Some highlights from this article....
..."Salar is the new Falluja," said Qomendan Hemmet emphatically. "The Americans and the Afghan army control the highway and 5m on each side. The rest is ours." Salar district in Wardak province lies 80km south of Kabul. The Kandahar-Kabul passing through it is a major supply line for United States and Nato troops. Like the Baghdad-Fallujah road, it is littered with holes from improvised explosive devices and carcasses of burnt-out Nato supply trucks and containers....
Hemmet is a Taliban veteran who started fighting against the Northern Alliance forces in the mid-Nineties, when he was 17. He went into hiding after the capital fell, becoming the commander of the Salar district after the previous leader died three years ago. "Against the Northern Alliance we fought face to face. This war is more difficult, the enemy controls the skies and they have many weapons. Sometimes I am scared. But we yearn for fighting the kafirs [unbelievers]. It's a joyful thing."
Mullah Muhamadi, one of Hemmet's men, arrives wearing a long leather jacket and big turban. "This is not just a guerrilla war, and it's not an organised war with fronts," he said. "It's both. "When we control a province we must provide service to the people. We want to show them we can rule, and we are ready for when we take over Kabul, that we have learned from our mistakes." Muhamadi said his group aimed to carry out about three attacks a week, but they did not always have enough ammunition. "Each area has a different strategy. Here it's attacking the main road, but everywhere in this province the countryside is in our control."
He said the Taliban's main problems were bandits and land disputes, and that in solving them "we win the hearts of the people". "We went from the jihad to the government and now we are in the jihad again. We have learned from our mistakes. The leaders are the same but the fighters are new and they don't want to be like those who ruled and made mistakes."
"I convince them that the Taliban are coming. We use all the facilities we have, our words and our pens to recruit for the movement, in the university, the bazaar and everywhere in the city." The irony is that he is using the freedom of speech provided by the Afghan government. "There is free speech now and we are not scared of the government. We work cautiously, we talk to the people as if we are talking about political and daily issues. The government is too weak to monitor us."