From a New York Times, I'm likeable borrow this- is a deal in his final days as present. Donald Trump is pro missing to withdraw as many american troops as possible from Afghanistan all but guarantee a major place for the Taliban in the country's future. Today, as that new chapter begins in Afghanistan, my colleague Mood Jean Michel on what he's learned from living with and reporting on the Taliban for the past twenty five years.

it's Wednesday November. Eighteen. Would you tell me about some of your earliest memories of growing up in Afghanistan? I think some of my earliest memories is my grandpa visiting our home. Then cobble often he lives in different parts of the city and he had a hurricane. He was a tall man and he loved walking every time you. that our home and you would knock on the door with his cane. You would be you know a moment of joy for us will run to the door. But this was period where

daily reality of the city was just the sound and the destruction of rocket soon and in the house we lived in. We had a small garden where my dad would grow vegetables when he would come back for work, one of those rock islanded, as he was watering, the flowers and vegetables in the backyard well, and we had this apple tree right in the middle, the backyard and we're lucky, because the rocky a kind of cut through that apple free and had landed and went through the soft dirt and it didn't explode. But I remember very clearly for years after that, my dad would pour water into that spot. Where the shell had gone in thinking, they would arrest the shell, anyone explodes it almost became part of his backyard garden in was going on in the country. That explained these terrifying expired is that are happening in your backyard. Who was behind US citizens

The early. Ninety nine, these there's a power vacuum. The soviet Union that are invaded Afghanistan has just pulled out, and all these guerrilla factions that were funded by the CIA As part of this larger cold war rivalry to fight the soviets are now fighting each other over the power vacuum so cobble. The capital city is divided into little fiefdoms by these guerrilla factions and their firing rockets on each other. but as a kid we didn't know if these bigger dynamics, what I was experiencing was largely just a sound and the horror of the Rockets and the law. Oh excitement that we had during the day was a couple hours and evening would get electricity power would come, and then people would switch on their television and will you switch on the television? be recitation of the Koran and

It would be the national anthem. and then they would go into a children's programmes. Most days, and not it was say, show about three was a rabbit and the rabbit was chasing carried in. I dont really remember the plot of the story, but I just remember in the daily teen in all the chaos. This was a moment of sort of laughter and color and normal is right, but that didn't last long thing I was seven or eight when it ended, and why was that what had happened? It was nineteen, ninety, six and one of the guerrilla groups, the Taliban moved into the capital. They were a force that did not believe

Eve and televisions and music and made any visuals and quickly any idea of television and things like TAT was gone? They literally turned it off. They turn it on And who were the Taliban to you What did you understand about them in this moment? So we felt the changes immediately, One thing I remember was there is a constant fear. of being raided. If you had a television or their music hard from your home, so you either destroyed the television that you had. Burn the photo albums or you found ways to bury them to hide them. my dad, I remember he had a collection of cassettes. He had favorites fingers at you, listen to and he took his cassettes. He took the television. He took the photo albums up the stairs diesel

attic we had, and he kind of put it all there and then at the end of the stairs, sealed the attic with war, and it was it was so Yes, you, it wasn't a great disguise really, but that is the best he could think of and then cool? I remember the subjects all of a sudden changed. Certain subjects were completely dropped. Like geography withdraw, There is multiple religious subjects that was added and some of the teachers for those religious subjects were early officials of the Taliban government, because they would arrive in cars, hours, Revalue air back then, and there and around noon. Everybody would be filed into decided Torreon where the noon prayer would happen and one youngest teacher. He would lead the prayers and the prayers supposed to be something focused were

looking at anyone, but, as you would bend over as you do in a muslim prayer Amber we would all be focused on his gun. gun would be strapped to his side. The other thing was my sister suddenly not being able to go to school. I have one sister and she was older than me, and I think she was in six grade and she was top prefer class, although six years since she continued studying at home, initially thinking this was a temporary thing right. What system, what government in their right mind would completely stopped? girls from going to school, but quickly the sense dawned on her that she may never get a chance to go back to school. And how do you remember people talking about these changes? People like you're, your parents, your answer, uncles, the adults in your life immediately. If we go back to their context,

a capital, city and anarchy, the daily reality being rockets. Being looting where their multiple forces inside the city in that context initially the Taliban was this force that brought an end to the anarchy and end the rockets that people didn't fear losing their lives any moment, then, all of a sudden at night you could leave your gate open and nobody dared come into your home to steal anything that all of a sudden, you felt like those order in the city, but they brought all of that at a enormous cost through terror and fear.

on the streets. You would see the Taliban around prayer time where they were forcibly lash people to the mosques. If somebody was caught stealing their hand was chopped in front of a pact stadium at the half time of a soccer game, you were at their mercy, they said, tone for how you lived your life. So how long does this period of profound trade offs that you just walked through? How long does that last at the time? The feeling was this was permanent. They had ninety five percent of the country under their control, but the end of it came really unexpectedly Osama Bin Laden who had orchestrated the attacks of September eleven two thousand one was living in Afghanistan. He was a guest of the Taliban right and once been login and all kinds carried,

those attacks in New York, the? U S, invaded and the bombing of the city started again and what was that time like free? At a time when the United States around in Afghanistan and begins this enormous invasion I remember when the air strikes started. School still continued and as a kid Then I knew very well that from the sky above, the plane will not be able to. a gathering of the Taliban and a gathering of students wearing turbaned, so I just distinctly number, the turban was part of the school uniform, but I would have tucked under my arm until the last minute of entering the classroom, where I really had to wear Then in the evenings? I remember in the darkness of the city we get on the roof to try to sort of estimate what part of the city was hit because you could see the fire

to know whether we knew a relative or family member, the live close to that area right, whether we should worry or not in school. I remember, there's nervousness in the same teachers and principles were seen. All of a sudden. Those meetings at the auditorium do be chance of death and then there was talk of how, with faith and wood Islam we're gonna. defeat this global military might, but the resistance didn't last long. It only took a couple weeks the Taliban to realise that this air force in particular was nothing like they had seen both were they start running pretty quickly, their one morning. We woke up and they were gone he day just packed up and left the city I remember for couple days my dad didn't really believe it, so he did

tear down the wall, to bring out his cassettes to bring out the television. But then we finally convince them. I just remember it was us kids begging him, it's gone, it's done We should bring how TAT television and our idea was that once you bring other television, you plug it into electricity and you turn it on. You go back to the same, showed so just as quickly as the Taliban arrives and is a total fact of life. It is suddenly just gone. Yes, is established pretty quickly, hot the streets when the music came back and when the barbershops were flooded, just peace, getting shaves in and the beards being gone. all of a sudden. The world's attention focuses on this deprived war. Torn

country dozens of nations come in there when, after embassies, the open up their purses government is in loser minorities come into the government. Women are ministers, schools open up, is a period of opportunities, and for me personally into doesn't three. I get a scholarship to go, studying mess uses in high school and what I was leaving the energy on the ground at that time was. This is the new beginning for Afghanistan, and this is a country under road for democratic, fair, just governance and prosperity and the Taliban They don't have a place in their future. All the way back. recently, you may have been wondering how can I help strengthen?

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learn more at I share sought com, slash core, I'm Bianca gave her I'm an audio producer at the New York Times. So shortly after the corona virus pandemic began, we talked to a twelve year old, named Tilly, whose grandfather had just died of corona virus. She was so open an emotional about her grandfather. She wanted to remember him and tell the story of his life the fact that its part of my job to call children to hear what they think about the news to hear about how the news is affecting them is incredibly special and that episode is fur anyone whose grieving or whose lost someone in this pandemic were able to make up. So it's like that one because of subscribers to the New York Times. So, if you can, please subscribed to the New York Times. The daily is the New York Times

thank you would you we know that, of course the Taliban does not go away. It starts to re emerge and I wonder how you experience that during your time in the United States, the years I was a student, the United States. I would go back home to my family over the summers. and in the first few years the Taliban occasion we would come up in the news. You know they were launched, small attack somewhere and far away district, It was really part of essential conversation, but as the years passed, it felt that the group is growing stronger. They went to safe havens across the border in Pakistan. They regrouped.

They came back so by two thousand and twelve. When I return as a rapporteur to cobble, he was very very clear that there were challenging the existence of this new democratic system that the Americans were bankrolling. As rapporteur on the ground, we felt them in the frequency of the suicide attacks. We covered couple times a week more than that they will be bombings across the city really bring. bombings and enable just grow in size and in carnage. One time they packed sewage struck explosives and they detonated pretty closer office. I was driving to write their morning And when I arrived, the desk, where I work at had been Flung in the windows were smashed and it just kept growing closer and closer to home. Where

the feeling is a resident of the city as Rapporteur was that if I would be stuck in traffic not- and they will be a truck in front of me- the fear about my heartbeat would go up because anything any moment could explode in front of your eyes and there nothing you can do about it, out of your home. You were on the front line. so at this point, how are you adult reporter thinking about the Taliban? Are they the means of Afghanistan? Are they in some sense rulers thrown from power trying to claw their way back as all powers to try to do? Are they terrorists to you like How are you categorizing them in your head? I'm seeing them as all those things, because

as a rapporteur. I know there is a back story to the carnage. There is an ideology to it. There's a story to it right. The trouble is that their leaders are hiding in safe havens in Pakistan there avoiding interviews and their fighters. The time we see them usually is their dead bodies so you don't have as much access to their thinking, but that started changing in two thousand and thirteen, and why is that remind us what happens in twenty eight, in so by twenty eight in the Taliban have grown into a force to be reckoned with have presence in large parts of the country and the loss of daily life is creating the sense of hopelessness and despair.

The war is bloody, stalemate and the? U S comes to a realisation that, despite growing an afghan security forces by supporting them, what air strikes, it can really defeat the Taliban militarily. The Taliban adjust stubborn. So the? U S decides to open direct talks with the Taliban in Doha, That's an opening for me to travel to Doha and to start meeting some of these shadowy figures that had been impossible for us to access for so long to get a sense of how they feel about this conflict. Would you, as you covered these negotiations? I wonder what was going through your head, because these are people who took a lot from you and everyone around you, and so.

I know, as a journalist you're there to cover them in their official capacity. But I wonder what was going through your hard azure sitting across and I'm talking to them. Is there a temptation to tat kind of confront them? Of course, there's two things. One is yes here. I am for the first time sitting across from people in whose name a lot of carnage happened, that these big bombing happen that that have actually cured friends. Colleagues, that I know so, yes, the anger is there, but as the rapporteur covering a war with multiple brutal sides, I've learned to try to keep some of those emotion in check and would also help to us. These characters whose names I knew, and I remember one afternoon in Doha, I was walking around the hotel where the negotiations are happening in

This one middle aged taller, boring turban, was standing at the edge of the shore line looking at the water in Doha, and I walked up to him and struck a conversation and as he was telling me about how the negotiations were going, he paused and then he said well, I won't be in trouble because probably don't know who I am anyways Isaac. Actually, I think I know your name, and he said who am I and when I mentioned what ministry he led. He started laughing and he just smacked my knee and he said earlier your clever one, and then he said how do you know like well when I was a kid I lived under your government and on the national independence Day. We would march in the state and you would be the vip area watching our parade, but this twenty years later now and an as Q as I was about how they are fighting this war, he starts asking me

questions you just bombarding you a lot of questions about how I've got a son has changed, and then he started asking me some questions about Taliban fighters around Kabul and some of the ways ask me questions made me wonder how oh, he knew those fighters are fighting in his name, and I realized really quickly that he's disconnected from a reality that has developed over twenty years when he was hiding in safe havens in Pakistan and to me that was very, very telling, because the Taliban leadership sitting in Doha, who are negotiating a peace deal, were actually elderly graybeards who had been out of the battlefield for twenty years, or so they were people who had experienced the chaos after the Soviet withdraw and they came with

a bit of pragmatism, realizing that there was a pews burden of responsibility on their shoulders to avoid Afghanistan, link into another power vacuum again, but the main leverage they have is the fighting force on the ground. So this doubt I had of how well he knows how well he is aware of of The evolution of that force made clearly important. that I need to meet face to face with this. The generation of Taliban fighters and understand the fighters and the views and and the expected of the fighter who are the real muscle at dinner the day it is the fighter The ground that matter in terms of whether this war ends, Peacefully or whether this country breaks into another civil war

How do you actually go about meeting these fires? So in February the? U S and the Taliban finally sign a deal and that began the american troop withdrawal and it mostly stopped the american air strikes and the Taliban. Reduced its attacks to open doors. negotiations with the afghan government over a power sharing over future government, and It is an opportunity for me to convince one of the Taliban commanders and EAST to take a stand, and let us spend some time at his fighter. so we're driving towards guy aware we're supposed to meet this Taliban fighters process has been a little difficult. We waited for several weeks actually month to get access, so does photographer Jim Holbrooke, and I, if there ever, was a window decision now. Is it

because the air strikes and our rapporteur released Abiola. We get in the car and we drive ass? My problems were meeting these fighters there's last jack birthright before a bridge worry cross into Taliban area and as the government control ends, as we drive deeper into the Taliban territory, servants. Their weapons out in the open were met in the middle of the road by their red unit, which is their most elite force and there arrived back of motorcycles, their faces are covered, their all young fires, This a similar road. We know they ve come to welcome us, and then we get out of the car to say hello in

and I'm nervous. I'm super nervous. It's one thing to sit down in a posh hotel across from the graveyard at political leaders, something else to sit down with their killers with the most ruthless of their fighters, I was going through my mind is: how do I make small talk to break the ice? Consents myself that I'm talking fast and I'm nervous- and I say hello to all of them and assume They see Jim, that he's a foreigner and resume their whole lives and that he speaks a liberal the local language they start cracking up and they start opening up of the company. they lead to their commander? There were meeting guy named Molly case. and we meet him in the middle of the bizarre who come?

out of this for our male and he does his clothes. Then he apologized- and he says I'm sorry I was busy milling some flour and he tells us That's his data. They bring oranges and some apples and than this heading we sit under. Shade of the mulberrytrees examine what for What does it really friendly normal conversation? And what does he tell you? What did you learn from him would no. I've got abundance and without an omelet go with us asked this commander and I said well the Americans, leaving you, have justified your violence by saying were fighting the foreign invaders. How do you justify killing fellow afghan fighters, who praised the same God, who read the same Koran that your habitable

mother thoroughly the angry. I give you button Sarah that he was an eloquent man when he said. Let me tell you clearly: our fight is not against the flesh and bones of foreigners. or the flesh and bones the Afghans dish moneyed among his answer that he said our fight is about. The system was Domini gateways. Elizabeth said yes, the Americans might believing, but how can we stop fighting it those in government are insisting on keeping the same corrupt government. The Koran it going from carbon capture studied the working day see therefore, As restoring their islamic way of government, I live in a moment Fighters on the ground want to resume the life of your childhood. That level of severe Taliban government exactly they want the strict interpretation of Taliban government that they were too young to

experience. They were an old enough to have memories of what that govern. Based on a rigid interpretation of Islam, look like they didn't know that the Taliban government, the Ninetys it was, it was poverty and starvation and people felt suffocated, so the disconnect here was that the younger fighters are excited about a victory to form a kind of government that in their mine, hasn't been tried before, but in fact it was tried, as the gray bearded leaders of them were more pragmatic at the top of it. they know that that was difficult to sustain

One of our last stops during this triple is we went to the cemetery. Where are the right ones? You know Jim is dotted with these graves of Taliban fighters. Why flags? On top of him- and I was staring at this vast cemetery- everyone realises I'm gonna get him. The commander case was telling me that you didn't every unit operating in their province had lost half of its men. So there's a sensitive. These paid a big price also for ideology, for wanting the return of the Taliban rule so we deserve it were entitled to it.

as we were saying goodbye to leave the province again, there's this little bit of really innocent curiosity and on part of the commander, and he can cornered me and he said well, you ve come from Doha you're bring the negotiations at this moment. I think buddy Oh my god. What do you think is hope for this process and the tone in which she was asking? What is gesture of how this fight has drain them, also soul, it was an interesting mix of resolve Entitlement victory had also cure. Exhaustion, not only in the visuals of the cemetery around them, packed with people

who were his comrades killed, but also in how and how he asked me that question whether this process to seek a peaceful end to this war was gonna led to anything which might have under the matter. So after visiting these negotiations. After talking to the Taliban leadership and in meeting with these fighters on the front lines, I won't what you're thinking might happen now to Afghanistan in this moment, do you have hope for a peaceful resolution for a compromise?

On the one hand, you see elements that could help a peaceful resolution, but what complicates that hope is the fact that, over the past several months since the negotiations started, the high it's a blush has continued and that's largely because the Taliban are refusing a ceasefire. They are initiating the attacks and what that indicates that perhaps the Taliban leaders at the top are walking such a fine line with their battlefield fighters that their struggling to sell a compromise and that perhaps the foot soldiers feel that they have sacrificed and lost so much in nineteen years and their so close to what they want. They didn't want to just allow their political leaders to make that decision for them at the table that they will,

continue their military pressure and influence till the very last minute. but the reality that creates is it continues, despair. It continues the hopelessness of for the afghan people, because, despite a start to peace talks, lives are being law, asked on daily basis. Medieval must be a strange time for you to be leaving Kabul As you are. I know your time as rapporteur in Afghanistan is coming to an end, and I mean strange, not just because of the delay Mama ran in these discussions about the role that Amber, because this is where you grew up. Yes, emotionally will now be able to disconnect from this place. This is

my family lives. This is the place is shaped me. I always feel what happens here. cobble from those days of rockets and explosions that I described is transformed into a massive crowded city of sixty seven million. There is music- There's free media. There is just the color of a happening urban centres. And this generation my generation as sort of grown in this new reality of the past twenty years My worry is whether this new foundation has been built for a vibrant reality. Will sustain will grow. But what I fear is that we may slipped back to those dark nightmares.

factional fighting in the nineties, so it is a turning moment. It's an inflection point. Let it does feel like if it's not grab right now This conflict could go on for another generation, and the fear is that, in that space is more things, only get more extreme violence only gets more. Extreme brutality is more extreme. Then, if this slips into another generational conflict, what we see over the past forty years in terms of the brutality will probably pale in comparison to what will come on. Let's all that doesn't happen, assumption.

Thank you in, and we wish you the best of luck in your next assignment. Thank you. Much Eve is leaving Afghanistan to become the South Asia correspondent for the times based in Delhi, starting in January, or very back. In a promised land, the first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama, provides a deeply personal account of history in the making. Obama reflects on the early years of his presidency.

Have a guiding the challenges facing our nation at home and abroad. He shares indelible portraits of his dedicated team, world leaders and cabinet in Congress members and also reveals his inspirations and quiet moments with family. A promised land is available wherever books and audio books are sold. visit Obama Book, TAT, calm, slash the daily for more information. Here's what else you need tenderly! On Tuesday, the leaders of three major medical associations me, American Hospital Association, the America. Medical Association and the American Nurses Association, urged present Trump to begin working with President Elect Joe Biden on a transition saying that it would save lives at the height of the pandemic. In a letter, the group said that a well planned transition, which Trump has been would ensure the smooth distribution of a vaccine and ensure that there is quote

no lapse in our ability to care for patients. At present, Trump has fired the official most responsible for the security of the election after the official Christopher Crabs repeatedly disputed trumps, false and baseless claims of election fraud. Craps, the head of the cyber security and infrastructure security agency was widely expected to be fired after publicly challenging the president. That's it for the day. I might lemme, see tomorrow in a promised land. The first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama, provides a deeply personal account of history in the making. Obama reflects on the early years of its presidency,

have a guiding the challenges facing our nation at home and abroad. He shares indelible portraits of his dedicated team, world leaders and cabinet in Congress members and also reveals his inspirations and quiet moments with family. A promised land is available wherever books and audio books are sold, Visit, Obama book dot com, slash the daily for more information