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Once we entered into his world, he was scribbling particulars relayed by an armed underling right into a pocket book. Clad in camouflage fatigues, the commander was barefoot regardless of the rain, working at a low desk and sitting on his kot, the standard daybed.
“Who have you learnt in Kabul?” he requested. “Zabihullah Mujahid,” we replied, naming the Taliban spokesman. A younger, gun-toting Taliban member quipped, “That is the best reply.”
And so started our surreal, and at some moments fear-inducing odyssey from Pakistan’s Khyber Go to Kabul.
Again within the Nineties, once I coated the Taliban’s struggle to take the entire nation, I marveled on the quantity of former Soviet army {hardware} deserted throughout their 1989 retreat. It was the oddest déjà vu to see the Taliban’s white flags now flutter from sagging sandbags and tired-looking Hesco boundaries that not so way back rimmed the perimeter of America’s Afghan empire.
We handed crumbling outposts, the sprawling Jalalabad airstrip, and several other former US bases. I would flown Black Hawk helicopter missions out and in of a few of these bases on embeds with US forces, even seen a US Afghan drone take off in Jalalabad. Now surveying the deserted huts and communications towers, it was as if I would stepped again in time earlier than the al Qaeda assaults on September 11, 2001, that prompted America’s decades-long struggle right here.
The battle with the People remains to be recent in lots of Taliban members’ minds, but even in victory some like Commander Supranullah and his males appeared able to reengage, albeit with an underlying mistrust.
The highway to Kabul
You possibly can really feel the billions of American {dollars} spent right here within the roads themselves. In comparison with earlier than US forces first arrived in late 2001, the 230-kilometer (140-mile) journey from the border to Kabul ought to have been a breeze — clean tarmac all the way in which. With out hurdles, the drive may have taken 5 hours.
These roads had been busy as we made our method to Kabul, big vans struggling up the vertiginous mountain passes, younger males on the wheels dangerously weaving out and in of the crowded lanes, mini vans and taxis jammed with younger households on board, cautiously taking their time. None of them was dashing for the border.
In comparison with yesteryear, this can be a nation nonetheless bustling with chaotic allure regardless of the financial uncertainty it faces. We drove by way of bazaars listening to sellers making an attempt to out shout each other, hawking freshly grilled corn, fried fish, sweets, grapes, pomegranates, and scrumptious lengthy flatbreads scorching from open-topped ovens.
What was absent amid the hubbub was girls. The Taliban have warned them to remain indoors, and plenty of seem to have heeded them. Solely in actually rural locations had been girls seen — and even then only some and clustered collectively.
One group of half a dozen girls in brightly coloured shawls balanced bundles of yellowing corn stalks on their heads as they strode alongside the highway. One other tiny cluster of ladies had been shrouded in abayas, black robes obscuring their our bodies, solely venturing out with one another for defense.
With out having an opportunity to cease and discuss with them, in our effort to get to Kabul earlier than dusk, it’s laborious to understand how they really feel about Taliban rule. How a lot the regime change is altering life in distant, culturally conservative communities is equally imponderable. However what is definite is that the positive factors in rights and liberties that got here from the Western-backed authorities are gone for now.
The Taliban’s grip on safety is tight. Driving by way of one busy market in a small city, we had been forcibly stopped by an armed man who stepped out from the gang. He demanded to know who had been, what we had been doing and the place we had been going. We defined, as we had achieved with Commander Supranullah, that we had Taliban permission to journey, and confirmed him the paperwork we would be given.
It wasn’t sufficient. Inside minutes, we had been being whisked away, he stated for additional questioning. As they had been driving us out of city at pace it appeared much less clear who they had been and the place we had been being taken. The difficulty was resolved pretty shortly by calls to Taliban HQ in Kabul. However what is evident is that weeks after the militants taking energy, the safety scenario beneath the Taliban remains to be very fluid.
Our jiffy of questioning what would occur subsequent had been negligible subsequent to the worry many Afghans stay with each day. Simply because we could not see it on our drive, it doesn’t suggest it isn’t occurring.
CNN’s Ingrid Formanek contributed to this report.
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