John Doyle: A terrifying look at the Islamic State in Afghanistan

The Afghan mission. We've been obliged to think about it recently, given the work this newspaper did on soldier suicides, Remembrance Day events and the extraordinary stories told in War Story: Afghanistan.

Afghanistan, that bewildering, unforgiving country, shifts from the news radar and then returns. Late last week, according to an Associated Press report, there were large protests in Kabul and other cities. The protesters demanded better security after the brutal killings of seven people from the minority Hazara ethnic group. The bodies of the four men, two women and a nine-year-old girl had been found beheaded in Zabul province where, apparently, rival Taliban factions have been battling each other for control.

Yes, the Taliban, our enemy. The Taliban that now controls large areas of Afghanistan. The murder of members of the Hazara group was particularly gruesome. Was it the Taliban? Perhaps. But perhaps it was the Islamic State. Yes, they are there, too.

Frontline: ISIS in Afghanistan (PBS, 10 p.m. ET) is a sobering and soul-scalding look at ISIS – to use the U.S. term for the group – and how it is operating in areas of Afghanistan it controls. It's mainly a report by Afghan filmmaker and journalist Najibullah Quraishi, who made the remarkable documentaries The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan and Opium Brides.

He went on what he acknowledges was a fraught and dangerous expedition into IS-held territory in Afghanistan and the resulting footage is both unique and terrifying.

First he talks to a former Taliban leader who defected to IS. The reason? Not ideology, but money. IS pays better. We are informed that many Taliban fighters are defecting because IS pays about $700 a month, a goodly sum in Afghanistan. "Once they join IS, they can get a normal salary and feed their families," Quraishi says.

There are about 1,000 such men in Afghanistan, but the number is growing and, we're told, the group controls a considerable area near Kabul. Not that they talk about the money they get. One man explains the superiority of IS by saying, "The Taliban are puppets of Pakistan while ISIS takes orders only from God."

Those orders, it seems, involve a brutal campaign against those Taliban who oppose them. The most horrifying segment of the program involves a video – which is not clearly seen, thank heavens – showing how IS deals with captured Taliban fighters. They take them to a field and make them kneel on land mines.

We also see an Islamic State school in which small children are taught only about jihad and about the use of weapons such as machine guns and hand grenades. The same children are also subjected to relentless propaganda videos from IS in Syria, showing all manner of killing, including beheadings. "We must impose God's will all over the world," the teacher tells those small children.

Meanwhile, Quraishi asks a Taliban leader what he thinks about the arrival of IS. "We do not agree with those who want ISIS here in Afghanistan," he says. "Under the Taliban we are already Islamic. We pray the faithful won't take part in this fight with ISIS, because it is divisive."

Later, Quraishi says, off camera, some of the Taliban leader's men told him they are thinking about defecting to IS because of the money.

Some 17,000 families have fled the area taken over by IS. Locals who have lived under the Taliban are traumatized by Islamic State rule. One local man says, "Our lives are wrecked by these fighters. They punish all the time. Then your children will be made to watch as you are beheaded."

It is a bizarre and deeply troubling situation to observe from here, this new circumstance in Afghanistan. Canada's mission was to help wrest control of the country from the Taliban. Now another group is trying to wipe out the Taliban. A young boy, ready to be a suicide bomber for IS, describes the Taliban enemy who must be killed as "heretics and slaves of infidels."

Brace yourselves, if you choose to watch this excellent and disturbing primer on the state of things in Afghanistan, where so many Canadians fought and died.

Also airing tonight

Chicago Med (NBC, 9 p.m. ET) joins Chicago Fire and Chicago PD as, you know, a running chronicle of life in Chicago. This time, inevitably, it's about the ER department at a Chicago hospital. The gist of the pilot episode is this: "An elevated train crash interrupts the grand opening of the emergency department when an influx of crash victims arrive at Chicago Med." These shows are, one gathers, very popular in Chicago.