Embedded with the Taliban
Award-winning Afghan journalist, Najibullah Quraishi, was in northern Afghanistan shooting footage for a different PBS Frontline documentary when he was approached by a fan who said he’d be willing to get him “an interview or a comment from the Taliban.” Two months later, Quraishi found himself near the border with Tajikistan, with veteran and young mujahideen from throughout Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Uzbekistan and Chechnya, belonging to the Hezb-i-Islami group.
He spent a week embedded with the men as they crossed rivers, built makeshift bombs, argued on their cell phones over logistics and even set up roadside IEDs that, in the end, failed to explode and kill their targets. The video (which can be viewed online) gives an unprecedented and human view of the day-to-day operations of these “hapless Afghan bombers”, as The Guardian UK calls them, and shows how far some reporters can and will go to show us the other side of the story.
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