admits that ISIS has roots here, but says it's an aberration.

>> ISIS is a cancerous growth.

Cancer cells, where do they come from?

They come from healthy cells in the body.

But the rest of the body is healthy.

And so yes, ISIS does some of the actions that can be pointed to as being similar to what we do, but we have a judicial system.

>> SMITH: Sharia law.

>> Sharia law.

And we are not going to give that up for anything.

>> (man shouting) >> SMITH: The trouble is that the kind of justice often practiced here in Saudi Arabia can appear indistinguishable from Sharia justice as practiced by ISIS.

Saudi Arabia is on the left, ISIS on the right.

>> ISIS is sort of the uber-Wahhabi, if you will.

They're taking the most pared-down and boiled-down essence of the Wahhabi sect and taking it and owning it.

>> SMITH: I've been to Saudi Arabia, I've talked to Saudi officials.

They say that they don't subscribe to this kind of extremism that ISIS represents.

And they refuse to take any responsibility for, in some way, laying the groundwork or laying the seeds.

>> If you are looking for a smoking gun, it is going to be very hard to find the memo that tells you that ISIS is following their ideology.

But if you look at the essence of what that sect of Islam is all about, it is very hard not to see that if not for this, there would not be that.

>> SMITH: In fact, ISIS used Saudi textbooks for their schools-- texts that preach hatred for all non-Wahhabi Muslims.

>> They did not have time initially to come up with their own curricula, so conveniently, the Saudi government puts up PDFs of its textbooks online, and so ISIS just downloaded those textbooks and used them in ISIS schools.

>> SMITH: The Saudis have revised some textbooks and say they are working on their messaging.

>> We're working on the counter-narrative almost every day.

We're having meetings, we're having consultations with people, with experts.

We have a show called Al Ikhbariya, and on that show, people give their opinion.

And one of the questions asked is the question, "How can you "protect your children from the ideas of ISIS or the ideas of terrorism?"

(music playing) >> SMITH: Another Saudi TV show, Selfie, mocks ISIS through comedy by spoofing a mass execution.

>> SMITH: Here, an ISIS fighter tries to get his father, who has come to take him home, to participate in the killing.

>> SMITH: The question I had was whether Saudi attempts at counter-messaging were making a difference.

>> (man singing) >> SMITH: ISIS has drawn more young men from Saudi Arabia than any other Gulf state.

>> SMITH: Has Secretary Kerry made any progress?

Has the United States made any progress in pressuring the Saudis to change?

>> We've made progress in terms of publicly talking about the issue, which is a step forward.

But we're just skimming on the top.

>> The message that gets through is still a troublesome message.

It still tends to denigrate non-Muslims, Jews, and Christians.

It still denigrates non-Wahhabi Muslims, especially Shia, anyone who teaches or believes that Islam is something other than the Wahhabi version.

>> The problem is so deep that addressing all of the layers of intolerance in Saudi discourse is very hard.

The problem is Saudi Arabia needs to do more, and American pressure to get Saudi Arabia to do more is important.

>> SMITH: It has been frustrating for the U.S., but counter-messaging is simply not the Saudis' number one priority.

Instead, it is the kingdom's long struggle against their archrival, Iran.

(men shouting) Since the founding of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini declared Iran to be the legitimate leader of the Muslim world.

He called for an end to the Saudi monarchy.

In recent years, as the U.S. began pursuing a nuclear deal with Iran, ISIS was seen as a lesser threat.

>> The challenge of course we've had in the Middle East is they all are concerned about ISIL, there is no question about that, but they don't always rank their concerns in the same order that we do.

So in the Saudi case, for example, you know, obviously I think they're focused first and foremost on the Iranian challenge.

>> There is not real buy-in to the anti-ISIL policy on the Saudi part.

Their analysis, I believe, is that the Iranian threat is an immediate and existential one that has to be dealt with at once, or all will be lost.

ISIL, on the other hand, is a big problem, but it can be dealt with over time.

It's much less threatening and much less urgent.

>> SMITH: Another big challenge facing the war against ISIS came in Jordan.

Historically, this small nation has been a reliable Arab ally.

Jordan and the U.S. have had close relations for decades.

The government shares information with the CIA and allows the U.S. to base special forces here.

In return, Jordan receives hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. aid annually.

But here too, there were problems.

>> King Abdullah of Jordan had no other option but to join the coalition.

First, he is fully dependent on the United States when it comes to the financial aids.

>> Allahu akbar!

>> But at the same time, he is extremely worried because he knows that there is a base of support of the Islamic State inside Jordan.

>> SMITH: As in Saudi Arabia, support for ISIS has deep roots here.

This man, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a founder of ISIS, came from Jordan.

>> If you look at the Islamic State, it was based on Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's organization.

So Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has a lot of support in Jordan.

>> Allahu akbar!

>> SMITH: For ISIS, overthrowing the monarchy in Jordan is among its stated goals.

>> There were rumblings in Jordan about whether Jordan should be engaged in a U.S.-led war.

The debate was, would Jordan be safer or not?

>> SMITH: Then, on December 24, 2014, one of Jordan's pilots flying for the anti-ISIS coalition went down over northern Syria.

The cause of the crash is unclear.

>> Some people are saying that it is a mechanical fault, but whatever the reason, there was a Jordanian pilot captured by ISIS.

>> SMITH: His name was Muath al-Kasasbeh, a 26-year-old Royal Jordanian Air Force pilot.

>> And there was a big shock in Jordan.

He looked like many poor Jordanians who didn't find jobs, but who found the only place that would give him, provide him a decent living was the army.

So people identified with him.

He captured the minds and hearts of people.

>> SMITH: He came from a small town in southern Jordan.

I drove down there to talk to his father.

(knocking) I asked him what he'd been told.

>> SMITH: He blamed the failure to rescue his son on the coalition.

>> SMITH: When the Jordanian pilot is captured, what effect does that have on the coalition?

>> I suspect that the other countries involved, if they didn't understand the risk to their forces previously, they understood it very well then.

>> Our ally, the United Arab Emirates, has stopped its air strikes campaign.

>> ...has stopped conducting air strikes, apparently for fear of the safety of their pilots.

>> SMITH: But any attempt to rescue the pilot was compromised.

U.S. rescue teams could not fly out of nearby Incirlik airbase in Turkey.

Instead, they were hours away.

>> We were conducting air operations from the Persian Gulf and from ships at sea, and so the flight time was considerable.

Whether it was a bombing run or a search-and-rescue mission, there was several hours of flight time that was required to get from those places to over northern Syria.

>> (men chanting) >> SMITH: Failure to rescue the pilot led to anger on the streets of Amman.

>> SMITH: Demonstrators called for Jordan to quit the coalition.

ISIS, meanwhile, wanted to exploit the pilot Kasasbeh to maximum effect.

>> Making a deal with ISIS, a possible prisoner swap with Jordan.

>> A new ISIS ultimatum: hand over the prisoner or your pilot will be killed.

>> SMITH: They called the pilot's family and demanded Jordan release a prisoner in exchange for Kasasbeh.

>> The prisoner ISIS is demanding be freed, Sajida al-Rishawi, is a failed suicide bomber on death row in Jordan.

>> SMITH: But negotiations over a prisoner swap stalled.

Ten days passed.

Then ISIS released this video.

>> I'm Kenji Goto Joko.

The ball is now in the Jordanian's court.

>> SMITH: In it, another hostage, Japanese war reporter Kenji Goto, was holding a photo of the pilot Kasasbeh.

>> Time is now running very short.

>> SMITH: ISIS seemed to be now offering two hostages for Sajida's release.

>> I only have 24 hours left to live, and the pilot has even less.

>> (men chanting) >> The fate of two hostages held by ISIS could be determined within hours.

>> Goto's mother issued an emotional appeal to the Japanese and Jordanian governments to meet the ISIS demands for a prisoner swap.

>> A deadline looms for Jordan and Japan as every moment becomes critical.

>> SMITH: King Abdullah told Kasasbeh's father he was doing all he could.

>> SMITH: But Jordan refused to negotiate until there was proof that their pilot was still alive.

>> We want to see a proof of life of the Jordanian pilot and then we can talk about the exchange between Sajida al-Rishawi and the Jordanian pilot.

>> What's the White House reaction to the Jordanian government expressing a willingness to give in to demands?

>> SMITH: In Washington, the administration publicly discouraged any negotiations at all.

>> The United States government will not pay ransom, will not give in to demands.

Do we think it is a bad idea if another government does exactly that?

>> I can tell you that this is a long-standing policy that predates this administration, and it's also one that we've communicated to our friends and allies across the world.

Our policy is that we don't pay ransom, we don't give concessions.

>> SMITH: The deadline passed with no word.

Then the Japanese reporter was executed.

>> So let the nightmare for Japan begin.

>> SMITH: There was no news of the pilot.

Until ISIS released another video.

>> (speaking Arabic) >> It looked like a scene out of a Hollywood blockbuster.

The digitization, the GPS coordinates of when they were debriefing him, and he was saying, "These are my other fellow pilots."

>> SMITH: Next, Kasasbeh walks before what looks like a firing squad.

The film includes stylized flashbacks.

(engine roaring) (engine roaring) Kasasbeh is then put in a cage and doused with gasoline.

>> (man singing) >> (screaming) >> SMITH: Back in Amman, members of the Jordanian parliament reacted.

>> It was very savage, the way they lit the pilot on fire.

And then his, literally, skin melting off.

And that's forbidden in Islam, to light human beings on fire.

It showed ISIS to be what they really are: a scourge on humanity.

>> SMITH: In downtown Raqqa, the ISIS capital, the film played to a crowd including children in the town square.

(men cheering) >> SMITH: Coincidentally, the king was in Washington at the time.

President Obama found time to meet with him, but with no questions from the press.

(camera shutters clicking) >> Okay, thank you, pool.

Thank you, thank you, pool.

Thank you, guys.

Thank you, pool.

>> Thank you.

>> SMITH: Immediately afterwards, the king recorded a message to be broadcast back in Jordan.

>> SMITH: The question was how would the Jordanian people react?

>> At that time, Jordanians could have said, "What fight do we have with these crazy jihadists?

"Let's not bring destruction down on any more of our young soldiers."

Instead, the Jordanian reaction was intense, passionate, anti-ISIS.

>> SMITH: The people called for revenge.

Jordan's prisoner Sajida was immediately hanged, and the government released a video featuring the king leading a new round of airstrikes.

>> Jordan's King Abdullah is vowing a "relentless war against ISIS" after the pilot was captured.

>> SMITH: The White House believed this would be a turning point.

>> Arab allies are now fighting with a renewed enthusiasm.

>> SMITH: But it was not to last.

>> A coalition of Gulf nations, led by Saudi Arabia, has launched a military operation in Yemen.

>> SMITH: One month after the burning of the Jordanian pilot, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and other Gulf states began diverting their war planes to combat what they believed was an Iranian-backed coup in Yemen.

They suspended many of their anti-ISIS air operations.

>> Jordan, like most of the Arab partners in the campaign, pretty quickly backs away and lets the United States take the lion's share of the air campaign.

>> Yemen's continuing instability is complicating Washington's efforts to confront the dangerous... >> SMITH: The administration was disappointed with its Arab partners.

>> It had to be something of a surprise.

President Obama certainly wanted them to be and expected them to be fuller partners than they have been.

And it's been one of the failings of this particular effort that it hasn't worked out that way.

>> SMITH: Six months into the war on ISIS, the U.S.-led coalition had made next to no progress.

ISIS holdings were virtually unchanged, and in Iraq, U.S. efforts to rebuild the Iraqi army were moving slowly.

>> (man shouting) >> SMITH: Threatening to fill the void, a group of Shia militias in Iraq had emerged as the most powerful military force in the country.

Supposedly under the control of the Iraqi government, they are also armed and advised by the Shia government of Iran.

They are highly sectarian.

In March 2015, these militias were impatient to take the fight to ISIS.

We hired an Iraqi cameraman to follow them as they began to make their move.

>> These Shiite fighters working together to flush out Islamic State.

>> SMITH: They set their sights on Tikrit, 100 miles north of Baghdad.

>> Part of a huge offensive to retake the city of Tikrit, the hometown of former president Saddam Hussein.

>> SMITH: The militias informed Iraq's prime minister they were going in almost as an afterthought.

>> Reportedly, they came to Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi about a week before the battle was going to start and said to him, "We're going to do this.

We are going to liberate Tikrit.

If you'd like to participate, you're welcome to do so, but no Americans."

This created an enormous problem for Abadi.

>> SMITH: The militias had a bitter history with America.

They were on opposite sides during the American occupation of Iraq.

Yet Abadi felt he had no choice but to go along.

>> Abadi could not allow the Shia militias to go ahead and mount a major military operation without his participation.

It would completely undermine the sense that he was actually the man in charge of Iraq.

>> SMITH: Abadi sent in a small force of Iraqi army regulars.

But the Shia militia made up two thirds of the invading force.

(artillery fire) >> Iran providing weapons to fight ISIS.

The U.S. is on the sidelines.

>> SMITH: The U.S. decided to withhold all support.

At the Pentagon, Ashton Carter had taken over from Secretary Hagel just as the battle for Tikrit was beginning.

I asked him about the decision to stay out of the fight.

>> We do not enable Shia-backed militia at all.

The hell of Iraq has been sectarian violence.

>> SMITH: It's what gave rise to ISIS in the first place.

>> Yes, so our approach has been to back Abadi's government, realizing that that's decentralized, but in order to have a defeat that sticks, we can't fuel sectarianism.

>> SMITH: At the White House, they were also worried about sectarianism.

>> It was a huge concern for the United states.

It could unleash a sectarian violence even beyond what we were seeing at that time.

>> Tikrit really is a show that is run by the Iranian-backed militias.

>> Many Sunnis in Tikrit, and in Saladin Province more broadly, see the Shia militias as being the stormtroopers of the Shia government-- come to oppress them, come to slaughter them.

(rapid gunfire) >> Iraqi prime minister Abadi did not ask the Americans for help.

>> SMITH: I also spoke with Prime Minister Abadi about Iran's involvement.

>> Well, Iran is a major partner as well.

I think if you look carefully, we are getting help in terms of advice and support from Iran and from international coalition, and it's good for us.

If they compete to help Iraqi security forces, that's good for us.

>> They're facing a lot of resistance.

They've been at this for almost ten days now.

>> SMITH: Then, a little over a week in, the militia offensive stalled.

>> Islamic State fighters who have laid explosives along the roads.

>> They realized after a few days that they had made very little progress, like inches a day at most.

>> The battle to reclaim it has not been an easy one.

ISIL had posted snipers and rigged the city with explosives to hold its positions.

>> ISIS turns out to be a lot tougher than they expected, and it's obviously a different battlefield than what they had been expecting.

>> Shiite paramilitary fighters insisted that they did not need U.S. military help to retake the city.

>> And then Prime Minister Abadi came to us and said he really wanted some help to take Tikrit.

>> SMITH: The U.S. said they would help, but only if the militia pulled out.

>> We will support and provide air support for forces that are operating directly under Iraqi command and control.

We will not provide air support outside that structure.

>> So the prime minister steps in and asserts that this is going to be an Iraqi government-led operation from now on.

>> SMITH: Reluctantly, the militias stood aside.

>> Prime Minister Abadi brought in all of his security commanders and said, "This is how it's going to be, and we hope the Iraqis take Tikrit."

>> The final push is happening without Iran-backed Shiite militias.

>> U.S.-led airstrikes were requested by Iraq's government.

>> SMITH: Once American planes started bombing ISIS positions, the battle turned.

>> Iraqi forces seized control of the governor's headquarters and the main hospital here in the Sunni city of Tikrit after fighting Islamic State militants for nearly a month.

>> Progress has been slow, but when the Iraqi forces retook the city of Tikrit, residents celebrated their arrival.

>> Psychologically and politically, it's huge.

It demonstrates that Haider al-Abadi is the man who can get this stuff done.

But it's Iraq-- nothing goes exactly according to plan.

And of course while the U.S. does a very effective job of helping the Iraqi army to retake Tikrit, there's no real well- worked-out plan about what's going to happen after the fall of the city.

>> SMITH: I traveled into Saladin Province a year later with the Badr Militia, one of several Shia militia groups.

I came to see what had happened after the battle.

>> ISIS was here and the Badr Brigade pushed them out.

>> SMITH: When?

>> SMITH: The area is now under joint control of Shia militias and the Iraqi army.

You can still see ISIS graffiti, a painted-over ISIS flag.

In this traffic circle, residents have erected a monument memorializing the day that ISIS executed 11 town officials.

ISIS was still in the area.

I was taken out to this oilfield.

Oil wells were still burning, set on fire by retreating ISIS fighters.

And I snapped a picture of the ISIS flag flying in the distance.

I wanted to know about reports of sectarian violence by Shia militia forces after ISIS was pushed out of the area.

Videos like this had surfaced on the internet-- Sunni residents dragged out of their homes and shot, accused of being ISIS collaborators.

>> SMITH: Their houses blown up.

(explosion) In Tikrit, I visited this Sunni neighborhood.

House after house demolished.

Human Rights Watch has reported that scores of Sunni homes were leveled by Shia militia.

I went back to Baghdad to speak to officials about what I'd seen.

The capital of Iraq supposedly represents all Iraqis, but militia propaganda is overwhelming here.

Are these martyrs?

>> Yeah.

>> SMITH: Their heroes celebrated on posters and billboards.

There are no posters of Sunni leaders.

Prime Minister Abadi has publicly asked the militias to take down the signs, but to no avail.

I asked him, who is really running Iraq?

The question people have is whether or not you really have the control over these militia forces.

They're staffed by Shia, they're powerful and more capable than your Iraqi security forces at this point.

>> Well, this is an official Iraqi organization, but yes, I agree there are excesses.

Some of it we are addressing.

We have to find the culprits and make them accountable.

My government has zero tolerance towards any excesses in the war.

>> SMITH: The reliance, however, on Shiite militias, how can that make anything better?

>> It depends how you look at them.

I think you're calling them Shiite militia; I'm calling them civilians who are fighting alongside Iraqi security forces to defend their country.

>> SMITH: Next, I went to see Hadi al Amiri, the head of the Badr Militia, which had participated in many battles in and around Tikrit.

His militia today has a heavy presence there.

>> SMITH: After Tikrit, there were indeed some allegations of abuse...

I met him at his Baghdad headquarters and asked him about the Shia abuses in Saladin Province.

>> SMITH: I sat down with Hadi al-Amiri, the head of the Badr Militia, and when I raised the question of the abuses that had taken place, he simply said, "Stuff happens.

This is war, there's abuse."

>> Well, that sounds like the kind of thing he would say, but that just proves my point, which is that the militias, the Shia militias are not under the control of anybody.

Still less are they serving in the interests of the government of Iraq.

They're sectarian militias that are out of control.

And if his remarks to you were admitting that, that's pretty much the way we see it too.

>> SMITH: Though Tikrit had been taken back, the next month, ISIS took Ramadi, a larger Iraqi town west of Baghdad.

In Syria, they were advancing even more, seizing the Arak gas field and the ancient city of Palmyra in central Syria.

Meanwhile, the administration's strategy to train and equip a large force to fight ISIS in Syria was still in its infancy.

>> Today, the Pentagon said it will deploy more than 400 U.S. troops to train and equip moderate rebels in Syria to target ISIS.

>> SMITH: There was a lot of skepticism about the plan, but the Pentagon was at least encouraged that its regional allies were cooperating.

>> The troops will work out of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Qatar... >> Initially as this effort was getting underway, we were able to get partners on board, we were able to work with the Turks and the Saudis and the Jordanians to provide us facilities and space in which to do the training.

>> The troops will train, equip, and arm as many as 5,400 fighters... >> SMITH: When I interviewed General John Allen back in early 2015, he was surprisingly optimistic.

>> We actually are in the process of recruiting now.

We're finding a lot of enthusiasm, actually, amongst the Syrians.

>> SMITH: Initially you had trouble finding the men that would join.

>> Not really.

We had questions about how the recruiting pool would look and ultimately the enthusiasm to do that.

And once the process started, we actually found that the numbers are trending substantially higher actually than we thought.

>> SMITH: They were finding candidates, but it was the vetting process that would cause problems and long delays.

>> Vetting was critical.

There were extremist groups that we in no way wanted to support and wanted to make sure that weapons were not going through.

So we would vet them before we started training, and then also before they would actually enter the training program, we would have a vetting program for them as they were largely brought out.

>> But we know this program's essential.

We need a partner on the ground in Syria... >> SMITH: In July 2015, Secretary Carter reported to Congress about the challenges they faced.

>> We are currently training about 60 fighters.

This number is much smaller than we'd hoped for at this point, and I can look out at your faces and you had the same reaction I do, which is that that's an awfully small number.

Why is that number so small?

The reason for that has to do with the criteria we apply to these recruits.

We do counter-intelligence screening... >> SMITH: One criterion in particular was problematic.

Doubts were raised about it months earlier.

Still, the administration had insisted that recruits be asked to sign a contract pledging to fight only ISIS, not Assad.

>> They show up at the crossing, they're literally made to sign a form that says that they are only going to fight ISIS.

And you can imagine a lot of these guys turned around and walked away at that point.

>> (translated): The second rule in the training project is that we fight whoever fights us.

The Assad regime is fighting us.

Are we going to sit still and not fight Assad?

We want the Assad regime to be stopped.

>> So far, fewer than 100 volunteers have turned up.

>> SMITH: Syrian opposition forces complained several times to General Allen.

>> We had a lot of meetings with General John Allen, and we showed our readiness to fight.

But we were clear: when we fight ISIL, we cannot just watch Assad forces coming from our backs and attacking us.

>> SMITH: There was dissension inside the Pentagon as well.

>> I was of the view that if we were gonna train these individuals and they were being attacked by Assad, we should train and arm them and allow them to attack Assad.

That was not what happened.

>> SMITH: Where was the White House?

>> So the White House at the time wanted us to focus on ISIS first, you know, that ISIS was the immediate threat to the United States, that's what we need to confront right now, and we did not want to be in a place where we were diverting from that immediate goal.

>> SMITH: According to rebel sources, the first 54 trainees were sent into Syria in mid-summer 2015.

13 never crossed the border.

Around 15 entered Syria but immediately joined a force fighting Assad.

For most of the remaining men, the news was worse.

>> They came in with poor intelligence, with a poor sense of the terrain, without really having a clear strategy for how they were going to move in that area, who their friends and enemies were, and they got crushed.

They were attacked by Jabhat al-Nusra.

The U.S. sent drones in to try to save them.

>> At this point, what I can tell you is...

I got a piece of paper on this right before I walked out here, actually.

We have seen press reports that some leaders have been detained.

>> Some of the guys I think were killed, others were kidnapped or captured.

There has been speculation at the Pentagon some of them may have defected over to Jabhat al-Nusra.

>> SMITH: It turns out they hardly had a chance.

Once inserted, they were basically deserted.

>> We were providing training, but we were not providing the kind of support that we would provide to our own units, should they be there.

If our own units were there, we would provide them with intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance.

We would provide them with MEDEVAC to get them out of harm's way, should they be injured.

We would provide them with lift support to get them where they need to go.

And we would have our special operators on the ground working with them.

>> SMITH: So you recommended these things?

>> These things were all very well known to anybody who had been working in the counter-terrorism arena for a long period of time.

>> SMITH: It's hard to imagine anybody with military experience seeing this force as anything other than a disaster-in-waiting.

>> Well, it was a disaster at the end of the day, certainly.

>> General Austin, when Senator Carter was here before this committee in July, he testified that there were only about 60 Syrian fighters that had been trained in our Train and Equip program and reinserted.

We've heard reports about the attacks on those individuals when they were reinserted back into Syria.

Can you tell us what the total number of trained fighters remains?

>> It's a small number, and the ones that are in the fight is... we're talking four or five.

>> The Pentagon was forced to concede that a key part of the president's Syria policy is a dismal failure.

>> The U.S. military will announce today that it is ending its Train and Equip program.

>> SMITH: The program was quickly shut down.

President Obama immediately distanced himself from it.

>> I'm the first one to acknowledge it has not worked the way it was supposed to, and I think the Department of Defense would say the same thing.

I've been skeptical from the get-go about the notion that we were going to effectively create this proxy army inside of Syria.

>> President Obama, he never believed in it.

He only did it because basically he had been browbeat into trying it, and then when it became a self-fulfilling prophecy that it didn't work, he said, "I was right all along."

>> He's essentially wiping his hands of this program.

>> SMITH: That's an odd thing for a president to say.

>> It's unusual.

>> SMITH: He's the guy in charge.

>> He's the guy in charge.

And it's pretty unusual to say, "I never believed that this program I started would actually work."

>> SMITH: And that I asked Congress for $500 million to fund.

>> $500 million to fund it, and then once it did fail, became a political talking point to say, "See?

My critics were wrong all along."

>> SMITH: America's war against ISIS was about to get much more complicated.

In the summer of 2015, I was in Syria.

How do you do?

Over and over again, the Syrians I spoke to were worried about gains being made by ISIS.

(horn honking) >> SMITH: I traveled the length of the country.

I was reporting from areas still controlled by the Assad regime.

I witnessed the destruction and the cost of Assad's war, paid in lives of young Syrian men and women.

What has the toll of the war been on this town?

>> SMITH: This militia commander was worried.

Just over these mountains was some of the fiercest fighting in all of Syria.

And how close is the front to here?

>> SMITH: It was a critical time.

In a rare televised speech, President Assad acknowledged that his army was on the retreat.

>> SMITH: He said there was a shortage of soldiers.

For those still fighting, morale was low.

>> There were reports of Syrian army units that were falling apart, they weren't fighting well.

You could just see the pressure that was growing on the capital.

>> SMITH: Rebel groups surrounded Damascus, lobbing mortars into downtown neighborhoods.

(sirens wailing) But everything was about to change.

At CIA headquarters, analysts were seeing new satellite images that showed a large number of Russian bombers on an airstrip in northern Syria.

>> Over the summer, Russia begins moving equipment, military equipment and forces into Syria, and we're watching this happening and we're wondering, "What's that about?"

>> SMITH: In September, in a speech before the U.N. General Assembly in New York, President Putin raised hopes when he hinted that Russia might join the fight against ISIS.

>> (translated): We propose discussing whether it is possible to agree on a resolution aimed at coordinating the actions of all the forces... >> SMITH: President Obama asked for a meeting.

>> And they talk about Syria, and the president says, "Look, I don't know what you're "thinking about doing there, but we need to be coordinated, whatever might happen there."

And Putin seems to suggest some constructive language.

>> SMITH: It seemed they may have struck an agreement.

>> Are you going to work together?

>> Have you made progress on Syria?

Did you make a deal?

How about a timeline, Mr. President?

>> And then a couple days later, suddenly, boom!

The Russians are bombing.

>> Russian airstrikes have killed hundreds of civilians and caused massive destruction to residential areas.

>> But the Russians were not bombing ISIS.

>> Exactly who is Russia targeting?

>> What they said they were gonna do was come in and fight ISIL, and use their influence to move Assad aside and thereby end the civil war in Syria, which has been one of the causes of the whole fertile ground for ISIL.

They didn't do either of those things.

>> SMITH: So they lied to you.

>> Well, they certainly had a very different interpretation of combatting ISIL.

>> Allahu akbar!

>> Activists say the strikes have intensified since Russia began its air campaign to bolster the Assad regime.

>> The Russians have instead joined Assad against the opposition, thereby pouring gasoline on the civil war.

>> (crying) >> This is a whole new dynamic in this awful four-year-old war at this point.

Now another superpower has entered the fray with enormous military might, fighting in effect on the other side even though it says it shares the same goals that we have of fighting terrorism.

And it's a huge complication for President Obama, who now has to figure out what to do.

>> SMITH: With Assad now backed by Russian airpower, the war was prolonged.

Defeating ISIS delayed.

>> There's no question that having the war rage, with all of its consequences, makes defeating ISIL harder.

It's also, I think, widely understood that it's hard to see how the war winds down and ends while Assad is still in office.

>> The simple fact is that Vladimir Putin is rubbing it in our face.

We're doing nothing about it.

>> SMITH: There was pressure on the president to somehow confront both Assad and Russia.

>> Clearly our strategy is not working.

>> SMITH: A confrontation he did not want.

>> But we're not going to make Syria into a proxy war between the United States and Russia.

That would be bad strategy on our part.

Our battle is with ISIL.

>> SMITH: The president resisted.

>> The decision to engage in a military conflict with a government like Assad's that has Russian and Iranian support, or to give significant military support to groups who include al-Qaeda backed extremists, to go down that pathway is a very momentous decision.

>> (man speaking over radio) >> SMITH: The death toll in Syria steadily rose throughout the fall of 2015.

An already dire refugee crisis now would only grow worse.

People fleeing the country exceeded four million.

Refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey were overcrowded.

The war was quickly moving beyond anyone's control.

>> One after the other, they keep coming, and the scale of this crisis is outstanding.

>> An estimated nine million Syrians have fled the country.

>> This crisis doesn't seem anywhere near over.

>> It is clear that by 2015, the strategic consequences of the war in Syria are becoming almost unsustainable.

You have hundreds of thousands of refugees, then it spills over to Europe, where it risks undermining the basic stability of the European Union.

>> More nations are tightening their borders as a historic number of refugees flood into Europe.

>> One million refugees into Germany alone.

>> Hungary says it's simply overwhelmed by the endless flow of refugees and migrants.

>> So you put all of this together and the consequences of Syria are enormous.

It looks worse than the threat of ISIS.

>> The issue of free movement in Europe is playing out right in front of people.

>> The biggest mass migration of people since the Second World War.

>> This is the ideal situation for ISIS to penetrate Europe.

>> No one can look at the devastating consequences of this conflict over five years and not ask the question, "What could we have done differently to prevent this horrific situation?"

And I think we've all rerun it in our minds, you know?

"Could we have done this?

"Could we have done that?

Should we do something now?"

>> We've got to bring some sort of order to Syria so that these people don't continue to flow outward.

>> The events in Syria have been horrendous.

The impulse to do something about it has been profound and understandable.

But the president has held firm that that in and of itself is not an argument to leap into military action if you can't tell him a story about how this ends.

(men shouting) >> Officials today said top ISIS commanders in Syria planned and directed the sophisticated Paris attack.

>> SMITH: Then, in November, came the ISIS attack in Paris, killing 130 people.

>> Inside that concert hall, survivors describe a horrible scene.

>> ISIS has spread far beyond its strongholds in Syria and Iraq.

>> The worst attack in France since World War II.

>> ISIS saying, "What's coming next will be far worse and more bitter."

>> The bloodbath in Paris has turned the focus of this G20 summit from the economy to ISIS.

>> Our goal, as I've said many times, is to degrade and ultimately destroy this barbaric terrorist organization.

The terrible events in Paris were obviously a terrible and sickening setback.

Even as we grieve with our French friends, however, we can't lose sight that there has been progress made.

>> We have several down in a conference room, several down.

We have at least 20 victims.

>> We have breaking news coming to us out of San Bernardino, where we have the sheriff's office confirming that they have an active shooter.

>> SMITH: Two-and-a-half weeks, San Bernardino, an ISIS-inspired attack.

Another 14 dead.

>> Now in the wake of the deadly Paris and San Bernardino terrorist attacks, it's clear that America is on edge.

There are investigations into ISIS now in all 50 states.

>> SMITH: Both Paris and San Bernardino were wake-up calls for officials.

When and where would ISIS or its sympathizers strike again?

Was the administration running out of time to stop them?

>> Americans view terrorism as the biggest threat facing the country... >> Many of us who are part of this debate are asking, "Do we have enough time?"

In other words, one of the risks we run trying to patiently implement a strategy is that we don't have the time we think we had.

>> SMITH: The worry is that we'll wake up tomorrow and the Golden Gate Bridge will be... >> Absolutely.

>> SMITH: Or Grand Central Station will be bombed.

>> Exactly-- all of that.

That's something you live with every day.

I would say the primary kind of emotion when you're in government is worry.

>> SMITH: From this point on, America's war against ISIS took on a new urgency.

>> Good morning, everybody.

>> SMITH: The President went to the Pentagon and held an unusual press briefing.

He implored America's Middle Eastern allies to do more.

>> Just as the United States is doing more in this fight, just as our allies France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, Australia and Italy are doing more, so must others.

And that's why I've asked Secretary Carter to go to the Middle East-- he'll depart right after this press briefing-- to work with our coalition partners on securing more military contributions to this fight.

>> SMITH: But Obama would immediately get pushback from his leading Arab ally... >> SMITH: Just hours after President Obama spoke at the Pentagon, the 30-year-old Saudi minister of defense held a midnight press conference.

He declared that Saudi Arabia was going its own way.

>> SMITH: The Saudis were focused not on ISIS, but on Obama's newly completed nuclear deal with their arch rival, Iran.

They feared the pending release of $150 billion in frozen Iranian assets would help fuel Iran's interventions in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

>> The nuclear agreement gave Iran a free hand to continue with its bad behavior in the region unchecked and balanced by the Americans and the Western world.

>> This Iran nuke deal has so roiled the Middle East.

>> They see the rise of Iran, Iran's more powerful than they've ever been since the 1979 revolution... >> Saudis in essence are telling the president, "We've had enough.

"We don't believe in your coalition.

"We're going to have our own coalition in the Middle East.

"We are going to be the leaders of the Sunni world.

"We are going to bring everyone together and fight terrorism the way that we think it should be done."

>> Yesterday, the Saudis executed 47 people, including a prominent Shiite cleric.

>> SMITH: Shortly after announcing their coalition, Saudi Arabia executed an Iranian educated Shia cleric, Nimr al-Nimr.

The Saudis were sending a shot across Iran's bow.

>> The U.S. says it's worried the execution of Nimr al-Nimr will exacerbate tensions, but Saudi Arabia is unrepentant.

>> SMITH: You knew that you'd get a pretty bad reaction from the rest of the world and from Iran.

That must've been in your calculation that you were sending some kind of strong message abroad.

>> I hope that that was the case.

And nobody has a right to either prevent us or condemn us or criticize us for that.

(men shouting) >> Saudi Arabia's brutal crackdown has angered Muslims in many countries.

>> SMITH: Shia communities across the region rose up.

>> Shiite protesters took to the streets from Bahrain to Pakistan in response to the execution of Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr.

>> SMITH: A Saudi consulate in Iran was torched.

Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain all immediately severed diplomatic relations with Tehran.

The Saudis risked igniting a new war in the region.

>> The Saudis knew there would be some kind of reaction.

I don't think it was a miscalculation.

My analysis is that it was a very well-thought-through move, that this was a time to tell the Americans that the Saudis were no longer willing to tiptoe around Iran.

>> Did Saudi Arabia give the White House a heads-up before cutting off ties with Iran?

>> Well, I'm not going to get into the details of all of the diplomatic conversations between the United States and Saudi officials.

>> SMITH: The White House has repeatedly urged the Saudis to resolve their differences with Iran.

>> The United States regularly has raised concerns about the human rights situation inside of Saudi Arabia.

>> The president and the people around him have said a number of things that have really ticked the Saudis off.

You tell them that they need to just learn to live with the Iranians, this is gonna drive 'em through the roof.

>> (man talking over speakers) >> SMITH: In February 2016, just weeks after the execution of Nimr al-Nimr, the Saudis launched a huge military exercise called Northern Thunder.

20 Sunni nations participated.

A massive arsenal of weapons was put on display, many of them U.S.-made.

The Obama administration has approved some of the largest arms sales to Saudi Arabia in history.

>> So the Saudis basically say, "Thank you very much for providing the weapons, "then we're gonna take care of our own objectives.

"We're gonna decide, you know, what price oil works for us.

"We're gonna decide which theater of war we need to focus on first."

"We're gonna decide level of threat "we want to feel from somebody else.

You know, we're gonna be on our own."

>> SMITH: The Saudis did not entirely abandon the U.S.-led fight against ISIS, but they did not noticeably increase their efforts, as Obama had asked them to do.

After that speech in December of last year, was there any real effect?

>> No, because you know, exhorting these governments in public that you need to do more, we're past that point with them.

They don't feel why they should do it.

>> They think that this White House is naive.

They have their own priorities, they have newfound capabilities, and they can project force.

They are pursuing their own policies based on their own priorities and their own interests.

>> SMITH: So this whole idea of a coalition acting together and with common purpose is a myth.

>> Well, look, coalitions... Iraq War, Libya, ouster of Saddam... America did it all by itself.

>> SMITH: But this is a case it seems where having regional buy-in was perhaps more important than in other coalitions we've seen over the last few years.

>> Right, but you're not gonna get the buy-in of the region where you have a very narrow tactical objective and where you don't have any solution for the day after you destroy ISIS.

>> SMITH: Increasingly, the U.S. has shouldered more and more of the fight... >> Over the past two months, I've authorized a series of steps to ratchet up our fight against ISIL.

...additional advisors to work more closely with Iraqi security forces... >> SMITH: Over the last several months, President Obama has agreed to send hundreds more soldiers to help the Iraqi Army.

>> Dangerous work for U.S. special operations forces, really going behind enemy lines.

>> SMITH: He has also increased the number of special forces in Syria from 50 to 300.

As a result, ISIS has been chased from several cities in northern Syria and from Ramadi and Fallujah in Iraq.

>> The Iraqi army said it was finally in full control of the last neighborhood in Fallujah held by ISIS.

>> SMITH: But administration officials say that while the U.S. has stepped it up, there is still a long way to go.

>> Look, if you go back to where we were when the day that Mosul fell, and you look at to where we are now-- this organization can no longer communicate from its commanders to its people in the field.

It can no longer project power outside of its strongholds.

It has not taken any territory in Iraq and Syria.

So it's a substantially degraded organization.

But I would be the last one to say that we've turned a corner.

This remains a lethal terrorist organization.

It'll seek to attack us here.

It'll seek to attack us in Euro.

And it is seeking to spread.

>> Allahu Akbar!

>> SMITH: The question is, what happens next?

>> In Yemen's capital, devastating airstrikes from Saudi Arabia.

>> SMITH: Saudi Arabia is still distracted by Yemen and their rivalry with Iran.

>> The cold war between Iran and Saudi Arabia is heating up.

>> SMITH: The Saudis say that along with the UAE and Jordan they are back in the fight.

But the Pentagon will not confirm what they are contributing.

Turkey, too, says it is on board and has sent troops into Syria.

>> Turkey moving into Northern Syria after many years of staying out.

>> SMITH: But at the same time, they have been shelling U.S.-backed Kurds.

>> Escalating tensions are straining long-time alliances and complicating an already difficult process aimed at ending Syria's war.

>> The battle for Aleppo is heating up in Syria with the ceasefire in shambles.

The last few hours have seen some of the most destructive bombing in the last five years.

Residents are trapped inside... >> SMITH: In Syria, Russia and Iran continue to back Assad.

All attempts to broker a ceasefire have failed.

And in Iraq, the country is still deeply divided between Sunnis and Shia and Kurds.

On the last leg of my journey, I went into central Iraq with the Badr militia again, in a caravan of brand new SUVs.

This area 100 miles north of Baghdad is home to the Khazrajs, a predominantly Shia tribe.

>> So where are we?

What is this?

Why this protection?

>> SMITH: In 2014, when ISIS moved into Khazraj's lands, they rounded up and killed 3,000 of its members-- close to ten percent of the tribe's population.

(car honking) >> SMITH: Badr chief, Hadi al Amiri, was going to a meeting with Khazraj's sheiks.

Amiri, whose militia has been accused of sectarian violence in the past, said he was here to encourage the tribe to welcome back local Sunni residents... >> SMITH: But the sheikhs were not buying Amiri's pitch.

Many of them insisted their Sunni neighbors had either been ISIS supporters or collaborators.

>> SMITH: In recent battles to retake other areas from ISIS, such as Fallujah, there were again reports of sectarian violence.

It's a reality that will likely plague Iraq-- and the region-- for many years to come.

>> Charlie Hebdo.

Paris.

Brussels.

>> These individuals were on the radar.

>> Frontline and ProPublica reporter Sebastian Rotella investigate the failures.

>> ROTELLA: How can known terrorists travel through Europe so easily?

>> And why Europe remains so vulnerable.

>> There's every reason to expect that we'll see ISIS lash out while it's under pressure to maintain its relevance.

>> "Terror in Europe."

>> Go to pbs.org/frontline for more on what nations in the Middle East are doing to combat ISIS, and how that's impacting the terror group.

Read extended interviews with Chuck Hagel... >> I didn't think I overstated it; I think I said it exactly right.

..Ashton Carter and others.

>> We can't fuel sectarianism.

>> Connect to the Frontline community on Facebook and Twitter.

Then sign up for our newsletter at pbs.org/frontline.

>> For more on this and other Frontline programs, visit our website at pbs.org/frontline.

>> Frontline's "Confronting ISIS" is available on DVD.

To order, visit shopPBS.org.

Or call 1-800-PLAY-PBS.

Frontline is also available for download on iTunes.