When we entered into his environment, he was scribbling information relayed by an armed underling into a notebook. Clad in camouflage fatigues, the commander was barefoot despite the rain, working at a lower table and sitting on his kot, the regular daybed.
“Who do you know in Kabul?” he asked. “Zabihullah Mujahid,” we replied, naming the Taliban spokesman. A younger, gun-toting Taliban member quipped, “Which is the correct respond to.”
And so commenced our surreal, and at some times panic-inducing odyssey from Pakistan’s Khyber Pass to Kabul.
Again in the 1990s, when I lined the Taliban’s war to get the total state, I marveled at the total of previous Soviet military components abandoned for the duration of their 1989 retreat. It was the oddest déjà vu to see the Taliban’s white flags now flutter from sagging sandbags and worn out-searching Hesco barriers that not so lengthy in the past rimmed the perimeter of America’s Afghan empire.
We passed crumbling outposts, the sprawling Jalalabad airstrip, and various previous US bases. I’d flown Black Hawk helicopter missions in and out of some of these bases on embeds with US forces, even witnessed a US Afghan drone consider off in Jalalabad. Now surveying the deserted huts and communications towers, it was as if I’d stepped back in time prior to the al Qaeda attacks on September 11, 2001, that prompted America’s decades-lengthy war right here.
The fight with the Us citizens is nonetheless new in quite a few Taliban members’ minds, however even in victory some like Commander Supranullah and his guys appeared ready to reengage, albeit with an underlying distrust.
The street to Kabul
You can come to feel the billions of American dollars invested listed here in the streets by themselves. When compared to just before US forces first arrived in late 2001, the 230-kilometer (140-mile) journey from the border to Kabul must have been a breeze — sleek tarmac all the way. With no hurdles, the push could have taken five hours.
These streets were being busy as we designed our way to Kabul, huge vans battling up the vertiginous mountain passes, young adult males at the wheels dangerously weaving in and out of the crowded lanes, mini vans and taxis jammed with young family members on board, cautiously using their time. None of them was rushing for the border.
In comparison to yesteryear, this is a region nonetheless bustling with chaotic attraction inspite of the economic uncertainty it faces. We drove through bazaars hearing sellers hoping to out shout a single one more, hawking freshly grilled corn, fried fish, sweets, grapes, pomegranates, and mouth watering prolonged flatbreads hot from open-topped ovens.
What was absent amid the hubbub was women. The Taliban have warned them to stay indoors, and a lot of surface to have heeded them. Only in definitely rural places were being ladies visible — and even then only a couple and clustered collectively.
A person group of fifty percent a dozen girls in brightly colored shawls balanced bundles of yellowing corn stalks on their heads as they strode along the road. Another very small cluster of girls were being shrouded in abayas, black gowns obscuring their bodies, only venturing out with each individual other for security.
With no owning a chance to stop and talk with them, in our hard work to get to Kabul before dusk, it is difficult to know how they really feel about Taliban rule. How much the regime adjust is changing lifestyle in remote, culturally conservative communities is equally imponderable. But what is specified is that the gains in rights and liberties that came from the Western-backed authorities are long gone for now.
The Taliban’s grip on protection is restricted. Driving through 1 hectic market in a tiny town, we were forcibly stopped by an armed guy who stepped out from the group. He demanded to know who had been, what we were executing and wherever we had been heading. We defined, as we had finished with Commander Supranullah, that we experienced Taliban authorization to travel, and confirmed him the files we might be presented.
It wasn’t plenty of. Within minutes, we ended up being whisked away, he claimed for more questioning. As they were being driving us out of town at velocity it seemed considerably less crystal clear who they were being and exactly where we have been becoming taken. The challenge was fixed rather promptly by phone calls to Taliban HQ in Kabul. But what is clear is that weeks immediately after the militants taking power, the safety scenario less than the Taliban is even now quite fluid.
Our couple minutes of wondering what would transpire upcoming were being negligible next to the fear lots of Afghans dwell with day by day. Just simply because we could not see it on our travel, it would not imply it is not happening.
CNN’s Ingrid Formanek contributed to this report.
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