(Community Matters) First hand account by NYTimes reporter held captive by the Taliban for 7 months, 10 days. Fascinating and a total must read to gain such an inside perspective.
excerpts:
Over those months, I came to a simple realization. After seven years of reporting in the region, I did not fully understand how extreme many of the Taliban had become. Before the kidnapping, I viewed the organization as a form of “Al Qaeda lite,” a religiously motivated movement primarily focused on controlling Afghanistan.
Living side by side with the Haqqanis’ followers, I learned that the goal of the hard-line Taliban was far more ambitious. Contact with foreign militants in the tribal areas appeared to have deeply affected many young Taliban fighters. They wanted to create a fundamentalist Islamic emirate with Al Qaeda that spanned the Muslim world.
The Taliban government that had supposedly been eliminated by the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan was alive and thriving.
And I found the tribal areas — widely perceived as impoverished and isolated — to have superior roads, electricity and infrastructure compared with what exists in much of Afghanistan. (continued here)
Community Matters 