Afghanistan: Life after the Taliban
42 minutes, 2001
Ref: 45tvc

The same day that the corpses of four murdered journalists were sent home, our team entered the country through Torkham. Their destination was Jalalabad, deep inside Pathan territory. Most Taliban are Pathans, Afghanistan's largest ethnic group. The team arrived in Jalalabad just a week after the Taliban had fled. The programme shows a slow, painful recovery to some kind of normality. But the streets are still thronged with armed men. Meanwhile, the Americans continue to bomb Bin Laden's hiding holes just 40 kilometres away. Our cameras filmed Al-Qaeda base just hours before it was bombed by US planes. Returning the next day to check the damage, the locals asked us if we were American spies. Jalalabad is deeply conservative and in a Pathan area. The women still wear the "burka". The new masters in the city are the same ones as five years ago, before the arrival of the Taliban. People still remember the bloody civil war after the Soviet withdrawal. Not surprisingly, fear hangs heavy in the air. Our reporters interviewed people who had witnessed Taliban atrocities at first hand and spoke to Taliban prisoners held in a granary. Our cameras also captured the re-birth of the city as music and women's faces returned to Jalalabad's streets.