The origins of the Taliban are in the jihad against the Soviets, who invaded Afghanistan in 1979. The United States, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan backed seven Sunni Islamist parties who fought the Soviets. Many of these mujahideen were extremists, but there was a preference for radical Muslim groups over nationalist groups. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar"s Hizb-e-Islami (Islamic Party) received the most backing. Jalaluddin Haqqani was another commander who received backing from the West. Both were now fighting the Americans and their allies in Afghanistan. The mujahideen were eventually successful, after the Soviets withdrew support for their quislings, and then the West forgot its proxies, who took to fighting among themselves and preying on the population. Into this postwar chaos stepped the Taliban.

The Taliban came from religious schools set up across the border in Pakistan. These schools provided a free religious education to millions of Afghan refugees and Pakistanis. Many of them helped to spread a radically strict form of Sunni Islam combined with Pashtunwali, the Pashtun tribal and social code of behavior. From a small core of devout religious students with rudimentary military skills, the Taliban grew into a vast state and military movement that controlled all but a fraction of Afghanistan. As the warlords were busy fighting one another and terrorizing Afghans, the Taliban seized their first town in 1993. Three years later they took Kabul. In 1998 the Taliban took the last major city in the north, Mazar-i-Sharif. The Pakistanis abandoned Hekmatyar in favor of the Taliban when they saw how successful the movement was. By 2001 less than 10 percent of Afghanistan remained in the hands of the Tajik Mujahideen, who continued a losing struggle against the Taliban until the Americans came to their rescue.

The Taliban have been portrayed as coming out of nowhere and rescuing a war-weary population that welcomed them because they were terrorized by warlords. In truth, most of the country was not in an anarchic state, although Kandahar and its environs were. In much of the country the Taliban had to fight its way into areas that were already at peace and where local services were better than anything the Taliban could provide. The Taliban even engaged in rape, murder, and ma.s.sacres to conquer some areas. Some of their violence was ethnically motivated. In some places they violated Islamic laws of war with a scorched-earth policy. They even had a s.e.x trade in Tajik girls. And while Kabul was not at peace, residents of the capital certainly did not welcome the arrival of the Taliban, who also bombarded the city. According to Afghan expert William Maley, "While the Taliban attempted to legitimate their power by reference to their provision of "security," with the pa.s.sage of time it became clear that . . . they had made a wilderness and called it peace."

The austere mix of strict Islam and Pashtunwali was harsh. But Western NGOs were able to work in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, though subject to draconian conditions, and the United States had a civil relationship with the group through diplomatic back channels until 1998. The Taliban had little interest in the West but instead cracked down on local practices they viewed as un-Islamic, including music and flying kites. The Pashtunwali code of hospitality forbade the Taliban leadership from handing over the Al Qaeda leadership, as the Americans demanded after September 11, and NATO, which was seeking a new reason for its existence after the demise of the Soviet Union, united to expel the Taliban from Afghanistan and install a friendlier government. The UN-brokered Bonn conference in December 2001 established an interim administration led by Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun with no power base of his own. Pashtuns are the largest of Afghanistan"s fifty-five ethnic groups, but the government was dominated by Tajiks, many of whom had battled the Taliban. In 2002 a loya jirga (grand a.s.sembly) was held, which established a transitional administration dominated by Tajiks. For the first four years, the NATO-led International Security a.s.sistance Force (ISAF) was restricted to Kabul, where it protected the Karzai government but ignored the fires spreading throughout Afghanistan. After September 11, the Pakistanis played a double game, joining the U.S. "war on terror" while continuing to back the Taliban. The Pakistani dictatorship backed Islamists to help it confront its more secular and popular democratic opposition. But these Islamists were allied with the Taliban. Just as American neglect of Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal led to the Taliban and secure bases for Al Qaeda, so too did American neglect of Afghanistan after it removed the Taliban and moved on to Iraq lead to a resurgence of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Following the defeat of the Taliban, the American strategy was centered on a "light footprint," relying on Special Forces to turn Afghanistan over to local leaders, with a weak central government in Kabul. Warlords were paid to run things and fight Al Qaeda. A continuous flow of U.S. funds was necessary to maintain the local militias and prop up anti-Taliban elders.

I had first come to Afghanistan in 2004, after my time in Falluja, seeking respite from the war. It was an idyllic time for me. Afghanistan was still the forgotten war; the mood in the country was optimistic. I drove up to Bamiyan in the north and went swimming in lake Bandi Amir. South of Kabul, I took road trips through villages in Logar and Paktiya all the way to the Pakistani border. I watched the first presidential elections in Gardez. But by 2008 the distance between Iraq and Afghanistan seemed to have closed. It was as if Afghanistan had become Iraq"s neighbor. The foreign military occupation was now killing and arresting innocent civilians, always denying initial reports that turned out to be accurate. The insurgency was increasingly sophisticated, learning from Iraq; its IEDs and suicide bombings were devastating.

The alleged success of the surge in Iraq seemed to confirm the notion that more American troops could solve other problems. For American politicians and the complacent news media, the U.S. was on the verge of victory in Iraq, even if it had taken five years, the destruction of the country, a civil war, hundreds of thousands of dead, millions displaced, communities divided by concrete walls, and the creation of new militias to reduce the violence from its highest points. As I showed in previous chapters, this is not the case, and the reduction of violence, falsely attributed to the increase in American troops, was leading many to draw the wrong lessons from Iraq and then apply them to Afghanistan.

Seven years after the Americans overthrew the Taliban, the movement was gaining confidence, able to control territory right up to Kabul"s backyard, while the American-backed government was weaker than ever. President Hamid Karzai was unable to extend his control beyond the capital. CNN was calling Afghanistan the "forgotten war," and it had indeed received less attention than Iraq from the international media and even from the Bush administration. The 2008 presidential campaign changed that.

For Republicans the military has traditionally been the chief tool of foreign policy, but Afghanistan became a much more central issue for Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama than it did for John McCain. Obama wanted to legitimize his call for a withdrawal from Iraq by increasing troops in Afghanistan. The Democratic narrative was that the United States should have stayed in Afghanistan and needed to swivel the cannons back to the original target. The Democrats worried about appearing weak. They wanted to prove that they too could be bellicose and tough, and kill foreigners. But calling the war in Iraq wrong didn"t necessarily mean that expanding the war in Afghanistan was right.

By September 2008 there were already about thirty-three thousand U.S. troops in Afghanistan and a total of sixty-five thousand troops in the international coalition. They were facing more resistance than ever, and by September 2008 the 2007 total of 111 dead troops had already been surpa.s.sed. Speaking at the National Defense University on September 9, President Bush announced a modest troop increase in Afghanistan, which he described as a "quiet surge" to help "stabilize Afghanistan"s young democracy." He would not allow the Taliban to return to Afghanistan, he said, unaware that they already had, and that only negotiation with the Taliban could bring any hope of stabilizing Afghanistan. "Iraq, Afghanistan, and parts of Pakistan pose the same challenge to our country, and they are all theaters in the same struggle," he said, proclaiming his "faith in the power of freedom." But the Taliban had their own faith, and so far they were winning.

There was a glitch in the matrix when, on September 10, 2008, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before the House Armed Services Committee. In his prepared testimony, which he submitted after it was approved by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and President Bush, Admiral Mullen stated, "I am convinced we can win the war in Afghanistan." His oral testimony was different. "I am not convinced we are winning it in Afghanistan," he said. In a war, if you are not winning, then you are usually losing.

BEFORE LEAVING KABUL I bought several pairs of kala, or salwar kameez, the traditional dress worn by Afghan men consisting of a long tunic-like shirt with b.u.t.tons on the top and baggy pants. I had grown my beard longer than ever, and endured suspicious looks in New York City subways as a result. In New York I had also taken intensive Pashtu-language cla.s.ses, to at least have some basic communication skills. Very few Western journalists knew Pashtu, but it is the language spoken by the ethnic group that dominates the Taliban, one of the biggest thorns in the side of the American military in Afghanistan. It is also the language of those people in Afghanistan and Pakistan who support or protect the Taliban, and what remains of the original senior Al Qaeda leadership. Regardless of who ended up winning the 2008 election, I knew America was certain to remain embroiled in conflicts with movements based in the lawless majority-Pashtun areas of South Asia. I didn"t think conflicts could be understood by studying only one side; journalists needed to study Pashtu and not merely embed with the American military.

Pashtu was not exactly in high demand, and the book the language school gave me was pretty basic and clearly designed for the military. It had a list of ranks, such as "general of the Air Force" and "private first cla.s.s." It also gave me a list of weapons such as land mines and bullets. It provided the Pashtu translation for important phrases like "You are a prisoner," "Show me your ID card," "Hands up," "Surrender," and "Let the vehicle pa.s.s." If I wanted to arrest an Afghan, I was now prepared. Interestingly, in the list of foods the book included hummus, which is eaten in the Arab world but not in Afghanistan (unless some fastidious Al Qaeda volunteer brought some with him). The book provided essential advice such as "Don"t burp or fart in public," "Don"t call everyone Hajji," "Don"t trust everyone," "Don"t use the same route every time," and "Don"t offer pork to any Muslim." It also advised me not to whistle or make catcalls toward any woman and not to insult "a native" in public.

Ghazni fell to the Taliban in 1995, early in their campaign to seize Afghanistan from the warlords. I was told it fell without a fight, almost overnight, soon after Kandahar. There were many subcommanders allied with various mujahideen parties. Alliances shifted often, and it was easy for the Taliban to co-opt these commanders, who just put on turbans, flew the white flag of the Taliban, and said, "Okay, we"re Taliban."

In the last few years of their reign the Taliban even succeeded in gaining the cooperation of Ghazni"s Shiite Hazara community. So the area was fertile ground for the neo-Taliban, whose control was spreading once again. Tribal leaders were weak in Ghazni while religious leaders were strong, making it easier for the Taliban to embed themselves with the population. The neo-Taliban also seized upon the population"s many grievances. Police would release prisoners in exchange for bribes, while Afghan soldiers looted people"s homes and government officials took goods from shops without paying for them. In 2006 forty policemen quit, and some joined the Taliban, because their salaries were many months late. Police chiefs had to buy supplies with their own money, so they extorted from the population. More and more clerics started supporting the Taliban. In 2006 the former governor of Ghazni was a.s.sa.s.sinated after announcing he was taking over security in the Andar district so that he could defeat the Taliban there. By 2006, in Andar alone dozens of government officials and others viewed as collaborators had been killed by the Taliban; soon there was no government presence in most of Ghazni"s countryside. When the Americans distributed cash to villagers, they would hand it over to the Taliban, and as soon as the Americans visited a village the Taliban would follow and seize anything that had been distributed. Former mujahideen commanders in Ghazni joined the Taliban. A 2006 military operation called Mountain Fury was said to have "dealt Taliban and foreign fighters a string of sharp defeats" in Andar. The U.S. Army claimed that "large swaths of southern and central Ghazni Province, described as ungovernable as recently as late August, embraced the allies and the reemerging provincial government." But things continued to worsen. Twenty-three South Korean missionaries were captured by the Taliban in Ghazni in 2007. That year eighteen Afghan de-miners were kidnapped from their base in Andar three weeks after a military operation attempted to remove the Taliban"s "shadow government" there, and when President Karzai gave a speech in Andar, the Taliban fired fifteen rockets at the event. One month before I arrived, Afghan broadcasters showed clips of Taliban kidnapping and executing two Afghan women on charges of "immorality."

Before I left for Ghazni, I spoke to a senior UN official. "I don"t think you should go," he said. "It"s deteriorated. Many Taliban commanders were killed there, and the leadership is totally fragmented. There is a lot of criminality within. In the past there was a sense of protection for foreigners here, but being a foreigner there is a major risk. There are Taliban checkpoints in the middle of Ghazni at night. Much of Ghazni is under Taliban control." I put his admonitions out of my mind. Three months earlier an Afghan soldier returned to Andar to irrigate his land. He was wearing civilian clothes, but the Taliban arrested him and executed him near the district bazaar. "The Andar district compound near the bazaar has only fifteen police," said one local who now lived in Kabul and was afraid to return. "They can"t even secure their compound, so how can they secure the district?" His cousin had once worked for the Parliament in Kabul, but the Taliban had threatened him with death if he returned to his work, so he stayed in Andar.

The Taliban governor for Ghazni issued ID cards and pa.s.sports for the Taliban regime, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Farmers with land disputes went to the Taliban there to seek justice according to their interpretation of Islamic jurisprudence. Beginning in 2004 the roads in Ghazni started getting dangerous, but now the Taliban could stop you there in broad daylight and check your cellphone to determine from your calls if you were a worthwhile captive. The Taliban"s former minister of education had been released in exchange for the Korean hostages in 2007. He returned to a.s.sume a position of importance among the Taliban of Ghazni. In order to gain control of one district, a senior UN official told me, the province"s government-appointed governor had to move his troops and surrender control of another district. Before leaving I asked my friend if I should worry about my trip succeeding. "In Afghanistan you should always worry," he said.

Shafiq, another commander from Ghazni, drove us down as Mullah Abdillah sat in the front pa.s.senger seat. We were accompanied by Kamal, a twenty-eight-year-old Afghan who knew just enough English to confuse both of us. I had tried and failed to find a real translator; some were unavailable, and others refused when they were told what the trip entailed. With the Arabic I knew as well as my basic Farsi and Pashtu, I hoped I would manage.

Abdillah had been injured recently in clashes with a rival commander from the Taliban, though at first he told me the wound was from an American bullet. He paid one thousand dollars of his own money for two surgeries at a private Kabul hospital to repair nerve damage. The wound was now covered with a bandage. He bore older scars on his arm and leg, and had lost one of his legs in fighting in the civil war during the "90s. Abdillah was now a commander in the Dih Yak district of Ghazni. He told me he had five hundred men under his command. Abdillah was also a liaison with more senior Taliban leaders and regularly communicated with the Taliban"s minister of defense. Shafiq had light skin with a short light-brown beard and wore a cap with embroidery and rhinestones. He had fought the Russians with the mujahideen. I asked him who was a more formidable foe: the Russians or the Americans. The Russians were stronger, he told me, more fierce. "We will put the Americans in graves," he said. Shafiq was a commander of fighters in Andar. He and Abdillah chatted and joked on the way to Ghazni. We were stopped at an Afghan army checkpoint, and the wary soldiers singled me out, growing more suspicious when they heard in my accent that I was a foreigner. One of the soldiers wore a brown T-shirt, and on his black vest he had a roll of plastic American flex-cuffs. My companions persuaded the soldiers that I was only a journalist. As we drove away, Abdillah and Shafiq laughed, explaining that the soldiers thought I was a suicide bomber.

We soon left Kabul province and entered Wardak. The road, lined with poplar trees and green fields, took us between arid sand-colored mountains with sharp peaks. Nomadic Kuchi women with colorful scarves draped over them ignored us, tending to camels as small boys herded sheep. On the hill-sides were cemeteries with rough tombstones haphazardly pointing in various angles and multicolored flags flying above them. In Wardak the new road was torn apart by craters. We circled around them as if they were giant potholes, but most had been made by roadside bombs buried in culverts beneath the road. Without the culverts floods would wash away roads, but they were an ideal location to hide bombs targeting Afghan security forces, the U.S. military, and its allies, as well as the convoys of trucks that provided logistical support. We drove by a truck still smoldering from an attack the day before and a truck charred from an attack a month before. Three or four American armored vehicles drove by, as did Afghan National Army (ANA) pickup trucks.

By the time we reached the town of Salar in Wardak, we had pa.s.sed about six trucks destroyed by Taliban bombs on the road. In Salar we approached a large group of cars with people standing on the side of the road by a gas station. Shafiq and Abdillah called Taliban friends on their mobile phones to see what was going on. "The Americans are fighting the Taliban," my companions explained. We could see smoke several hundred meters away and heard the chatter of machine-gun fire interrupted by the thuds of mortar fire and loud explosions-which clapped against my ears and got closer, shaking us. I flinched and ducked, gasping and cursing, as Shafiq and Abdillah laughed at me. "Tawakkal ala Allah" (depend on G.o.d), Shafiq lectured me, using a common expression to tell me not to be afraid. That same month in Salar the Taliban had tried to a.s.sa.s.sinate the governor of Ghazni, wounding two of his guards.

Two small green NATO armored personnel carriers zipped by driving away from the battle. Shafiq and Abdillah laughed. Bulgarians, they told me. As more cars stopped on the road, more men got out to watch the battle, point at what they could spot, and chat. At a small shop by the gas station, my companions bought a syrupy Taiwanese version of Red Bull called Energy. People went to urinate behind rusting shipping containers. Afghan men squat all the way down when they p.i.s.s. I couldn"t manage this feat of acrobatic skill, and a man standing as he relieved himself would have immediately attracted attention, so I waited until everybody had left before I went and p.i.s.sed between shipping containers.

Several American vehicles drove by as well as two Polish and two ANA vehicles. A few minutes later three American vehicles sped in the direction of the fighting, shortly followed by three NATO vehicles. After an hour of waiting, everybody smiled and went back to their cars. Buses and cars drove toward us from the direction of the battle scene, honking to let us know the way was safe and the roadblocks had been opened. Trucks were ablaze on the side of the road, and large craters had torn through the asphalt, with chunks of the road tossed in our way. The trucks had been carrying drinks for the Americans, Abdillah told me. Sure enough, as we drove past them we could see hundreds of water bottles spilling out. We drove by the halted convoy. Dozens of trucks, some partially burned, crowded the road. The drivers stood outside the trucks, which had UKMOD (United Kingdom Ministry of Defense) stickers on their windshields. Armed escorts fanned around the road. Further down the road there were more craters and American armored vehicles blocked our path, with fire and smoke behind them. People told us to stop because the Americans were shooting at approaching cars. Shafiq slowly maneuvered the car to the front of the line and stopped. The Americans moved, and we all followed slowly like a nervous herd. We drove by yet more burning trucks down a stretch of road that had been smashed to bits. Abdillah pointed to three destroyed vehicles from an attack four days earlier.

We were on the "ring road," the most critical road in Afghanistan. It was the fastest, most direct and practical means of getting from hub to hub, if you ignored the increasing risk. Without the ring road, one was relegated to using small provincial roads-which greatly increased the length of the trip, since many were just gravel or dirt. The ring road was the only one that was close to being a highway in the country and was the only viable route for those wishing to move large convoys. The Kabul-Kandahar highway had been a show-piece for the American coalition, connecting the two main American bases-in Bagram and Kandahar-and linking two halves of the country together. Now it was destroyed, and traffic in support of the Afghan government or the coalition forces was becoming more difficult. On June 24, 2008, the Taliban attacked a convoy of fifty-four trucks pa.s.sing through Salar: they destroyed fifty-one of them, seized two Toyota escort vehicles that belonged to the security guards, captured loot, and killed some of the drivers. More recently, on September 8, in Zurmat-which is between Gardez province and Ghazni-a convoy of thirty-five trucks was attacked, and twenty-nine of them were destroyed.

At a lonely desert checkpoint manned by the Afghan army, a few soldiers with AK-47s asked us what had happened on the road. Later we pa.s.sed by a pickup truck full of more Afghan soldiers. "They are bad," Shafiq told me, explaining they were from Kandahar and were affiliated with President Karzai. "I fight them every day," he said. Night fell, and we pa.s.sed a police station. "From now on it"s all Taliban territory," they told me. "The Americans and police don"t come here at night." We no longer had mobile phone reception. Shafiq and Abdillah explained that the Taliban ordered the local phone towers to be shut down every night so they could better conduct operations. We stopped at a gas station, and they pointed to an Afghan in an SUV who they knew worked with the Americans at the nearby base. In the darkness we slowly rolled into the village of Nughi. It was the holiday of Shab-e-Barat, when Muslims believe G.o.d determines the destinies of people for the coming year. It seemed as though all the young boys of the village had gathered in small groups to swing b.a.l.l.s of fire connected to wires. Like orange stars, hundreds of fiery circles glowed far into the distance. Carefully Shafiq maneuvered the car on the b.u.mpy dirt road between mud houses. A traditional house in these areas, called a qala, is made of an extremely durable mixture of mud and straw and built like a fort, with high walls surrounding large compounds that often include different quarters and even areas for agriculture. We pulled up in front of one house, and Shafiq banged on the metal door. A man led us by motorcycle to another house, where a group of young men emerged. In the darkness I could make out a couple of them carrying weapons. We greeted the traditional way, each man placing his right hand on the other"s heart, leaning in but not fully embracing and inquiring about the other"s health, home, and family.

Mullah Abdillah left us, returning to his house. We followed the Taliban on foot to another house with the moon lighting our path. We entered through a short door into a guest room with a red carpet and wooden beams on the ceiling. A dim bulb barely lit the room. I spotted a rocket-propelled grenade launcher with several rockets beside it and a PKM, or belt-fed machine gun, leaning against the wall. An old man named Haji Shir Muhamad was sitting in the room. Shafiq, Kamal, and I were joined by two Talibs: Mullah Yusuf, a commander from Andar, and a boy called Muhamad. Mullah Yusuf had dark reddish skin and a handsome face. He wore a black turban with thin gold stripes and carried an AK-47. A boy brought a pitcher and basin, and we rinsed our hands. We drank green tea and ate a soup of mushy bread called shurwa with our hands. Some chunks of meat were served to us, followed by grapes. Haji Shir Muhamad had lived in Saudi Arabia for five years, so we were able to communicate in Arabic a little.

Mullah Yusuf slept in different houses every night, he said. He went from village to village, as did other Talibs, to avoid the Americans. He was Mullah Abdillah"s nephew and was originally from the Zarin village in Ghazni; although he was only thirty years old, he was an important commander in Andar. A year and a half before, Yusuf had been injured in battle by an American helicopter strike. The wound was in his thigh. He had been hospitalized but still had problems and walked with a p.r.o.nounced limp. Yusuf"s cellphone rang with a bells-and-cymbals version of the Sorcerer"s Apprentice theme. Yusuf had been with the Taliban for five years. Before that he had studied at a famous religious school called Zia ul-Madaris al-Faruqia in Miranshah, center of Pakistan"s North Waziristan, where many Afghan refugees lived. He joined the jihad because foreigners had come to Afghanistan, he told me, and were fighting Afghans and poor people in their villages. He had not received training but had learned from friends. He claimed that he did not receive a.s.sistance from foreigners, only from people in the villages, who provided weapons and money. Yusuf told me he used what money he had to buy weapons and ammunition before he bought food. Local villagers even helped when the Taliban attacked checkpoints, he said. "All of this village helps because they are Muslim," he said. "The Americans are not good. They go into houses. Some people from this area are in American jails. Fifteen days ago the Americans bombed here and killed a civilian." Foreigners did occasionally come to fight with them, he said, including Saudis and Uzbeks. It soon became clear that he referred to all foreign fighters who volunteered to fight with the Taliban as Arabs. "They are like my brothers," he said. Arabs and Chechens taught them how to use remotely detonated bombs.

"The Americans are blind in Afghanistan," Yusuf said. Afghanistan would be a graveyard for them. But when the foreigners left, the Taliban could negotiate with the Afghan army and police, instead of continuing to fight. "They are brothers, Muslims," he said. He fought with them now only because they were with the Americans. President Karzai would flee to America when the foreigners left, he said. When the foreigners left, girls could go to school and women could work, he added. I asked about the killing of aid workers. If foreigners didn"t fight the Taliban, he said, he didn"t fight them. The Afghans needed help, and it didn"t matter if aid workers were Muslims or infidels, but "the UN is with the Americans, so I fight them."

A year before, in a big attack in Andar, the Americans killed a senior commander named Mullah Mu"min. Yusuf had been his deputy and a.s.sumed leadership after he was killed. Yusuf received his orders from his own commanders. The mujahideen always wanted to attack the Americans, he said, but their commanders told them when to attack. Mullah Yusuf operated only in Ghazni. Mullah Omar was the top commander, he told me, but only Yusuf"s most senior commanders could communicate with the one-eyed former leader of Afghanistan, who called himself the "commander of the faithful."

Yusuf told me he would stop fighting when the foreigners left Afghanistan, but then he would go to other places like Chechnya, Palestine, Uzbekistan, Lebanon, and Somalia to fight. I doubted it was more than bravado; he knew little about the world outside Afghanistan and his refuge in Pakistan. Still, the pre-September 11 Taliban were much less connected to other struggles in the Muslim world. Globalized jihadism was penetrating even the remote Pashtun areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan. While most Afghan Taliban fought only for Afghanistan, the longer the Americans remained, the more links the Taliban might forge. Out of curiosity, I asked Yusuf what he thought about Hizballah. Throughout the Muslim world, tensions between Sunnis and Shiites were increasing. In Pakistan the Sunni groups backing the Taliban were bitterly anti-Shiite and often murdered innocent Shiites. At first my hosts were confused between Libya and Lebanon. Shafiq said they didn"t like Shiites but they liked Hizballah because they fought America, though this was not exactly accurate. "Hizballah are mujahideen," Yusuf said. "It is no problem that they are Shiites. They are our brothers. The Americans made problems between Sunnis and Shiites. All Muslims are one."

Muhamad, Yusuf"s eighteen-year-old companion, was also from Ghazni but had gone to an Islamic school in the Pakistani city of Quetta, which borders Afghanistan and sheltered many Taliban leaders. The school was called Mahmadiya, and education was in Pashtu, the only language Muhamad knew. Room and board had been free. In Quetta he had joined the Taliban, he said, because they were Muslim and his whole village had joined, and because he didn"t like the Americans entering his village. His parents did not know he had joined; they thought he was still studying in Pakistan. He had been a fighter for only fifteen days but had received two or three months of training in Ghazni. The training was not difficult, he said, but he had taken part in only one attack so far, against a police checkpoint in Ghazni. He had used an AK-47, and his friend had used an RPG. The Afghan police were not good fighters, he said. Shafiq added that the Afghan army was very good, and soldiers. .h.i.t their targets when they shot. Referring to Muhamad, Shafiq proudly said, "All our boys are Mullah Omar and Osama."

After we finished eating we walked to a mud shed. Shafiq opened its wooden doors to reveal a white Toyota Corolla. The men loaded the RPG launcher and four rockets into the car, along with the PKM and the AK-47. We drove under the moonlit desert on dirt paths to the village of Kharkhasha, where Shafiq lived. Shafiq put a tape of Taliban chants on. They were in Pashtu and without music, which was officially forbidden by the Taliban. We walked over a short wooden footbridge, and Shafiq"s older brother opened the door to greet us.

We entered the guest room in darkness and sat down on the thin mattresses that lined the walls. A small gas lamp was brought out as well as grapes and green tea. Shafiq belonged to the Jalalzai tribe, which was the biggest in Andar, he said. He fought the Soviets alongside Maulvi Muhamad Younes Khalis"s hardline Hizb-e-Islami, a splinter group with the same name as the one led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Shafiq was jailed for five years in the Communist era, and he bore tattoos on his wrist from that time. During the jihad against the Soviets, he worked with Arab doctors who volunteered to help the mujahideen. He picked up some Arabic from a Lebanese doctor called Sheikh Aqil, whom he described as a big, strong man. Following the Soviet withdrawal, as the mujahideen started to fight one another, Shafiq said he saw that the mujahideen had become robbers. He joined the Taliban in 1994 because they wanted peace and Islam.

When the American forces left, Shafiq said, he would be willing to negotiate with the Taliban"s Afghan rivals-but not with President Karzai, who was not a Muslim but a Jew. "I cannot make a deal with Karzai because he is American," he said. Shafiq wanted a Sharia government, meaning one where Islamic law was imposed, and he hoped that Mullah Omar would return to rule the country. Girls could attend school, he said, and women could work, as long as they wore a hijab that covered them appropriately. Women could even serve as Parliament members and as governors, but not as the president, he said. Shafiq had a seven-month-old daughter; he said he would send his daughters to school, but only if the teachers were women. He was wary of giving too much freedom to women. They could go to cinemas only with their brothers or fathers, he said, not with other boys. There weren"t many cinemas in Afghanistan, so I didn"t know what he was so worried about. "If you give women freedom, they will go with boys and get HIV," he said. One of my favorite views in Kabul was of kites fluttering high above homes in Kabul. The Taliban regime had forbidden kite flying in the past, and I asked Shafiq what he thought. Kites are not good, he said; it was better to work or study, and flying a kite was not even a sport. Soccer was also bad, but exercise and martial arts were good. Even the boys we pa.s.sed playing with fire were doing something that was haram (forbidden).

Shafiq wanted help from Saudi Arabia or Iran; he and his men needed money for ammunition. They received help from Saudi individuals, as well as Pakistanis, but he did not know of any state a.s.sistance. Iran did not help them, he said. "Whoever is fighting with America," he said, "he is my brother." Shafiq had a friend called Mullah Agha Jan, who was killed while fighting in Baghdad. They had benefited from the Iraq experience when remote-controlled bomb techniques were imported to Afghanistan. Shafiq had heard of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who had run a training camp in western Afghanistan before leading Al Qaeda in Iraq. "He is a big mujahid," Shafiq said, "famous in Afghanistan." Shafiq had met Osama bin Laden twice: once before the Taliban took over and once during its reign. He had been impressed by bin Laden"s knowledge of Pashtu. (He must have had a better book than I did.) Shafiq had met Mullah Omar as well. He thought both Mullah Omar and bin Laden were very friendly. Arab, Pakistani, and Uzbek fighters had come through the Andar district, Shafiq said, mostly as suicide bombers but also as fighters. Some Afghans from Kandahar had also come to fight in Andar. The Kandaharis were the best fighters he had seen; they were not afraid. The Russians had fought fiercely, like dogs. He did not have a high opinion of his American foes. "Pakistan and Iran are not friends of Afghanistan," Shafiq said. "They want to take Afghanistan, they don"t want peace." In this he was representative of most Afghan Taliban, who despite their extremely conservative views were fundamentally nationalists. Like most Afghans, he was against suicide bombings as well. "Suicide attacks are not good because they kill Muslims," he said.

I asked Shafiq what he thought of a recent attack that had killed the women and driver working for International Rescue Committee in Logar. It was not good to kill women, he said, even infidel women. The Taliban didn"t know it was women, he said. The windows were tinted, and they couldn"t see the pa.s.sengers. On the other hand, UN staff were infidels. Human rights were American, so they were bad. The Koran gave all the rights. "People spent seven years in Guantanamo," he said. "Where are the human rights?" Shafiq told me he had recently purchased weapons in Kabul, where a man gave him two PKMs and an RPG for free. Shafiq bought two jeeps from the Afghan police, who later told the Interior Ministry that the vehicles were lost in an attack. "Some police work with us," he said. Shafiq told me that Taliban representatives visited different villages in the area to teach people about the Taliban and recruit on their behalf.

It was late, and the men washed themselves with a bucket of water for the final prayer of the day. We all lay down on the mattresses where we had been sitting and took the pillows that had been against the wall. Shafiq"s older brother brought a thick flannel blanket and covered me. In the morning they took turns washing themselves again for the first prayer of the day. Shafiq"s older brother brought tea and some dry bread for breakfast. I asked him if he was also with the Taliban. He was just a farmer, he said, pantomiming digging and pointing to the grapes. Shafiq had an eighteen-year-old brother at Ghazni University who was also a Taliban fighter. Another younger brother was in a local school. They owned a generator, which was their only source of occasional electricity, but fuel was expensive at five liters for four hundred Afghans, about eight dollars. I asked about a bathroom. Kamal told me there wasn"t any, and instructed me to go outside in the yard.

Shafiq and Kamal went to the bazaar, leaving me with the young Taliban fighter Muhamad, but they said I could walk in the garden as I waited. It was untended and wild. Sunflowers towered over the large mud wall compound, bushes and dry trees grew in rows. There was a deep pit for a well and a crude pump to irrigate the field and draw water for personal use. As we sat waiting in the guest room Mullah Yusuf showed up with a companion called Qadim, who was missing his front teeth. Shafiq carried his AK-47, and the larger Qadim carried a heavier PKM. Mullah Yusuf played with a pair of binoculars he found on the floor. Yusuf wore a vest with pockets for magazines of ammunition, and he had several grenades stuffed in as well. Shafiq returned and spoke on the phone with a fellow Talib fighter from Meidan Shah in Wardak. They had conducted a successful attack, capturing four trucks and drivers.

We got back into the Corolla, loading the PKM, RPG launcher, and four rockets into the trunk. Shafiq and his PKM were in the front pa.s.senger seat. Yusuf drove, with his AK-47 beside him. I hoped we wouldn"t hit too many b.u.mps. Qadim rode his Honda motorcycle alongside us, an AK-47 strapped to his shoulder, a scarf around his face to protect from the sand and dust. As we drove I finally got to see the environment. It was flat and starkly arid. Everything was the color of sand, including the occasional man-made structure, the mud bleached by the sun. Yusuf pointed to a police checkpoint in the distance. The police knew him but did nothing, he said. "Every night I go on patrol and they don"t fight me," he said. "They don"t have guns, and they are afraid." I asked Shafiq and Yusuf what services or aid the Taliban provided people in Ghazni. They complained that they had no money to help.

Yusuf called a fellow commander and told him he was bringing over a journalist. The man on the other end of the call called me a devil and told him not to bring me. So we headed to another commander instead. Yusuf pa.s.sed by a school called Ghams al-Ulum, which his predecessor, Mullah Mu"min, had built fourteen years earlier. There had once been three hundred boys studying at the school, but it had been closed since the Americans arrived. Three years earlier the Americans and Afghan army had used it as a base, he said, "but we fought them and they left."

We drove in the desert to the village of Khodzai and entered a mosque. Eight men and two boys sat on the floor drinking tea. An RPG and several AK-47s were on the floor or against the wall. In addition to Yusuf, another senior commander from Andar was present. The men talked about fighting the Afghan army two days earlier in the nearby Naniki village. The commander I spoke to told me they had ambushed a logistical convoy of trucks using machine guns and RPGs; they killed twenty Afghan soldiers, and one Talib was injured. The Americans didn"t come here, and there was no Afghan government, he said. "We control this area. The Taliban is the government here." All the older men agreed that the Russians were more dangerous than the Americans. I asked to take a picture of some of the fighters. The commander wrapped his young son up with a scarf and showed him how to hold the AK. Everybody laughed as I took his picture with the others. The men got ready to go on a patrol, putting on their vests, checking magazines, slinging AK-47s on their shoulders, and wrapping scarves around their faces. We all went out, standing in a sunny courtyard. Small boys and girls emerged to watch the men ready themselves. They got on their Honda motorcycles and carried their RPGs. Suddenly a coalition military helicopter flew low overhead, nearly coming to a hover above us. I clenched my fists in terror waiting for the helicopter to fire a missile at us. I struggled to control the urge to flee. The other men ignored it and laughed at me. One told me that he had fired an RPG at a helicopter the day before, and that they would fire at this one if it attacked us. To my relief, the helicopter continued flying. The men took off on their motorcycles. We drove away in the Corolla. Shafiq told me he had killed more than two hundred alleged spies. After a trial, if the judge gave a verdict of guilty, he explained, they would cut the spy"s head off. "First I warn people to stop, and if they continue I kill them," Shafiq said. He explained that they could only fight for about twenty minutes before the helicopters came: "I can"t fight for two or three hours."

As we drove he played more Taliban chants about brave boys going to fight. We pa.s.sed by another school that had been closed. The sun shown bright on old mud houses. Many were worn out and looked like sand castles after the first wave hit them. There was only one school open in the area, Shafiq told me as we drove through the village of Kamalkhel. He pointed to a new yellow school, explaining that it was a government school run by the Taliban. "There are no government people here," Shafiq said. One month earlier the Americans had arrested Mullah Faizani, the Taliban commander of Kamalkhel.

As we drove through villages a bearded man with his face partially concealed by a scarf stopped us on his motorcycle. He demanded to know who I was, and Shafiq told him I was a guest. He asked me if I was Pashtun. "Pukhtu nayam," I said. "I am not Pashtun." He glared at me and drove off.

We entered an old adobe home built seventy years ago. Livestock brayed past the gate. A large group of Taliban were seated around the room. I met a seventeen-year-old called Isa. Like Muhamad, he had been a Talib for only two weeks. He had studied at a local Islamic school in Andar. I asked him why he had joined. "I like the mujahideen," he said, "and I want to do jihad." I asked him why. "Because the Americans are here," Yusuf said. Isa repeated Yusuf"s answer. He hoped to continue studying religion when he was done fighting. Food was brought out. More shurwa and chunks of meat. They got most of their news from listening to BBC on the radio. They could not watch television because of lack of electricity, they said. In the past the Taliban had prohibited television. One of the Talibs told me he thought the Americans would leave in one year. "When the Americans leave I want to fight them, because why did they attack Afghanistan?" said one man. "America is at war with Islam," said Shafiq. "The war started with the Prophet Muhammad," said Yusuf.

I asked the men who they thought should lead Afghanistan. It didn"t have to be Mullah Omar, they said, as long as Islamic law was imposed. I asked them if they would allow people like Osama bin Laden and other foreign fighters in once they controlled Afghanistan. "Islam has no borders," said Shafiq affirmatively. I asked why most Taliban were Pashtun. "Pashtun people have more principles and religious faith than others," said Shafiq. "It"s also because Pashtuns are the majority." This is not exactly accurate: Pashtuns are the largest group in Afghanistan, but they are not the majority. "Life was better under the Taliban because it was an Islamic regime," said Yusuf. They asked me questions about the Americans: what they thought of their being in Afghanistan, and if they thought they would win. I struggled to find the right answer. One of the commanders told Shafiq that I was an American CIA agent. Shafiq told him I wasn"t. I heard the words "istikhbarat" and "jasus," which meant "army intelligence" and "spy," as we readied ourselves to leave.

We left to meet more fighters. Yusuf stopped the car at a house where an American strike had killed two Talibs a year earlier and asked me to photograph it. We crawled through rocky paths between mud homes, a vast labyrinth. Everything looked the same to me. We got stuck in the sand, and a dust storm hit us, blinding and suffocating us as we struggled to push the car. We stopped in front of a shop with the PKM in full view and Taliban music playing. The people in the shop greeted Yusuf warmly. Six men came out to greet us as we sat waiting in the car. Yusuf bought many shoulder straps for AK-47s and put them in the car.

We drove to another mosque and found twelve men inside. A large shoulder-fired missile was on the floor, an anti-armor weapon I had not seen before. Most of the men in this room were older. Shafiq told me we were waiting to meet the commander who would approve my trip. I thought it had all been approved already. One of the men was called Abu Tayyeb, an Arabic nom de guerre. He spoke Arabic, so we were able to talk to each other. He told me he commanded two thousand men in Wardak and was visiting. He had lived in Saudi Arabia for one year and spent three months in a Saudi prison for mujahideen-related activities. He had joined the mujahideen fourteen years ago, he said, and under the Taliban he was a commander in the northern Kunduz province. He told me the large shoulder-fired weapon on the floor was an RR82, or some kind of recoilless rifle. I continued to ask him questions, but then the angry man-the one who had asked me if I was a Pashtun-came in holding a walkie-talkie and barked at him to stop talking to me until the commander, called Dr. Khalil, showed up. I noticed that some other men had walkie-talkies too, and that Kamal was nervous. There was a problem, he told me; the judge would decide what would happen to us. Upon hearing the word qazi (judge), I started to panic inside. As Shafiq had told me, a meeting with a judge could end with your head getting cut off.

We got up to go, and when we were out I was told to get in the car with the angry man and other strangers, who would take me to the judge. Yusuf was praying and Shafiq said he would pray and catch up with us. I told him I was not leaving him, that I was his guest. A desperate feeling was beginning to take over me. Holding their rifles the commander"s men shouted at me to get in their car. Yusuf came out, told me to get in our Corolla, and a.s.sured me he wouldn"t leave us. He put Qadim in the car with us. A standoff ensued. I called and sent text messages to my contacts back in Kabul to let them know I was in trouble. Qadim sat menacingly with an AK-47, his face concealed by a scarf. His phone rang: its ring tones were machine-gun fire and a song about the Taliban being born for martyrdom. Lack of water, fear, and the dust had dried my mouth, and I felt as though I had lost my voice. My friend in Kabul who had helped arrange the trip called Shafiq and told him he should not leave me, that I was Shafiq"s responsibility and he would hold him personally responsible if anything happened to me.

After an hour Shafiq told us we could get out. Abu Tayyeb, the Arabic speaker, tried to rea.s.sure me and told me not to worry. The angry man and his companions departed, taking the rocket launcher with them. I thought it was over, and put my hand on my heart as they left, to indicate no ill will. Then Shafiq told us Dr. Khalil was coming to see us. Abu Tayyeb had tried and failed to get them to let us leave. I wondered if all the increased phone traffic and movement of Taliban commanders would attract the attention of whatever American intelligence agency might be spying on us, and if we would be attacked. Abu Tayyeb apologetically explained that there were many Taliban groups and that the one causing me problems was different. Then the order came for us to go see Dr. Khalil ourselves.

We left in a heavy dust storm. The car crawled forward slowly, rocking back and forth on the rocky paths, and I felt as though I were in a boat being tossed about by waves. Yusuf said not to worry, that if they came to take me he would fight them. We drove from village to village with Qadim ahead on the motorcycle. In my loneliness it occurred to me that we had driven through an entire district, through many villages, and there was no authority other than the Taliban, who seemed completely comfortable in their territory and not half as concerned about the Americans as I was. "We have problem," Kamal said, but he didn"t elaborate when I asked what it was. On the road I struggled to find network reception for my phone, cursing as the bars appeared and disappeared. I reached another one of my contacts. "I spoke to Dr. Khalil," he said. "If they behave bad with you, don"t worry. They just want to punish you, but everything is okay. I have only one more guy to call, who is bigger than Dr. Khalil." Shafiq also told me not to worry; he would get killed before he left me. We crawled at a snail"s pace to our denouement in a dark empty desert, which only made me more tense. I could see nothing on the horizon; it was clear we had a long way to go. I asked Shafiq if Dr. Khalil was a nice guy, a good guy. "He"s like you," Shafiq answered cryptically. "No Muslim is a bad man. Don"t worry, the Doctor has a gun and I have a gun." Dr. Khalil, apparently, was a Tajik, not a Pashtun, which was very unusual for a senior Taliban commander like him, and he was from the Tajik village of Asfanda in Ghazni. He had recently been released from an Afghan prison in a prisoner exchange. Shafiq later said that as soon as Dr. Khalil heard I was a foreigner, he thought he would be rich. He called his superiors and told them he caught Shafiq with a foreign spy. He called Mansur Dadullah and told him, "I arrested a foreigner and an Afghan in Wardak and brought them to Ghazni." Mansur Dadullah was the brother of the slain Mullah Dadullah, who had commanded Taliban military operations after the 2001 American invasion until he was killed in May 2007. Mansur Dadullah was released with other Taliban prisoners in March 2007 in exchange for the Taliban release of an Italian journalist. He then commanded Taliban operations in some of the most dangerous southern provinces and served as a spokesman until he was reportedly demoted by Mullah Omar.

Mullah Abdillah called to say that he had reached a Taliban leader in Quetta in Pakistan and somebody in the United Arab Emirates, and they had promised to call Dr. Khalil and tell him not to harm us. "The Doctor will fight with me, not with you," said Shafiq. My contact called again to tell me "they might slap you, but they won"t hit you or kill you, just punish you for coming without permission. They might keep you overnight as a guest. You are lucky you called me." I felt some relief, but I was not convinced. Later he told me that Dr. Khalil had told him, "Don"t worry, we won"t do anything that isn"t Sharia," but this was little consolation, since they considered Islamic law to permit beheading.

We drove through a Shiite village called Kara Barei on our way to the area between Gabari and Sher Kala village. "I"m a martyr, I"m a star," sang the Taliban chants on the tape. "I"ve reached my goal, I"m a martyr . . . I will testify on behalf of my mother on Judgment Day. When I was small my mother put me on her lap and spoke sweetly to me . . ." We finally arrived at the mosque where Dr. Khalil was waiting for us. Upon entering I inadvertently stepped on a pair of Prada sungla.s.ses. Dr. Khalil walked in at that moment and picked them up to examine them somberly. He was a burly man with light skin and a dark brown beard. He had thick hands and was stern. He wore a cap on his head. After everybody prayed together, Dr. Khalil told everybody to leave the room except for Kamal, Yusuf, and me. We sat on the floor. He put his sungla.s.ses on. "Deir obekhi," I said, apologizing for entering his territory without permission. He did not react but accused Kamal and me of being spies for the Afghan army. He asked how I got a visa to Afghanistan and why, and how I got visas to other countries. I told him I was there to write about the mujahideen and tell their story. If I liked them so much, he said, why didn"t I join them? He asked about my contact. I said he was a former mujahid from Jamiat-i Islami. He scoffed dismissively, telling me they were not mujahideen. Suddenly he got up and said he would make phone calls to Pakistan and elsewhere to investigate us, so we had to spend the night in the mosque-he would come back for us in the morning. He got up and left in a hurry as I tried to protest.

I sat glumly on the floor in the guest room. A few minutes later Shafiq stuck his head in and said, "Yallah," Arabic for "come on." I stood up with alacrity, relieved to get out of there though confused about why. But the Talibs sitting with us insisted we drink the tea they had just made. I hurriedly gulped down the scalding tea. We stepped out into the darkness and heard helicopters in the distance. Soon we could spot their silhouettes; everybody ducked behind the car and motorcycle, so I did too, wondering if the men I was with had heard of night-vision goggles. After the sky was silent again, Yusuf apologized for having to leave me and go see his family. Shafiq told me we had to return to this mosque in the morning, and I was once again crestfallen. He drove the Corolla slowly, painstakingly winding through invisible paths. The moonlight was blocked by dust. I could see nothing out the window and wondered what was guiding Shafiq. The mobile phone network was shut down again, and I had no way of updating my contacts in Kabul.

At Shafiq"s house I met his seventeen-year-old brother, who was studying at a nearby state school and knew some English. I was surprised that a Taliban commander would let his brother attend a government school. Shafiq"s brother told me he wanted to study engineering and didn"t want to fight. He had been with Mullah Abdillah all day, he said, and Abdillah had spent much of the day calling Taliban commanders to try to release me from Dr. Khalil. He had even called Mansur Dadullah in Kandahar.

Shafiq carried a television into the guest room and turned on the generator. He was able to read the English t.i.tles on the guide and found Al Jazeera, the Arabic satellite news channel. We watched coverage of attacks on the road from Kabul to Jalalabad and the ones we had driven by in Wardak. Boys were shown taking pieces of the trucks away. Shafiq got bored with Al Jazeera and put on Ariana, an Afghan channel, to watch an Indian soap opera dubbed in Dari. Women were shown in revealing Western attire. I was amazed that he would watch something so anathema to the Taliban. It was okay, he said. "It"s a drama about a family." Later he put on a British Muslim channel called Islam and moved on to an Iranian American pop-music satellite channel. A portly singer with stubble and long hair imitated "80s rock in Farsi. The next video showed an Iranian pop singer dressed up in leather like Davy Crockett and wearing brand-name tank tops. It was terrible stuff, but Shafiq told me he had no problem with these things. Qadim and Shafiq"s brother chatted. Shafiq read him something, and it became clear that Qadim was illiterate.

I finally managed to fall asleep, but at 11 p.m. there was shouting outside, and Kamal told me to wake up. "The Taliban are here for us," he said, and my heart started racing again. Three young men carrying AK-47s with scarves and blankets draped around their heads and shoulders walked in. My knees felt weak as I stood up to greet them. "They"re a different group," Shafiq"s brother said. They were not here for us at all. They hadn"t even heard of us but were merely a night patrol pa.s.sing by. One of them sat on the floor with his barrel pointing at Shafiq. I eyed him nervously as he played with the trigger absentmindedly until Shafiq"s brother told him that his safety was off and it was dangerous. They left and came back again, this time leaving with Shafiq.

In the morning, I woke up to the sound of military planes overhead. I stepped out of the qala and saw a convoy of American armored vehicles a mile away. I fought the strong urge to walk to them and be rescued, knowing they might shoot me themselves and that it would doom everybody who had helped me. I waited impatiently for the phone network to go back up. One of my contacts in Kabul told me that he had spoken to senior Taliban people everywhere and had told Dr. Khalil not to harm us, but Dr. Khalil insisted we were spies. My contact thought he was just trying to a.s.sert his independence and hoped to exchange us for a large ransom. Mullah Nasir, a one-armed Kandahari who served as Taliban governor for Ghazni, was also helping us. Zaibullah Mujahed, the Taliban spokesman, had promised to call Dr. Khalil as well. I tried to persuade Shafiq to drive us to Ghazni"s capital, but he said that if he didn"t return us to Dr. Khalil, then Khalil would arrest him.

Shafiq"s nephew had been arrested the night before after a Taliban patrol spotted him walking with a girl. Shafiq left us to go release him. In the meantime I spoke to a contact in Kabul, who told me that we had gotten caught in a rivalry between Mullah Abdillah and Shafiq, on one side, and Dr. Khalil, on the other. Mullah Abdillah and his men had killed nearly a dozen Pakistanis and Arabs for trying to burn down a girls" school, but the foreigners were commanded by Dr. Khalil, so bad blood lingered. My contact told me he had been told by senior Taliban that we would be released in the afternoon but that once we were on the road we should take the batteries out of our phones. Shafiq had to deal with more headaches when other Talibs called to complain that they had heard music coming from his house when they called him the night before. Exasperated, Shafiq protested that it was only Al Jazeera.

Mullah Baradar, the Taliban minister of defense and Mullah Omar"s deputy, called Dr. Khalil and demanded our release because he had given us permission to travel in Taliban territory. Another contact added pressure on Dr. Khalil by calling his former commander, who had arranged for his release in the prisoner exchange. Early in the afternoon Dr. Khalil finally showed up. He examined my pa.s.sport and visas, and carefully went through my bags. He was most fascinated by my Gillette gel deodorant, opening it and smelling it. He took my toothbrush out of its container and carefully thumbed through the bristles, bringing it close to his eye to examine it. He leafed through my notebooks and was intrigued by my many medicines for diarrhea and dehydration. He asked me to show him the pictures I had taken. "Zaibullah Mujahed said I should hit you, but I will not," he told me. Dr. Khalil"s att.i.tude was markedly different, and he made me feel at ease. "What can I do for you?" he asked. I asked him a few questions. He was fighting for a government of Islamic law, he said, but Mullah Omar did not have to be the leader again. G.o.d willing, it would take up to twenty or thirty years until they got rid of the foreigners. If the foreigners left, he would still fight the Afghan army, and he refused to negotiate with President Karzai. Women could go to school and work, he conceded. Dr. Khalil had studied in the Hakim Sahib Sanai Islamic School in the Pakistani town of Jub and then studied internal medicine in Afghanistan. In 1992 he joined the Taliban, and he was a commander in the far northern Taluqan district.

I wasn"t in the mood to ask too many questions, and we piled into the Corolla again, loading an RPG into the trunk just in case. Dr. Khalil got in the driver"s seat with Shafiq beside him holding the PKM. Qadim held an AK-47 and squeezed in next to me. Dr. Khalil"s escort followed on another motorcycle, as did Shafiq"s brother. We drove for about an hour through villages. The car got stuck, and I helped collect rocks to put beneath the tires. We drove through Dr. Khalil"s village of Asfanda, and he pointed to its outer limits. "This is the border between the Taliban and the government," he said, proudly stressing his control. We drove undisturbed through the village. He asked me what I would write in my article. I told him that I would write about how much control the Taliban had in much of Afghanistan. He was now jocular and relaxed.

He pointed to a nearby American base with a spy blimp parked on the ground and told me to take a picture of it. At the edge of town close to the main road he got out, followed by Shafiq, who held his PKM. The locals appeared stunned. He stopped a pickup truck and ordered the driver to take us to the bazaar. We parted warmly and climbed on the back of the truck. Shafiq"s younger brother followed us on a motorcycle to the bazaar, where we met Mullah Abdillah, who was very apologetic for what had happened to me. Abdillah was supposed to have been with me during my trip through Talibanistan, but he was tired from his surgery and had gone home to relax. "I paid for my mistake," he later said. "This Doctor, he is a very nasty guy," my contact told me on the phone. "He might send somebody to kidnap you on the way, and then I can do nothing for you." Abdillah was also worried that Dr. Khalil had set up an ambush for me on the road. Later I learned more. Shafiq had incorrectly told local Taliban that I worked for Al Jazeera. Dr. Khalil called the Al Jazeera bureau chief in Pakistan and asked him if he knew me. When the chief said no they decided I was a spy. By the time Mullah Baradar had made the call to Dr. Khalil, the leadership in Andar had already decided to execute me.

We dodged craters in the road on the way back with Abdillah, and the sides of the road were strewn with burned-out and exploded cars. The trucks I had seen burning two days earlier were still smoldering, and children were playing with them, removing pieces. I teased Abdillah for his Taliban having destroyed the roads and made our drive more difficult and perilous, and was surprised when he seemed to agree. He later expressed disapproval of the Taliban for killing Afghan civilians, explaining that they were not acting like Afghans. We didn"t stop fast enough at an army checkpoint, and the soldier raised his AK at us. It was a sunny day with clear skies, and I felt euphoric as we drove north to Kabul.

I RETURNED TO KABUL to find that the UN had been put on four days of restricted movement to coincide with Afghanistan"s independence day and the anniversary of the 2003 attack on the UN in Baghdad. While I was there rockets were also fired at the airport in Kabul and at the ISAF base. I told a Western intelligence officer about the extent to which the Taliban were in charge of Ghazni. "Andar is a very bad place," he said, explaining that it had recently become one of the most dangerous areas in the country. "The Taliban showed a lot