Princess Diana meets the Taliban

In late 1991 I was travelling in northern Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan, notoriously an area where all but the roads are outside of government control, and certainly an area where at that time following world news events was more or less impossible.

I had decided to take an overnight bus southbound. Clambering aboard around in the early evening, I exchanged a greeting or two with my neighbour, establishing merely that I was British and that he was from a town near the end of the route, and then as the bus began its slow progress along the tortuous valley highway, I attempted to sleep.

Some short while later the bus pulled over abruptly to the side of the road, a soldier came aboard and spoke to the passengers in Urdu, and a dreadful cacophony of gunshots, singing and hand-maintained 20-year old diesel engines passed by the window. "What's happening?" I asked my neighbour. "Oh, it is the Mujaheddin. They are going to hear one of their leaders make a speech," he shrugged. Eventually the convoy passed, we were allowed to resume our journey, and I settled down again to doze.

After some hours, there was an unexpected repeat performance (with louder singing - the firewater made in the northwestern frontier area combines particularly efficaciously with the locally abundant marijuana.) Again a soldier boarded and spoke reassuringly to the passengers. My neighbour turned to me once more. "It is the Mujaheddin," he said. I nodded. I had guessed this. "They are going to see your Princess Diana," he added.