A day with the Taliban 2.0

After the last American soldier left, Al Jazeera’s Osama Bin Javaid was the first to report from outside of Kabul.

The Taliban fighter waited for us behind the barbed wire at the end of the long, narrow metal walkway that is the only path for pedestrians crossing the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

He greeted us with a smile, clutching his shiny M16 rifle, emblazoned with the words “property of US govt”. A few hours earlier, the last American soldier had left Afghanistan.

I, a cameraman and a producer were the first international news crew to have crossed into the country by land since the Taliban had taken over Kabul on August 15, and we would become the first to report from outside the capital.