It begins with Bugles at the Gates of Jalalabad by Stephen Jeffreys. The play tells the story of the first Afghan war, which took place in the mid 19th century – one of the first major conflicts during the ‘Great Game’, the term coined to describe the power struggle in central Asia between Great Britain and Russia.

And it ends with the current bloody conflict in Afghanistan in Simon Stephens’ play Canopy of Stars, which explores the war’s impact on British soldiers and the responses of their family back home. That the opening and final stories of The Great Game focus on wars the British have fought in Afghanistan provides a sad yet beautiful framing to the play, as we see the same mistakes repeated and hear of their impact by two generations of soldiers living 150 years apart.

But the question remains; why put on such an epic play about Afghanistan? Afghanistan is the political issue of the day; our country is embroiled in a long and bloody war there, the end of which appears a long way off, and what happens in Afghanistan promises to have a massive impact on world politics for years to come. Looking at it this way, it is surprising the history and politics of the country have not been explored more by writers and artists, as for example Iraq’s have.

Politics and art have always enjoyed a special relationship; art allows us to probe our beliefs and ideas and convey them in new, interesting and creative forms. And when free political debate is stifled or silenced, art becomes the last sanctuary of expression, as people search for covert methods of communicating what they can no longer say aloud.

The Great Game tries to unpack and explore a history more hidden than visible to many in the west, and give a voice to opinions and ideas often lacking in our national ‘discussions’ on Afghanistan. In this sense it is the absolute meeting of the political and the art.

The playwrights, including Richard Bean, David Edgar, David Greig, Abi Morgan, Simon Stephens, Ron Hutchinson, Stephen Jeffreys and Colin Teevan, have delivered scripts which are politically challenging and complex and beautifully dramatic, and varied in both form and content. Each play is like a signature of the playwright exploring the history of one country but in a style unique to each, and lingering on themes of personal interest.

It is this communication and co-dependence between art and politics that inspires artists. It forces the stars to part with their egos and makes it about the experience; this is not about one playwright, one leading actor or one director but about the questions we, as a group, are asking of an audience. There is no space in The Great Game for such egos; it runs for eleven hours, in which time the audience is guided through twelve stories, each with their own characters and concerns. The same actors are used throughout, in greater or lesser roles depending on the play, creating a true ensemble experience.

In recounting the history of Afghanistan, characters and opinions are featured that are often unheard in the west. The Lion of Kabul, one of the plays within The Great Game, is a neat example. The main character is a Taliban mullah – figures much spoken about here in Britain but rarely allowed a voice. This mullah, named Kahn, asks some probing questions about how the west views Afghanistan, at one point asking: ‘Is it not our human right to reject your “freedom”? This is one human right you do not recognise.’

Some of the opinions presented may not be ones I, or the audience, agree with, but that is the point of theatre. When you stage a play you have to engage in all perspectives; the whole point is to be as objective as possible and create complex characters which are believable. We in the west are looking at the world through a western lens and our specific cultural attitudes permeate our understanding and response. When you are directing or acting you have to be as true to the characters as possible, which forces you to examine and justify a character whose opinions are not your own. But this is what makes theatre interesting. It is what makes theatre unique.

Afghan history is rich and complex, as is our relationship with it. In staging The Great Game we are not concerned with ‘supporting’ or ‘defeating’ any argument or opinion. It does not offer answers but invites questions. We hope to spark debate – but one premised upon a more thorough understanding of Afghanistan’s history and politics.

Indhu Rubasingham was talking to Kate Ferguson

The origins of Afghanistan as a state with fixed boundaries go back to the 19th century power struggle between Russia and Britain for control over the trade routes and military advantages of this strategic heartland.

As Russia conquered the territories of Bokhara and Tashkent close to the northern border of Afghanistan in the early 19th century, the British became concerned that further gains could jeopardise their hold over India. The ‘First Anglo-Afghan War’ saw a British force depose the Afghan ruler, Dost Mohammed, after he sought to strengthen his ties with Russia. In his place they installed the deeply unpopular and ruthlessly brutal former Amir, Shah Shujah, a loyal British ally.

Two years later, when the British cabinet made savings by cutting the bribes it paid to the southern Pashtun tribes for their support, British forces in Kabul faced a large and well organised rebellion. They were routed in one of the British army’s worst defeats. A column of 4,500 British troops and 12,000 civilians attempted in vain to make their escape in the harsh January winter. Only one man out of the original 16,500, Dr Brydon, reached Jalalabad alive. Shujah had also been killed. Retribution was immediate. Much of Kabul was destroyed in the process. Shujah’s son was made Amir. But by the time the British had retreated one month later, the new Amir was killed and Dost returned.

Thirty-seven years later, in 1878, when again it appeared to the British that the Afghan ruler (Dost’s successor, Amir Shir Ali) was becoming too close to the Russians, the British government sent a 35,000-strong invasion force. Shir Ali died of natural causes during the invasion, and, with British troops occupying most of the country, his son, Mohammed Yakub Khan, was forced to sign a peace treaty ceding large areas of territory and relinquishing control of Afghan foreign affairs to the British. This treaty imposed by the British, the Treaty of Gandamark, formally established Afghanistan as a state.

After another brief insurrection in 1880, in which the British suffered a notable defeat in the battle of Maiwand, Afghanistan became a client state of Britain, who installed Amir Abdur Rahman as ruler and provided him with weapons. Known as the ‘Iron Amir’, he governed with great brutality, executing large numbers of opponents, making conversion to Islam mandatory and forcibly transplanting entire hostile tribes.

In 1893, Sir Mortimer Durand, the British India foreign minister insisted on dividing Afghanistan and what was then British India across a border that bore little relation to demographic realities. Waziristan – the Pashtun homeland – was split between what is today south-eastern Afghanistan and the North West Frontier provinces of Pakistan. The Durrand Line, as it became known, was meant to establish Afghanistan as a ‘buffer state’ between India and the Russian empire, while annexing strategically significant high ground to India.

In 1919, the progressive liberal reformer, Amanullah, became king. He was influenced by the emerging nationalist and modernist movements of the time. A strong influence on his thinking was Mahmud Tarzi, his father in law, who believed in a progressive Islam and like Amanullah wanted to overcome the backwardness of Aghanistan, which they both believed to be in part a consequence of British control. Tarzi became Amanullah’s foreign minister. They demanded unconditional independence from Britain. A short war followed – the Third Afghan War – ending with Britain capitulating to full Afghan independence. Inspired by radical developments occurring throughout the Middle East, Amanullah wanted to build a proper infrastructure, found a mass educational system and a postal network, and tried to enshrine social rights for women in the country’s first constitution.

Meanwhile, the British continued to destabilise the newly independent Afghan state by providing material support to the southern tribes who opposed Amanullah’s radical reforms – which also included forcing tribal leaders to wear suits and cut off their beards. In 1928, after yet another insurrection, Amanullah was forced into exile, leaving Afghanistan to undergo half a century of lacklustre rule by three successive generations of the Durrani family dynasty.

Part 2: 1979-1996. Communism, the mujahideen and the Taliban

The first 20 years or so of the cold war were a period of relative stability – and the years when Afghanistan became a destination on the hippy trail. The competing big powers used aid to extend their influence.

In 1973, the Durrani dynasty ended. Amir Zahir Shah was overthrown by his cousin, Mohammed Daud, with the support of the small domestic Communist Party. Afghanistan became a republic. While many welcomed the modernising direction of the new republic, parts of the population remained extremely conservative, and a small Islamist movement began to gain influence led by Burhanuddin Rabbani, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Ahmad Shah Massoud. Under pressure from the government these Islamists moved to Pakistan and forged alliances with Islamist organisations there, including the Muslim Brotherhood.

In 1978, Iranian followers of the Ayatollah Khomeini moved into Herat. Marxist army officers used this as an opportunity to overthrew Daud and installed a communist regime, which immediately moved to speed up the process of modernisation, demanding secular co-education and land reform. As part of the cold war strategy to weaken the Soviet Union, Jimmy Carter’s administration began covertly funding the Islamic opposition with the help of the Pakistani secret services, the ISI.

The government requested military support from the Soviets, and in December 1979 100,000 troops crossed the River Oxus from Russia into Afghanistan. Pakistan immediately received enormous US and Saudi aid to support the mujahideen. In border camps, the ISI trained more than 35,000 foreign and Afghan Islamic militants in insurgency warfare and terror. Those supported in this way included Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. William Casey, then head of the CIA, described the policy as attacking ‘the soft underbelly of the Soviet Union’.

By the time Soviet forces withdrew in 1989, the war had claimed 1.5 million Afghan lives and displaced two million refugees – half of the world’s refugees at this point were Afghans. The Soviets are estimated to have lost as many as 75,000 soldiers.

Contrary to promises made during the 1988 Geneva Convention, the US continued to fund the mujahideen and the Pakistani ISI. The latter’s power became almost equivalent to a shadow state. The training that it supervised was designed to inflict maximum terror and cause complete social breakdown, turning Pakistan into the world centre of jihadism for the next two decades and very likely sowing the seeds of Al Qaeda. Osama Bin Laden was among the young fighters supported by the US in this way.

The Soviets, meanwhile, backed the government of new president, Najibullah. This support soon dried up, however, when the USSR collapsed in 1989, leaving the army demoralised, poorly equipped and under constant attack. Six of Afghanistan’s 31 provinces quickly fell to the mujahideen.

Ethnic differences undermined any possibility of unity between the mujahideen warlords. Throughout 1991, they fought to expand their areas of power, and Afghanistan became a major source of world heroin supply as they facilitated poppy production and smuggling to fund their militias.

In April 1992, the rebel commander General Dostum and his Uzbek militias entered Kabul and arrested Najibullah. Rabbani was installed as president, with Ahmed Shah Massoud as defence minister. Alliances between the warlords fractured and a brutal civil war ensued. Pashtuns, under Hekmatyar, fought against an alliance of Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara warlords under Shah Massoud. Kabul became the scene of a series of massive battles in which 20,000 were killed, and the country was split into small pockets, each under the control of a different warlord. Battles between the factions were incessant and devastating, creating more than five million refugees.

Then, in November 1994, a hitherto unknown force called the Taliban captured Kandahar.

Adherents to a strict and fundamentalist interpretation of Islam, they were a highly political movement aiming to transform Afghanistan into an Islamic state. Well armed with weapons remaining from the Soviet conflict, and using Japanese pickup trucks to mount lightning attacks, they were an efficient fighting force. In the next three months they took 12 more provinces.

For many Afghans, influenced by elements of Sufism, the Taliban’s intolerant interpretation of Islam was unwelcome. But as the Taliban began to instill order and stability after 16 years of banditry and crushing exploitation by the warlord barons, they won popular support. This stability came at a heavy cost to individual freedoms, however. Women were removed from public life, losing all jobs, education and most health care. Traditional pastimes, such as playing marbles and flying kites, were no longer allowed. Music and dancing were prohibited, televisions were removed, cigarettes were banned, and works of art were destroyed.

For the next two years, the Taliban fought the warlords, eventually emerging as victors in 1996. Massoud retreated north with the Tajik section of the Northern Alliance, whilst Dostum and the Uzbeks remained secure in Mazar. Hekmatyar sought refuge in Iran.

Part 3: 1996-2009. Enduring Freedom

The Taliban’s relationship with Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden – who had arrived in Kabul in 1996 – became of increasing international concern. In 2000, the UN security council passed a resolution instituting sanctions. Pakistan, however, remained loyal to Kabul, and continued to provide fuel and supplies.

The Taliban continued to pound the Northern Alliance, and instigated a campaign of savage internal repression against Afghanistan’s Shia Hazara minority. Meanwhile, a nationwide drought killed 70 per cent of the country’s livestock and ruined 50 per cent of its agricultural land. Again, vast numbers were displaced, yet the UN was unable to raise the $221 million required for humanitarian aid.

In 1989 the US withdrew from direct involvement in Afghanistan. Within ten days of 9/11, however, Bush announced ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’: 110 CIA officers and 316 special forces operatives were given $1 billion to fund the anti-Taliban militias of the Northern Alliance. The assumption was that the 9/11 attacks were the work of Al Qaeda located in Afghanistan. US air support decimated the Taliban, and by November the Northern Alliance had retaken Herat and Kabul. Thousands of Taliban prisoners were massacred in the aftermath.

With victory seemingly assured, the Bonn Agreement was signed in December 2001, and Mohammad Karzai, a former lobbyist for Unocal from an old Pashtun family, was chosen as interim leader.

Despite foreign troops flooding into the country, real power remained with the warlords and their militias. Extortion, kidnappings and killings were rife, and poppy production – which had declined under the Taliban – exploded as the warlords used drug revenues to fund an arms race. The death toll continued to mount over the next two years as they battled for control of territory, yet the world’s media was mostly distracted by events in Iraq. Another devastating drought caused widespread starvation and disease, and Dostum’s militias in the north carried out numerous atrocities against the local Pashtun population. Enormous social upheaval ensued. The number of civilian deaths during this period remains unknown.

In June 2002 an interim government was established. Seventeen top level cabinet posts were given to the victorious warlords of the Northern Alliance, including principal positions in the defence, interior, intelligence and foreign affairs ministries. Pashtuns held 11 seats, Tajiks eight, Hazaras five and Uzbeks three. The interim government remained weak and ineffectual compared to the warlords, however, and reconstruction efforts were impeded by a budget deficit. Offers of foreign aid did not match the resultant inflow of funds. A US think-tank, the Rand Corporation, estimated that $167 per head was required to stabilise Afghanistan. By 2003 the country had received a mere $57 per head.

Unemployment and poverty were endemic. Migration from the countryside increased, and the cities swelled with makeshift shanty towns. Kabul’s population had risen from an estimated 400,000 in the 1970s to 3.5 million. By June 2003, the US had donated $1.9 billion in ‘aid’, but this brought about little improvement. Reconstruction contracts were mostly given to US firms, which frequently overcharged for grossly inefficient work. The Provincial Reconstruction Teams established to operate outside Kabul were frequently subject to interference from the local warlords on whose authorisation and protection they were reliant. Government and NGO corruption was endemic. There was limited success in educational reform. In Kabul, 45 per cent of girls were receiving some form of education, but in the rest of the country the situation remained largely unchanged.

From August 2003, Nato expanded the International Security Assistance Force’s (ISAF) mission, assuming responsibility for nationwide security (previously their operations were confined to Kabul). Ostensibly a peace-keeping force, around 40 countries donated troops. Security continued to worsen, however, and in Helmand and Zabul, the Taliban opened up a major new offensive. The Red Cross and other NGOs pulled out of the southern provinces, and the UN suspended travel for all its employees. By the winter of 2003, the Taliban had recaptured 80 per cent of Zabul province.

The Afghan defence minister pressed donor governments to fund an army of 200,000 soldiers. He received funds for just 37,000. Many recruits were illiterate, and desertion rates were high. Efforts to rebuild the police force were also hampered by similar issues of illiteracy and inadequate funding, training and equipment.

A total of 10.3 million people were registered to vote in the October 2004 elections, 40 per cent of whom were women. Karzai retained the presidency with 55 per cent of the vote. Despite political developments, however, life continued to get worse for the majority. A small government elite grew enormously wealthy through corruption and outright theft – vice president Zia Masoud, for example, was apprehended in a Dubai airport with a million dollars in cash – while development indicators continued to fall. According to the 2007 UN Human Development Report, life expectancy was 43 years, adult literacy ran at just 28 per cent, only 39 per cent of Afghans had access to clean water, and more than one in four children would die before they reached five years of age. This showed a marked decline, even from 2003.

Meanwhile, Afghanistan was deteriorating into a narco-state. Warlords paid by the coalition to curb opium production instead pocketed the money while yields increased. With the economy in ruins, poppy cultivation became the only reliable source of income for farmers. Efforts to eradicate these crops, therefore, make the fragile government yet more unpopular, and fuel support for the insurgency. By 2007, Afghanistan was producing 8,200 tons of raw opium a year – 93 per cent of total world production, an increase of around 4,600 tons from 2003.

Since 2006, the Taliban and their allies have made significant gains on the other side of the Durrand line in Pakistan. At the same time, coalition air strikes and raids against insurgents in Afghanistan’s predominantly Pashtun south have caused large numbers of civilian casualties, further bolstering support for the resistance, which, in turn, was mounting successful attacks on coalition forces with greater frequency.

Counter-insurgency is now overshadowing nation building. Development projects are forced to rely on links with occupying forces, creating dangers for the Afghans involved. Little progress is being made. Karzai’s government remains dependent on the ISAF, and Northern Alliance warlords continue to occupy key cabinet positions.

Insurgents have captured large swathes of Pakistan’s northern provinces, and are engaged in heavy fighting with Pakistani troops, while coalition forces currently control just 30 per cent of Afghanistan. William Dalrymple gives a vivid glimpse of the consequences:

‘Meanwhile, tens of thousands of ordinary people from the surrounding hills of the semi-autonomous tribal belt that runs along the Afghan border have fled from the conflict zones, blasted by missiles from the unmanned American Predator drones and strafed by Pakistani helicopter gunships, to the tent camps now ringing Peshawar. The tribal areas have never been fully under the control of any Pakistani government, and have now been radicalised as never before. The rain of armaments from the US drones and Pakistani ground forces, which have caused extensive civilian casualties, daily add a steady stream of angry foot soldiers to the insurgency. Elsewhere in Pakistan, anti-western religious and political extremism continues to flourish, and there are signs that the instability is now spreading from the Frontier Province to the relatively settled confines of Lahore and the Punjab.’ (Guardian, 4 April 2009)

With 25,000 more American troops awaiting deployment in the coming months, the conflict, and its consequences for civilians and for the stability of the region, only look set to get worse.

This history is based on the original programme notes for The Great Game at the Tricycle Theatre. The programme, with the full version of the three-part history of Afghanistan, is available from www.tricycle.co.uk or 020 7328 1000 for £6 inc p&p

In the Pashtun heartlands, several distinct resistance groups have rapidly grown in popularity and strength. Tracing their roots back to the mujahideen struggle against the Soviets, factions such as Hezb-e-Islami and the Haqqani network were formerly enemies of the Taliban, yet are now allied in opposition against the coalition forces and the Kabul government they see as their people’s oppressors. These groups adhere to a characteristically Afghan brand of intensely conservative Islam, yet Gareth Price, director of the Asia program at the influential research institute, Chatham House, believes that many of their fighters are motivated as much by nationalism as religious fervour.

As 25,000 more US troops prepare to enter Afghanistan to execute an Iraq-style ‘surge’, the Karzai government controls just 30 per cent of the country, and US president Barack Obama frankly admits that the US-led coalition is failing to meet its objectives.

Events leading to the current state of affairs can only be accurately understood in light of the civil war that exploded after the Soviets withdrew in 1988. The mujahideen fractured along tribal and ethnic lines, each faction vying to fill the resulting power vacuum. The Taliban – whose support comes from the largest tribe of Afghanistan’s Pashtuns (42 per cent of the Afghan population) emerged as eventual victors, yet they could never fully dominate the predominantly Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara north. The stalemate was only broken when, in 2001, the coalition gave decisive military support to the warlord leaders of the northern ethnic and tribal groupings, allowing them to gain the offensive. Sweeping southwards, these warlords and their armies massacred thousands of captured Taliban fighters as American and British special forces looked on. In the months that followed, Northern Alliance soldiers went on to rob, rape and murder thousands of ethnic Pashtun civilians – effectively ‘cleansing’ the north of its Pashtun minority.

In April, Hamid Karzai nominated Mohammed Fahim as his vice presidential running mate in the forthcoming election. Many believe that Northern Alliance commanders such as Fahim, alongside Karzai’s army chief of staff Rashid Dostum, actively encouraged or at least condoned these massacres. Certainly, as a Northern Alliance commander in the early 1990s, Fahim indiscriminately shelled densely populated areas of Kabul, and is alleged to have strong ties to powerful criminal militias operating in the city today.

Pashtuns overwhelmingly see Fahim’s appointment as an attempt to secure the vote of the sizeable (27 per cent) Tajik minority. They see it as further evidence of their marginalisation and believe it will deepen the ethnic divide that is an important factor in the violence in Afghanistan today. Northern Alliance commanders now comprise the top echelons of the Kabul regime.

There are no reliable statistics of the death toll that has resulted from the 2001 invasion. Estimates range between 10,000 and 40,000. Indisputably, the overwhelming majority have been Pashtun. This includes large numbers of Pashtun civilians. Air raids often appear to be indiscriminate or based on fatally flawed intelligence. In several instances, the US Air Force is understood to have been effectively tricked into assassinating Pashtun tribal elders by rival tribes or warlords who had deliberately fed them false information.

Despite large scale opposition to the Taliban even from within Pashtun society, the Pashtun majority feel they are now being victimised in retaliation for the Taliban’s misdeeds. Perceived insults from occupying forces, a dearth of economic assistance to their regions, and the arming of neighbouring ethnic rivals through the ill-thought-out Arbakai militia scheme have further strengthened the perception that this is a war not just against the Taliban but against the entire Pashtun people.

Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN official who chaired the 2001 Bonn conference that led to the creation of the current government, has stated that the coalition’s current problems are directly related to the fact that the conference was not representative of Afghan society.

Ayub, a 46-year-old Pashtun and former army officer from Kabul, complains that despite comprising around two fifths of Afghanistan’s total population of 32 million, Pashtuns remain poorly represented at all levels of government. While a number of ministers are ethnic Pashtuns, they are mostly coalition-installed, pro-American foreign nationals. Hamid Karzai’s links to US business interests are well documented; the defence minister and former finance minister are American citizens; the foreign minister, German; and the interior minister, British.

‘We don’t believe they speak for us,’ says Ayub. ‘Pashtuns vote for Karzai only because they have no other option.’ Indeed, many prominent Pashtun parties have been outlawed, and Pashtun ministers are in office as independents. Even before the Taliban established their rule after the Soviet withdrawal, the Pashtun had dominated Afghanistan for centuries. This dominance was the foundation of numerous injustices for which their Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara neighbours understandably harbour deep resentment. Ayub believes, however, that the Pashtun’s current disenfranchisement is sowing the seeds of more bloody ethnic conflict for generations to come.

As Red Pepper was going to press, there were reports that the Karzai regime was in talks with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, leader of the militant Islamist insurgent group, Hezb-e-Islami, about a possible power-sharing deal. A Pashtun warlord with an appalling human rights record dating back to the civil war, Hekmatyar is nonetheless popular among Pashtuns. Some believe that, despite Hezb-e-Islami’s fundamentalist politics, this could appear as a step towards more inclusive government and could lead to a significant decrease in violence.

Mohammad Asif is an Afghan journalist in exile

Security is almost nonexistent on the frontline of Afghanistan’s forgotten war and the people have had enough. More than five years after they were promised peace, prosperity and liberty, all many want now is for the Taliban to come back. ‘The Americans say they are democratic, modern and know everything, but they fuck us in so many different ways,’ says Faiz Mohammed Karigar, a local resident. ‘How can we forgive them? How can we forgive the Americans?

‘If I sit at a table with an American and he says he has brought us freedom, I will tell him he has fucked us: “You did not bring us freedom.”‘

As the world starts to acknowledge the full horror of Iraq, Afghanistan slips towards the same grim hell. With each passing week another nail is hammered into the coffin of the Nato-led mission.

‘When the Taliban were here I escaped to the border with Iran, but I was never worried about my family,’ Karigar tells me. ‘Every single minute of the last three years I have been very worried. Maybe tonight the Americans will come to my house, touch my wife, touch my children and arrest me.

‘I have already decided to stand against them. I will stand against them even when I see them on the road. I will fight them with my tongue, my hands, with guns – I will fight them in any way I can.’

The southern province of Kandahar is where the Taliban movement was born and it is here that it has come back to life, resuscitated by the widespread anger Afghans feel towards the foreign troops in their midst. When Mullah Mohammed Omar was in power people could walk the streets safely as long as they complied with a strict interpretation of Islamic law. Now a simple outing to the market is seen as a risk.

‘[President Hamid] Karzai is always shouting about democracy and saying everything is fine, but it’s just words,’ says Maria Farah, a mother-of-five. ‘If you meet women their faces are very sad. I don’t just mean two or three women – all our faces are very sad. And if you go to houses you will see the same faces on husbands as well because they cannot get jobs, they worry about security and they worry about their children.’

‘I can only talk about Kandahar city. I think life under the Taliban was very good. If we did not have a full stomach we could at least get some food and go to sleep. If we went out somewhere there were no problems,’ she continues.

‘How about now? If we go out we don’t know if we will arrive home or not. If there is an explosion and the Americans are passing they will just open fire on everyone.The security problems are too much here. If someone is driving on the highway they will be stopped and beheaded. If women leave the house when it is getting dark people look at them with a hatred in their eyes.’

The 33-year-old finished our conversation with a simple request.’Ask Bush to come here once and meet with women who want to tear his skin off,’ she says.

Soon after the Taliban first surfaced in Kandahar during the mid 1990s they brought peace to an area previously ruled by rival warlords.Today this is one of the most dangerous places in the country, with political and criminal violence spreading fear among the population. Suicide attacks now occur regularly here and a number of recent incidents have seen nervous Nato troops shoot civilians they mistakenly believe are about to blow themselves up. And whatever the actual cause of any bloodshed, Afghans almost always blame the foreign soldiers and local security forces.

‘Forget that a road has been built,’ says Haji Abdul Rahman, a tribal elder. ‘If a road has been built and you are killed, what good is it?

‘Everyone is a robber. I guarantee if you sit in my car and we go for a drive no Taliban will take you away. But I cannot guarantee you about the police. If they stop you they will steal your money and your camera.’

His friend, Abdul Hamid, shares similar concerns. All of his six sons are unemployed and he believes jihad is the only way forward for Afghanistan.

‘It’s much, much worse than when the Russians were here,’ the 71-year-old says. ‘At that time maybe we were scared a rocket would land on our house, but we were not scared of them coming into our house.

‘One of my sons wanted to join the military. I was not happy about that. I told him this country is fucked up, everyone is a robber and you have to make a stand and fight for the truth.’

Panjwayi is a Taliban stronghold in the west of Kandahar province. Last May US-led forces conducted an air strike on alleged insurgents in the district. US officials claimed as many as 80 militants might have been killed, but villagers at the scene said many of the casualties were civilians.

Mawlawi Abdul Hadid tells me 18 members of his family died in the raid. He says 30 innocent people were killed in all, the youngest of them a twoyear- old girl. ‘In the beginning you had only one enemy.Then you made two, then three and now I also stand against you,’ he declares. ‘You made me your enemy as well and I will stand against you.’

‘The Taliban are the sons of this country. My son is a Talib and your son is a Talib,’ the 45- year-old adds, gesturing towards another man in the room. ‘The Taliban are fighting for our rights, they are fighting for humanity and they are fighting for the truth. Day by day the Americans are losing support, but lots of people support the Taliban.’

Asked how long it would take to defeat the foreign soldiers, Hadid gives the kind of response heard increasingly across Afghanistan. ‘In Islam we don’t know what will happen tomorrow,’ he says.’But one thing we do know is that God brought them here and God will take them away.’

If Kandahar feels like it is on the brink of collapse, then the neighbouring province of Helmand has already disappeared into the abyss.The former head of Nato forces in Afghanistan, lieutenant general David Richards, described fighting there last summer as the worst British troops had faced since the Korean war.

According to insurgents, the situation is unbearable. They speak of villagers too scared to switch on their lights at night in case their homes are bombed in air strikes; bodies of civilians left rotting under piles of rubble; and members of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance using their new roles in the Afghan army to persecute the Pashtun population.

‘The foreigners just sit in the desert and open fire from there. As soon as they get reports of Taliban they open fire, without checking,’ says Zahir Jan. ‘When they occupy an area they kill all the women and children. They do not even spare the animals, they kill them as well.’

Dressed in a shalwar kameez and green combat jacket, the 20-year-old is among three Talibs who made the journey from Helmand to meet me in Kandahar. It is too dangerous for western reporters to work independently in their province.

‘Everyone has picked up a gun. What else can we do? We cannot bear it anymore.When the foreigners first came we thought maybe they wanted to build the country, but what have they done in the last five years?’ he says.

‘They have done nothing, so we have to stand against them. They have killed lots of innocent people, occupied the country and we now know that jihad is demanded of us.’

Nowhere is safe now, not when rockets rain down at night and your front door can be kicked in as you lie fast asleep with your wife by your side.

Each day you wonder if that taxi driver is a suicide bomber, that cop a murderer, that soldier just a trigger-happy kid. Even men who joined the army to kill and be killed piss themselves as they go into battle.

Rather than wait for a miracle, Afghans are again preparing for a fight to the end.

‘There is a big fire under the earth. It’s like a volcano and soon it will explode,’ Said Mohammad Hashem Watanwall, MP for the province of Uruzgan.

‘It will explode if everything continues like now – the corruption, the bad security, the bombing of civilians by coalition forces. Soon it will explode and people will stand up in the name of jihad and [martyrdom] if there are no big changes.’

Watanwall isn’t a crazy extremist out to destroy freedom, liberty and everything else Britain is meant to stand for. But when he thinks about his country he can’t help wonder what kind of hell waits around the corner.

‘Now in parliament the MPs are saying “Forget about Pakistan and the Taliban – why are the foreigners here?” They are saying a thousand-headed dragon is here and it’s the foreign armies. Just imagine, if the MPs are saying that in an official place, what will a simple person in a village be saying?’

A country on the brink

Kabul is the capital of Afghanistan, a city where anyone with a flashy car is almost certainly a drug dealer, a warlord, a corrupt government official – or a rich westerner looking at poverty through tinted windows. It was relatively safe here until spring 2006. Then the gunfire, loud bangs and gut-wrenching screams arrived.

There was a suicide bombing near my home recently. First came the explosion, a huge blast that cut through the air and froze time for a split second. Then the smoke and dust rose up, leaving a dark thundercloud above the body parts.

Shopkeepers stopped getting their stores ready. Labourers laid down their tools and looked across the rooftops to see where the latest ground zero was. Then they all carried on with what they had been doing a moment earlier. Hayat Ullah Wali works on the other side of town, in a hospital for the mentally ill. It’s a place where heavily drugged patients shuffle like zombies through dark corridors, chains around their feet.

‘Let me talk to you clearly. The Americans are not here to help us. America created Osama bin Laden, America created the terrorists. Now America wants to fight the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, but they were created by the Americans,’ he says.

A war that was meant to end with the last stand of bin Laden and his faithful lieutenants in the Tora Bora mountains is only just beginning. Afghanistan is on the brink of a mass rebellion.

Dead bodies are stacking up like cordwood, with more than 3,700 people estimated to have been killed in the fighting by November 2006. Each new dawn ushers in some fresh carnage, another nail in the coffin of British and US foreign policy.

Perhaps today it will be a NATO air strike, similar to the one that murdered scores of civilians in Kandahar during the holy festival of Eid. Or maybe it will be a suicide attack by insurgents, a clumsy American house raid, a beheading caught on camera for the latest snuff movie. The bloodshed is getting impossible to keep track of.

Leave or join the Taliban

Rahullah Amiri comes from Ghazni province, south of Kabul. Earlier this summer the local police beat his 22-year-old brother with their guns and some kind of cable.

‘Two or three of his teeth were missing, his nose was broken and his back was as black as your coat,’ says Rahullah. The result is that Afghanistan’s poorly equipped security forces and Britain’s undersiege troops could soon have another insurgent charging towards them with explosives wrapped around his waist.

‘I can’t describe my feeling, it’s very hard,’ Rahullah explains. ‘But let’s say at that time I hated the Karzai government and I decided to join the Taliban. When the Taliban were here everything was okay. At least when they arrested people they had allegations against them. They were not arresting people without any reason. Now all the countries of the world are here – the Americans are here, the UK is here – how can this happen?’

‘Even now I don’t know why they beat him,’ he continues. ‘The only thing I can think of is that it was because of our low culture and the culture of war. For three decades we have been at war.

‘Please pass my voice, my words, onto your officials, your newspapers. Tell the world you are coming here, you are losing your young people in the fighting and it’s a waste because the current government is nothing. Karzai has failed, everything has been lost. Five years have passed, there is no security here; there are a lot of explosions, a lot of suicide attacks.’

‘So what can the people do?’ Rahullah asks despairingly. ‘My brother was beaten, so I want to give up my life here, I want to sell my factory and leave this country because there is no security. I am not a jihadi and that means I can’t get a high position in the government, so I want to leave the country. I want to tell the world Karzai has failed, it’s a waste of time.

‘There is only one way for us now: leave the country or join the Taliban. I really feel like joining the Taliban and fighting the government.’

Civil war awaits

History serves as a warning. The insurgency that overpowered Soviet troops and Kabul’s puppet communist regime began with small rebel movements in the countryside. It developed into a nationwide struggle during which mujahideen battled against their fellow Afghans and Russian soldiers. The occupation ended in 1989, but peace remained elusive and from 1992 to 1996 a brutal civil war raged. Increasingly, Afghans believe that something similar awaits on the horizon.

This trash strewn Kabul suburb is dotted with giant furnaces for baking bricks. Not so long ago, the smoke coming from the chimneys carried the stench of charred human flesh. People were cooked alive here simply because they belonged to the wrong ethnic group or fought for the wrong commander.

The men who murdered them are not the insurgents NATO and American troops have been struggling against. This is a Shiite neighbourhood and its residents are staunch opponents of the Taliban. But after five years of trying to eke out an honest living from Afghanistan’s shattered economy, they have had enough.

‘Yes, soon the jihad will start. I will fight against the Taliban and the infidels, the foreigners. If your stomach is empty, of course you will do something and what we will do is fight,’ says Yahya, a local resident.

‘I will kill civilians and not soldiers. There won’t be any soldiers on the ground – they will all have disappeared and you will just see them in the sky in their planes. But I will kill civilians because they have stolen all our money. All the money that’s been given to Afghanistan goes in their pockets.’

NATO commanders talk of victory, British politicians of hearts-and-minds. They should go and meet Yahya.

‘Of course I will kill you if you come back to see me when the jihad starts,’ he says. ‘That happens when there is fighting. I have seen men kill their own brothers.’