Hints and tips:
...The Talibs [then] . . . say: ‘Are you going to take responsibility for security of Kabul now? . . ....
...I’m here. I’m here for my people and my country. It’s nothing political. I’m so happy I’m here. That’s it.”...
Hardline views of new generation run contrary to image leaders of the movement hope to portray
...“The Talibs are . . . a very strong and cohesive movement to the outside world, but internally there are a lot of fractures,” said an international official....
...A Talib whose hair was longer than mine asked the driver to roll down the window. He pointed at me out of the corner of his eye and asked who I was....
...I said I’m Fawad and I’m a shopkeeper,” he said. “I got another phone call saying ‘you are Khalid and it is our obligation to kill you’....
...But Afghanistan is a high-risk environment where Talibs hit by sanctions oversee government departments....
...“Even at the end, we had an agreement with the Talibs for [them] not to enter Kabul,” he said....
...And I told him, you know, you might laugh or say I’m crazy, but I spent $40,000 on this, and I have an idea. I’m gonna turn him into a rapper, and I’m gonna call him Spottie WiFi....
...The regime rightly continues to go unrecognised by the world, and senior Talibs face international sanctions. Hyperinflation and a collapsing payments system mean the economy is on its knees....
...One afternoon in Faizabad last week, heavily armed Talibs used thick leather belts to beat back hundreds of people trying to secure bags of flour and pulses from a distribution warehouse....
...Instead of lynching ex-presidents, delegations of portly Talibs have called on Hamid Karzai, Ghani’s predecessor as president, for drawing-room discussions about the creation of an “inclusive Islamic government...
...“The Talib who is now doing my job keeps calling me to say I will be safe and I should come and tell him what needs to be done,” he said. “But they are not honest. We are not safe....
...I’m still hazy about what it means!)...
...After entering Afghanistan and displacing the Taliban regime, the western coalition excluded the Talibs from power and politics....
...The group appointed Naseebullah Haqqani, a masters-educated Talib, as chief executive of the cricket board....
...Women hardly commute and Talibs patrol with guns which people find intimidating,” said a journalist whose father was killed by the Taliban this year....
...The Islamists have mounted a social media offensive, disseminating peaceful scenes and a senior Talib kissing a baby....
...“The problem is that the Americans have taken away all the rich Afghans,” said the portly Talib with a greying beard....
...Saleh, Afghanistan’s vice-president who also left the country and whom many predict will mount armed resistance, was defiant after his departure: “I will never, ever & under no circumstances bow to d [sic] Talib...
...I’m driven away in my host’s armoured car. I pass soldiers sitting glumly in the back of Humvees and pickup trucks....
...When I asked about it, he sent me a link to a Facebook video in which two Talibs in shalwar kameez danced in circles, vests carrying bullets, rifles strapped across their bodies and sandals....
...“I’m afraid.”...
...Naimah Talib, a politics lecturer at University of Canterbury, said the sentencing brought enormous relief to the Muslim community in Christchurch....
...The alumni include several Nobel Prize winners in science, high-ranking public officials such as Eric Holder, the former US attorney-general, prominent artists such as rapper Talib Kweli and astrophysicist...
International Edition