How Muslim are the Taliban?
I first met Haji Mir, a tribal elder from Helmand, in Herat in western Afghanistan in 2002, not long after the fall of the Taliban. He had come to Herat to ensure the safety of Helmand under the new American-backed administration. At the end of the trip he protected us when we were stoned by a mob after filming a large outdoor event marking Eid. Mir was a decent local leader in a system that valued his skills. But when I tried to track him down ten years later, at the height of British military involvement in Helmand, I was told he had been targeted and killed by the Taliban.
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