>> just an hours drive from kabul, is charkh district, afghanistan. as the us and nato prepares to pull out most of their forces later this year,

i travelled here to try to see what life is like in areas of afghanistan under the rule of the taliban. after days of negotiations, through intermediaries - i was told i would be allowed in, with a camera. >> i'm actually quite nervous and the reason is that five years ago when i tried to embed with a group of insurgents in helmand i was kidnapped and i was held for a week. i was lucky and managed to escape from them but still i don't hope that i will end up in the same situation. >> this sort of access is incredibly rare... its also risky - this is taliban country. >> charkh is a cluster of dusty settlements surrounding a small, central town.

the taliban of charkh were burying their dead. >> one of the two taliban fighters killed in an attack on a local afghan army base. a lot of inhabitants from this village in charkh have gathered today. >> they're here to pay their respects. they're here also to mourn, and also show that they are proud. >> the dead man's father was amongst the mourners.

>> many of the dead fighter's comrades were there, including 17-year-old ehsanullah, who also took part in the attack. after the funeral was over, i followed him as he went to meet a friend. i asked him to tell me what motivates young men here to fight for a movement like the taliban

>> from what i was told, the taliban in charkh are mostly recruited from the 40,000 people who live in the district. >> the taliban are feared across many parts of afghanistan - and especially outside predominantly pashtun regions. before they were toppled from power in 2001, and like other groups during afghanistan's civil war, they committed horrendous massacres against civilians. when they ruled afghanistan, they imposed an extreme

interpretation of sharia's law, and provided a safe haven for osama bin laden and his al qaeda network to operate from. but in the time that i was in charkh, although it was impossible to know who in these communities supported the taliban, and who didn't, i witnessed what appeared to be, on the surface at least, civilians and taliban co-existing. >> the taliban recognize that they could only go so far as far as the want if they have the support of the population because they are from the communities in which they are fighting - they rely on the local population to give them shelter to give them food, they rely on them for funds sometimes in terms of raising local taxes and so they need to win the hearts and minds of locals to be able to fight nato or the afghan forces. >> over the several days that i spent in charkh, it was obvious that the taliban here control

the area. while i was allowed to film openly, most of the time there was a taliban minder with me, so it was impossible to know how honest the people felt they could be. >> villagers in places like logar are really in a tough spot. they're not likely one to offer i think very honest opinions when they are on camera and there is a great deal of intimidation on either side, if you had nato forces standing there next to them, i think they would also happily say that we're very pleased to have the westerners here as well.

>> my impression was that most people just wanted to get on with their lives, whoever was in control of charkh as long as it wasn't foreign forces. despite a member of the taliban looking over my shoulder, one older man seemed to agree.

>> the taliban is not just waging a military war against the afghan government - it was becoming apparent that in chrakh at least, they were engaged in a pr campaign too. allowing me in to film was doubtlessly part of that. when i arrived in charkh, i had asked the taliban to allow me to film them as they governed the area. i was told i could follow a senior taliban cleric - mullah fazil rahim mujahid. with the camera rolling, he listened to a widow lodging a complaint against her stepsons.

>> its thought that one of the reasons that the taliban has been able to increase its support in rural parts of afghanistan is that they have implemented the sharia courts sytem - in a place where there was either no law, or the legal system was corrupt. >> from an afghan point of view, particularly from those afghans who are living in the war zone it's actually a very welcome alternative to no law at all. the taliban courts do have a reputation for being much more fair than the government courts. that doesn't mean that the taliban courts are incorruptible. compared to the government courts this is actually a much more effective system.

>> but what is also true is that examples of justice by the tailiban's sharia court system have been brutal. adulterers stoned to death, hands are cut off. even recent reports of beheadings have surfaced. what i was invited to see was a more mundane case - inside the local mosque, the clerics allowed me to film a case of a man trying to claim an unpaid debt. >> before the next case began, i asked the plaintiff why he had

chosen to bring his case in a taliban, rather than government court. >> the defendant in this case was a taliban member himself. he had bought some birds from the plaintiff on credit, but was refusing to pay. >> the taliban member lost and walked off in disgust. when i challenged him, the cleric did nõt deny the extremism of the past. but he claimed theyõd learned lessons, and changed.

>> there are different interpretations of sharia law, competing interpretations. your experience of going to a sharia court will vary from village to village or from district to district. >> i think the govt judiciary system and court system is not trusted it's seen as corrupt, it's seen as distant as opposed to local, it's seen as slow. and those are all problems that when you have a local grievance and the people are all right there if through a cleric and through a mosque you can sit down and compose some kind of just settlement, people actually prefer that because they get a quick measure of justice. there's more to financial news than the ups and downs

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>> what is surprising about charkh, is that despite the taliban appearing to operate openly, they do so right under the noses of the afghan national army. i was taken by a taliban commander, leesan, to an ana base on the outskirts of town. >> from this abandoned building, he told me, the taliban would attack the base. >> they tell me that the ana soldiers they don't move outside of the base. there are 300 soldiers in the base, and the taliban they can

move freely in the area around. if they get too close they will get attacked, but as far as they stay out of approximately a 200 meter radius, they can move around in the whole area of charkh. >> leesan told me that the ana shelled civilians in response to the taliban's attacks. one taliban member brought me to meet this family. they were not, he told me, members of the taliban themselves.

>> while its impossible for me to confirm the details of what happened to this family, what is

true is that the war in afghanistan has led to the death of thousands of civilians caught in the middle - killed either by the taliban, afghan security forces or international troops. it's impossible to know the exact figures - but the un estimates that the majority of those civilian casualties are caused by the taliban. i had heard that the taliban, who had previously bombed state-run schools and murdered teachers, were now allowing them to reopen. i wanted to see what education looked like now in taliban-controlled charkh. >> at this boys-only school, there was an emphasis on religious studies, and the taliban prohibits all literature and textbooks they perceive as immoral. but i was also led into a chemistry class, and another

class where the students were learning math. i asked the teacher a few questions. >> before i arrived in charkh, i had heard that some taliban leaders had softened their stance on girls' being educated in state schools. >> when they held power, the taliban severely restricted girls' education and shut down a a majority of the schools, mainly because of their opposition to co-education. during the insurgency, female students were attacked, teachers sometimes killed.

now, in charkh, under pressure to appease the local population, and as they look to regain more power in the country, they have allowed some education for the town's girls. >> there are some local taliban groups who are beginning to grapple with these issues because they recognize that they need the support of the population. also there is a lot of resistance from conservative elements and traditional elements to the idea of girls been educated beyond puberty. you have to keep in mind that in the countryside girls are still being married off at the age of 13 or 14 and so it's very unrealistic to expect the taliban to do any differently in this regard. >> they need to change that narrative to win more public support. so allowing girls education and i think basically it's a tactic to try to be more accommodating toward the local population. but given the taliban's history and their ideology, i don't have any confidence that what it really means in their attitude towards girls. i 'd have a hard time believing

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>> break though investigative documentary series america's war workers only on al jazeera america >> the taliban was planning another attack against the afghan national army. >> while he was waiting for the fighters to gather, i asked the taliban commander - leesan - about how he felt about killing fellow afghans. >> i asked him if the taliban today was changing its approach.

>> i was driven to the outskirts of town to film a large gathering of over a hundred taliban fighters. this was undoubtedly a show of strength for the camera. and a reminder why so many are concerned about what will happen when the nato troops withdraw later this year.

>> as you can see, some of the commanders are planning their attack today. they're planning to attack an afghan national army base. >> the key us war aim was to prevent al qaeda from being able to operate out of afghanistan. before they went on their raid, i asked them whether they would renounce ties with al qaeda - something that the taliban's leadership has so far refused to do.

>> being present at a gathering of armed taliban in these numbers was terrifying - this was a potentially a prime target for a us drone strike. as you can see, the taliban fighters operate in broad daylight in the district of charkh. the ana base is not far from here but they don't fear any attacks from them and they move all around the city without fearing them. i was told the roads would be closed and the area sealed off by government forces after the attack. it was time for me to leave charkh. >> when the us and nato withdraws most of its troops from afghanistan, the taliban

will, despite over a decade of war, still be here. the key question is what will happen on the ground after the draw-down? the answer might be that i've already seen it - it's basically already happening. a fight for power - on the battlefield with bullets and in the towns and villages, for local support. >> what is likely is this sort of thing continuing for the next four or five, six seven years,. areas in which the taliban have de facto control surrounding small afghan outposts and continuing to fight perhaps not a lot of territory changing hands. and as always civilians will be caught up in the middle >> and so what we're most likely going to see is a stalemate, two sides fighting each other with not one side winning which is not a good thing for peace.

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