Azam Ahmed, a Times correspondent and former bureau chief in Afghanistan, made repeated trips to areas in the country that had once been off-limits to foreigners.
The Talib looked as ragged as his outpost, a trailer banked on a snowy mountain pass. Holes were bored into its sides to ventilate a sputtering wood stove.
Upon seeing foreigners, the Talib, with an unkempt beard and layers of ill-fitting sweaters, ordered us out of the car.
For more than an hour, my colleague Bryan Denton and I waited on the trailer floor as he reviewed our documents. Beside him, two guards slept beneath heaped blankets. It smelled as if they had been there a while.
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After the withdrawal of American troops, Times reporters made repeated trips to Afghanistan to visit areas that had once been off limits.America’s MonsterHow America Created the Enemy It Feared MostBehind Afghanistan’s Fall, U.S.-Backed Militias Worse Than the TalibanThe Once Booming Drug Town Going Bust Under Taliban RuleIs Afghanistan’s Most-Wanted Militant Now Its Best Hope for Change?Who Was Abdul Raziq?