I am an independent journalist. My writing favors neither the Taliban nor the Afghan government. But to secure this interview I had to tell the young Taliban that I wanted everyone to know about his jihad. The Taliban only grant interviews if they feel confident that they will be presented in a positive light.

The Taliban posed for me and I took a few pictures. He tried his best to look tough in the photos. I learned that he was visiting some relatives in Tarinkot but that he was based in Darosh, an area about four kilometers outside of the city. The garage where we met belonged to his family.

I did not press him with too many questions, because I knew I would not get much out of him and I worried about alarming him and possibly making him turn on me.

A veil of calm prevails in the city of Tarinkot these days—which is not to say that instability and danger are not omnipresent. I have learned that many Taliban militants have siblings, uncles, aunts, and cousins all over town.

The militants come secretly during the night and hide weapons and explosives in safe houses like the one where I met the young Taliban. Then they leave in the daytime to return to their strongholds in the villages.

The people who live in Tarinkot know all about this. They know exactly who is a Taliban and who is a policeman. They know the families of these people and their political loyalties. It is all common knowledge. But residents of Tarinkot are reluctant to share this knowledge with outsiders due of a general sense of mistrust.

Most people here have come to believe that the foreign troops will leave sooner or later. It’s only a matter of time. Yet, nobody knows what will happen then. Will the Afghan government fall? Will the Taliban take over?

I like what one of my friends from Tarinkot told me: “The Taliban are not going to go away. It would be unrealistic to think that the government or the foreign troops are going to defeat them militarily. But the Taliban could turn into something different. They could evolve. I hope one day they will join the government and integrate with our police and military forces.” I agree with my friend. I also hope that one day the Taliban will change.

While driving through Shah Wali Kot district, in the northernmost part of Kandahar province, I saw many bomb craters in the road. It was clearly the work of the Taliban. Day by day, their roadside bombs are becoming more frequent and powerful. At one point I drove past the twisted remains of a Canadian armored personnel carrier. I even caught a glimpse of dried blood on the metal chassis.

I was scared. I could not stop thinking: “If the Taliban stop me they are going to arrest me. Or maybe they will kill me.” I tried to drive as fast as I could on the narrow road.

When I arrived in the Chinarto area of Uruzgan province I stopped briefly to pick up a friend who was also going to Tarinkot. We would continue the trip together.

My friend showed me the site where a coalition air strike had hit a wedding ceremony. He said that on this occasion the bombardments had killed more than 250 people, including men, women, and children. There is no way to confirm the accuracy of this figure but I did see a large number of white flags hanging over the graves of the deceased in a nearby cemetery.

After a few kilometers, I saw a downed helicopter, with pieces of metal scattered all around it. My friend told me that the Taliban had shot it down with a rocket-propelled grenade and that all the soldiers on board had died in the crash. I did not say anything but I thought to myself: “What is this place? There is death and destruction everywhere. I have come to hell!”

I looked at the men I saw along the road and they were all dressed just like the Taliban. There was absolutely no way of telling who was a civilian and who was a militant. In these villages, regular people and Taliban guerrillas wear exactly the same clothing and black turbans. I was not surprised. Mullah Omar is from Uruzgan after all. This is Taliban land. But I did feel apprehensive, because the Taliban are very suspicious of outsiders.

Finally, we arrived in Tarinkot, Uruzgan’s provincial capital. As we drove through town I noticed that the policemen were not wearing uniforms. They were all in plain clothes. Some of the policemen were just teenagers with guns. I was appalled. I turned to my friend and asked him: “These are the policemen here?” He nodded without saying a word.

I sighed and braced myself for my stay in Uruzgan province. In the next few days I will update you on my experiences and I will report what people tell me. Wish me good luck.

The professor had asked us to think about recurrent themes in the songs produced by emerging bands, and a lively discussion ensued. Some of the most common refrains in the music from Juárez are demands for justice and peace, as well as opposition and rejection of corrupt state institutions, like the police and the army. Yet, I told myself that as long as we sing there is hope.

As I drove from my university to a friend’s house, I began to sing a song about a young girl from Juárez. She was killed by a stray bullet, as the traffickers’ hired guns mowed down some poor devil in the street. It happened only four blocks from where I live, a few months ago. I sang the reprise out loud while driving: “When will the agony end? When will peace finally come?”

I slowed down at a stop sign on one of the streets behind City Hall and I saw a car driving up to the S.U.V. right behind me. I looked in my rear-view mirror and noticed that this car had two passengers, one at the wheel and one in the backseat. How strange, I thought. Then the one in the back lowered his window, pulled out a gun, aimed it at the driver of the S.U.V. behind me, and started shooting.

I will never forget the moment the man rolled down the window, the loud blasts from his pistol, and the agonizing face of the man in the S.U.V. It’s all so vivid in my memory, as if it had just happened. I remember leaning down under the steering wheel and holding my hands against the door. I thought I was going to die too.

A few seconds later the S.U.V. that had just been shot up bumped into me. The driver had lost conscience and his foot was pressing the accelerator. My vehicle jerked forward and bumped into the pick-up truck in front of me. I pressed the breaks and lifted my head to see what was happening. The S.U.V. continued slamming into me. The driver looked dead. Meanwhile, the pick-up in front of me was already fleeing the scene. I got up, and saw smoke billowing from my tires. I released the break pedal, steered the wheel to turn around, and freed myself from the thrusts of the dead man’s S.U.V. As soon as I was out of its way, the S.U.V. shot ahead at full speed. I watched it hit three more cars before it crashed into the guardrail.

I stopped and got off my vehicle. I was shaking and feeling disoriented, but I still had that man’s face in my mind. I could see his eyes as the bullets hit him.

When I lifted my head again I saw that several people had gathered next to the S.U.V. I could not believe my eyes when I saw them pull out a baby. It was alive. I knew it because it crying and screaming. Then the police arrived.

A few policemen walked up to me and questioned me. They asked absurd, useless questions. I left as soon as I could. But even now that I am home I cannot stop thinking of that man’s face when the bullets hit him. I see the whole scene in slow motion. I can almost hear his cry.

Later that day I found out that there was another passenger in the car. Her name was Lesley Enríquez, and she was an employee of the U.S. Consulate here in Juárez. Her husband, Arthur Redelfs, was the driver, the man whose eyes I could not forget. I learned that he was a detention officer in the El Paso County Jail, in Texas.

As I write this article, I feel hopeless. How could anyone look at that baby girl who just lost her parents and tell her that there is still hope? I remember the assassinations of my university professors, Manuel Arroyo and Alfonso Martínez, and the 15 teenagers who were massacred at a birthday party last January in the colonia Villa de Salvarcar. I think of all the people who died in this stupid war, the innocent and the guilty, and I tell myself that we must do something to stop it.

I am writing to bring attention to the violence that is plaguing my city. I am writing because we are alone here. We are in the hands of incompetent public authorities, and at the mercy of ruthless and highly organized drug trafficking cartels.

The president of Mexico, the military, the federal police, and the municipal police, should all be ashamed. I hope they read this and start doing their job.

I want to be free. I want to live without fear. I want to feel safe walking in the streets of my home city. I want to live in peace again. That peace that was stolen from me and from my fellow citizens, I want it back.

When the Taliban were in power, before the United States invaded and occupied Afghanistan, I remember talking about politics with my friends.

We would ask ourselves how we could ever live a normal life with such a radical and isolationist government, and we struggled to find answers. In those days, I believed nothing would change in Afghanistan until the death of Mullah Omar. I never imagined that the Taliban could lose power so suddenly.

Even today, I cannot believe how fast we transitioned to a new government, and how much has changed in my country since then. But in spite of all the development and the reconstruction projects, I myself feel lonely. And many of my Pashtun brothers feel lonely too.

President Karzai is a Pashtun, but he is not a real Pashtun. He is a Westernized Pashtun, who has little credibility here in the South. Moreover, his government is dominated by Tajik and Uzbek warlords who committed many heinous crimes against the Pashtun people during Afghanistan’s long years of civil war. This is why so many Pashtuns today are joining the Taliban insurgency.

The only way the West can end the war in Afghanistan is to convince the Pashtun people that the world is not against them. But for this to happen, the Pashtun people need to see an Afghan government that truly represents them.

We don’t need sham elections. We need honest leaders who care about us. We don’t need war and Predator drones overhead. We need a serious commitment to peace and national reconciliation, and representatives in the Afghan government that know where we are coming from and the situation we are living in.

It all started when someone began calling me on my cell phone from a blocked number. Then I noticed a man following me on the street. I don’t know who this person is but he keeps following me and harassing me.

As if this were not bad enough, someone must have seen this man following me, and thinking I was having an affair went and told my father so. This is absolutely not true. I only go out to go to school and to go to work and wild people instead of helping me want to spread rumors about me, ruining my life!

My father told me I shouldn’t go to school or to work for some time. I’m afraid he believes those rumors about me. Now I’m scared of everything, even of living. Sometimes I’m so overwhelmed I just go blank.

I wish I were a boy. I wish I were a boy so I could defend myself and defend my family. I don’t know what to do anymore. I want to get out of Afghanistan.

I only have one choice in front of me and that is to get married to someone who is living abroad. But I also want to be a good daughter and I want to serve my parents. I know I have to be an adult. I have to study and gain knowledge and make my parents proud of having a child like me.

I am the eldest child and I don’t want to leave without serving my family, my people. When I look at all the obstacles I face, though, I fear my dreams will not be fulfilled. Destiny is weighing down on me so heavily that I can’t make any decision.

Sometimes I think of what the NGOs and the international community have done for Afghans, and how they supported and empowered many of our women. But is there any kind of help for me? Readers, could you please advise me on how I could have my rights protected here in Afghanistan? And if that is not possible, how can I get out of Afghanistan? I know can’t live like this anymore. I need a way out.

We hugged and greeted each other because that’s part of our culture. Then I admitted to the man that I honestly could not recognize him.

He laughed and said that in fact we had never met before and that this was his first visit to my house. He told me he was the son of L.A. (I cannot reveal the actual name for security reasons, but I understood that this man was a cousin of mine who lives in the Nadali district of Helmand).

I asked him what he was up to and he replied that he was heading to Quetta, Pakistan, in order to visit a doctor because he was very sick.

As I said, my cousin was really tall but I also noticed that he was very skinny too. He told me he had been having chest pains and that he had trouble lifting heavy things, even though as a farmer he always had to lift one thing or another.

My cousin told me he had just arrived from Helmand, and that 4,000 U.S. troops had been operating in Nadali district and in the surrounding areas, including Marja, Disho, Gramsir and Khanisheen. He told me that there were 15 U.S. checkpoints in Nadali alone.

Not knowing about the structure of the U.S. military or of the differences between the Army and Marines Corps, he called them all Americans. He claimed that in spite of the presence of so many American soldiers and Afghan National Army troops, 70% of Nadali district remained under Taliban control. He said that when the Taliban come under pressure, they just hide their weapons somewhere in the ground and walk away as if they were farmers, but as soon as they see an opportunity to attack they dig up their weapons and are ready to fight.

According to my cousin, the overall Taliban strategy has changed, because they have learned that if they engage directly with American troops, the Americans will quickly call for air support, and sometimes in a matter of a few minutes there will be fighter jets and helicopter gun-ships overhead.

My cousin went on to explain that there are approximately 10 to 15 bomb-making teams in Nadali district. The Taliban know that bombs are very effective against U.S. troops. If the Taliban are able to get to the site of a blast immediately after an explosion, they collect body parts of American soldiers, which they then hang over their motorbikes and cars to show to local residents that they have killed foreign troops.

As a resident of Nadali, my cousin said that he knows that if he ever hears an explosion or fighting, he must immediately run into his house or into someone else’s house because when the Americans come under attack they start shooting everyone close to them, including farmers, shopkeepers, and young boys.

He described how on the 27th of July 2009, U.S. troops killed two farmers while they were irrigating their fields in Nisar Ahmad Charahi, north of Nadali’s district center.

People of the area were very angry about this incident, particularly because the Americans boast about their satellite technology that enables them to see even small objects from several kilometers away. Why then were they unable to see that the two farmers were just watering their land?

I asked my cousin why he and his family have not left Nadali district for a safer part of Afghanistan, at least for a while. He answered that in the end, people do not flee their villages because they believe that the war is not going to last a few days but several years and so they do not want to abandon their family homes.