In many areas of Afghanistan, Taliban back in charge

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Two months ago, Mohammad Anwar recalls, the Taliban paraded suspected thieves through his village, tarred their faces with oil and threw them in jail.

The public punishment was a clear sign to villagers that the Taliban are back in charge. And the province they took over lies just 30 miles from the Afghan capital of Kabul, along the main highway.

The Taliban has long operated its own shadow government in the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan, but its power is now spreading north to the doorstep of Kabul, according to interviews with a dozen government officials, analysts, Taliban commanders and Afghan villagers. More than seven years after the U.S.-led invasion, the Islamic militia is trying to reconstitute the government by which it ruled Afghanistan in the late 1990s.

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