When we entered his world, he was writing details transmitted by an armed subordinate to a notebook. Dressed in camouflage suits, the commander was barefoot despite the rain, working at a low table and sitting in his kot, the traditional day bed.
“Who do you know in Kabul?” he asked. “Zabihullah Mujahid,” we replied, naming the Taliban spokesman. A young Taliban gun-armed member said, “This is the right answer.”
And so began our surreal and, at times, odyssey that provoked fear, from the Pakistani khyber crossing to Kabul.
In the 1990s, when I covered the Taliban war to take the whole country, I marveled at the amount of Soviet military hardware abandoned during its 1989 withdrawal. It was the most curious déjà vu to see now the white flags of the Taliban that they came out of fallen sandbags and tired-looking Hesco barriers that not long ago bordered the perimeter of the Afghan empire in the United States.
We passed by sunken outposts, Jalalabad runway and several old American bases. He would fly Black Hawk helicopter missions in and out of some of these bases in incrustations with American forces, he had even seen an American Afghan drone take off in Jalalabad. Now exploring abandoned shacks and communications towers, it was as if it had gone back in time before the September 11, 2001 Al Qaeda attacks that sparked the U.S. war for decades.
The struggle with the Americans is still fresh in the minds of many Taliban members, although even in victory some like Commander Supranullah and his men seemed willing to participate again, albeit with an underlying distrust.
The road to Kabul
You can feel the billions of US dollars spent here on the roads. Compared to before U.S. forces first arrived in late 2001, the 230-kilometer (140-mile) journey from the border to Kabul should have been a breeze: a smooth asphalt all the way. Without obstacles, driving could have taken five hours.
These roads were very busy as we headed for Kabul, huge trucks struggling through the dizzying mountain passes, young men on wheels intertwining and dangerously coming out of the crowded lanes, mini vans and taxis jammed with young families on board, taking precautions the their ways. time. None of them hurried to the border.
Compared to before, this is a country still full of chaotic charms despite the economic uncertainty it faces. We toured the bazaars listening to the vendors trying to call each other out, grilling freshly baked corn, fried fish, sweets, grapes, pomegranates and delicious long hot bread from open ovens.
What was missing in the midst of the hustle and bustle were the women. The Taliban have warned them to stay inside and many seem to have ignored them. Only in really rural places were women visible, and even only a few and grouped.
A group of half a dozen women in brightly colored shawls balanced bundles of yellowish corn stalks as they walked down the road. Another small group of women were wrapped in abayas, black dresses that hid their bodies, only venturing among themselves to protect themselves.
Without having a chance to stop and talk to them, in our effort to get to Kabul before nightfall, it’s hard to know how they feel about the Taliban government. What changes regime in the lives of remote and culturally conservative communities is equally imponderable. But what is certain is that the gains in rights and freedoms that the government obtained with the support of the West have disappeared by now.
The Taliban’s control over security is tight. Driving through a busy market in a small town, a gunman stopped us by force to get out of the crowd. He demanded to know who they were, what we were doing and where we were going. We explained, as we had done with Commander Supranullah, that we had permission from the Taliban to travel and showed him the documents they would give us.
It was not enough. In a matter of minutes, they were taking us to a place, he said for more questions. As they drove us out of the city at high speed, it seemed less clear who they were and where they were taking us. The problem was resolved fairly quickly through calls to the Taliban headquarters in Kabul. But what is clear is that weeks after the militants took power, the security situation in the Taliban is still very fluid.
The few minutes of wondering what would happen next were insignificant alongside the fear that many Afghans experience on a daily basis. Just because you can’t see it on our record, doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.
CNN’s Ingrid Formanek contributed to this report.