Right in the city centre, what remains of a police post after an incoming rocket. Welcome to Kabul. These days, the Afghan capital itself is increasingly in the sights of the Taliban The west has equipped the new police force with uniforms and weapons and you see more an d more of them on the streets here - but in reality the bubble of security around the capital is punctured ever more easily by the Taliban - fighting NATO and their fellow Afghan more effectively than ever… Afghan police used to talk incessantly to reporters. Now theyre ordered to keep silent. Afghan civilians however, are so angry with the state theyre now in - will drive up to talk to you... SOT VAN MAN VOICEOVER @ 52" "I left the countryside to come here to be safe. And here the government is hitting us. The Taliban rocket us. I don't know what to do and where to run to. We are completely disillusioned." Disillusion is now the Afgfhan national mood. So who are the Taliban ? How come theyre back, all but surrounding Kabul -- seven years after the Amercans supposedly drove them out of the country.. This programme's come here to meet the Taliban to find out. 1'21" After making contact in Kabul, security is now so fragile you have to fly to the south. Our Taliban contacts risked the Kabul to Kandahar . Even they were briefly kidnapped. It was just a misunderstanding. Everyone eventually met up and headed 1'38" out from Kandahar, the southern capital. PAUSE The rendezvous had been set. PAUSE Out along the rough roads and wadis. The place they were heading was just ten miles from Kandahar. KNOCK KNOCK 2'00" 02.04 knock on gate of compound track beginning " They must wait. These are the final seconds in a process which has taken months to organise. .. Eventualkly the guard returns. Everything is aloright... These men may die for you if you are their guest. They may hack yuour head off if you are an intruder... It is a regional headquarters for Taliban fighters. Some don't want to show their faces... This compound belonged to the Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah who was killed by NATO last year... 3'16" SOT HAMIDULLAH KHAN - TALIBAN VOICEOVER "This is the late Mullah Dadullah's home. He gave his life in God's will. When he was killed twenty thousand more came forward in the name of Dadullah. They're now behind him. This is the Taliban way. When one is killed another comes in. Then another. We don't leave the ground empty." UP SOT GUN BANG- 3'33" The only sign of Pakistani influence here - Aftab Panjabi, weapons instructor and former Pakistani soldier...It may look a little ragtag -- but the Taliban are killing more NATO soldiers than ever before...at least forty in the past month.... Deadly roadside bombs..., suicide attacks... better adapted ambushes using Afghan police and army uniforms...need extra short thought about uniform to match extra shot- but lose 3 seconds of uniform pics after NATS FIGHTING SEQUENCE STARTS AT 4'19" And they used such uniforms in this operation. This group supplied us with video showing them wandering onto a main road.... Not any old road -- but the main Kabul to Kandahar Highway - you begin to see why Aghans advise you not to drive along it... NATS And attacking a compolund using the traffic as cover... NATS If NATO sends in an airstrike -- they'll hit the traffic and kill civilians. Though usually the attackers are long gone by the time the Apache helicopters or jets appear... NATS "allah" An open, daylight assault, almost leisurely, across the country's main highway. The confidence of the Taliban these days. No wonder America's commander said last week that the west is not winnning the war here.... So why are they fighting? No talk here of Osama bin Laden , Al Qaeda or Mullah Omaro -- they just talk about feeling alienated by an Afgfhan government which hasn't delivered... 5'46"SOT HAJI HYATULLAH VOICEOVER "People are getting fed up with the lies the government has told them. Also there is no work for people. They do this because they need a piece of bread to eat. Also, they want to defend theri independence, Islam and Afghan national pride. That's why they come and support the Taliban." But surely someone's got to negotiate eventually with the government? ... SOT HAJI HYATULLAH VOICEOVER 6'05" "No, no we don't see any need for talks with this government. Actually there is no such thing as the government. The issue here is foreign countries and we deal with them by fighting like this. Jihad is the only way for us. Our Jihad." A feeble government...humiliation of foreign occupation...and the grinding poverty and curruption - the essentials of the Afghan stalemate... Right outside the compound they point out recent flood damage and say nobody's come to help. Officials in Kabul or Kandahar they'd say if they came here would they'd be shot -- or worse. And they'd be right. It is the Afghan vicious circle. Rebuilding this country can't happen without security. Security's evaporating all the time. And when it comes to the fighting -- the Talibs say there is no problem. with money.. SOT HAMIDULLAH KHAN 6'55" Q :" Do the Taliban pay more than the government? A:" Yes, yes. The Taliban pay them, care for them and also this is the way of God. They pray and look after them." Q:" So people join the Taliban for money?" A:" No, no. They join up for Islam and God's way." Q:" So the money - where does all this money come from?!" A:" The money's coming in from Islamic countries such as Pakistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia." They are open too about showing their differences from the Taliban who took this country over a decade ago... These men likie a whisky - and they like a bet... NATS Out side the compounds, vallagers are not only permitted to enjoy traditional Afghan passtimes like pitching their fighting goats against each other....these new Taliban positively encourage such things.... NATS Further more --- villagers openly bet on the outcome of the fights. Just the kind of unIslamic activity the old-style Taliban would have beaten you for - at the very least..These are not the unsmiling footsoldiers of Mullah Omar - but the new Afghan incarnation of that shorthand word Taliban... 8'58" NATS Equally -- at a local wedding celebration there is music -- which the original Taliban would have banned -- many of hese men loayl to the maverick warlod Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. If not exactly keen on the music -- they seemed prepared to tolerate it. Changing times for a changing Taliban perhaps. NATS So there's a sense that the Taliban have gone back to their roots: among Afghans, not Pakistanis - Afghans tired of an occupied, increasingly corrupt, and still failed state... NATS That failure uderlined by the coffins of soldiers aboard the plane back to Kabul.... Traversing a land where it is the Taliban making gains at the moment -- not NATO.