KABUL, Afghanistan - You couldn't miss the irony. As we tried to contact Taliban commanders through an intermediary their mobile phone messages in Urdu made one thing clear: The insurgents were in Pakistan or very close to the Pakistani border.

For years now, many Western journalists have approached the Taliban for interviews and the Taliban has obliged.

The militants would sometimes cover their faces or not give their names, but face-to-face contact was possible, especially when it suited the Taliban and its message.

Not any more.

As the war in Afghanistan has escalated, the Taliban has become off limits for any journalist who wants to come out alive. As Nir Rosen from Rolling Stone magazine found out when doing his investigative piece "How We Lost the War We Won," any old, tribal notions of Taliban insurgents keeping their word is out the window.

When a couple of insurgents promised to keep him safe, he became a pawn as the infighting between rival Taliban commanders wore on.

Rosen was lucky, his fate hung in the balance for little more than 24 hours. But it underscores the dangers of seeking the journalistic authenticity we all crave.

As journalists we talk to the Taliban to get a sense of the message they want to convey. It's then up to us to scrutinize that message as best we can. We don't feel that we're mouthpieces for the group, no more than we feel that we're mouthpieces for NATO every time we cover one of its press conferences. 

An interview can give us a new or sometimes a very cliched perspective of the Taliban. Either way, it still represents a valued piece of news that is instructive in terms of where the conflict is going and how the Taliban hopes to shape it.

So we made do with a phone call. There is no way to verify if the man we spoke to, Mohammed Ibrahim Hanafi, is in the ascendancy as a Taliban commander or on his way out. He did make a point of telling us that he would play a pivotal role in the Taliban expanding its reach in the north of Afghanistan.

Above all though, what we took from the interview is an overwhelming sense of confidence and control from the Taliban. Certainly Taliban commanders feel they have coalition troops on the run and perhaps more importantly, that they have the support of more and more Afghans.

Civilians may respect the Taliban or just fear it, but either way the result is the same: The Taliban now has renewed influence and reach in almost three quarters of the country.

KABUL, Afghanistan — I knew something was wrong the minute I took a look at the police sniffer-dogs tasked with protecting a key checkpoint just outside the walls of the presidential palace. They looked tired, they weren’t interested in the cars, they had to be coaxed into sniffing around and they had sores on their hind legs. Great, I thought, that’s all that’s coming between me and a catastrophic explosion in Kabul: Work weary dogs and their underpaid masters.

Can you really blame the dogs or the cops though? Kabul is clogged with traffic and people and at the best of times there is no way to assure safety in this city. And it’s alarming for this correspondent to hear the same line from both the Taliban and one of the city’s top cops: Insurgents can hit the city anytime, anywhere.

That’s not to say the Kabul Police force isn’t trying. They are now talking about a double ring of security around the city and they’ve gotten better at enforcing it. Many cities around the world with many more resources, are having their own battle with terrorists and so in that context, the security forces here aren’t doing a bad job.

Securing this capital is a crucial test not only for the city’s police force, but for the whole country. They need to know they can stand on their own and sort out their own security without thousands of foreign troops turning their capital into a fortress.

Less than three years ago, foreigners could walk the streets of Kabul in relative safety and have the luxury and freedom to hail their own cabs and try out the local food. Some foreigners of course still do that, but the majority live in armed camps throughout the city, fearing both random attacks and targeted kidnappings.

I saw first hand the pictures from inside a recent attack on the Justice Ministry here. It was gruesome, stomach-churning stuff. The images of dead employees with bullets to the head and chest were bad enough, but the placid expressions of the dead Taliban fighters, some of whom had major body parts blow off, were chilling.

The Taliban claims it controls several of the main routes just outside the city and not many Afghans are willing to test that claim. Roadside bombs have tripled so far this year and then there are the “Taliban checkpoints” that are harrowing for Afghans, let alone foreigners.

The fact is, even if Kabul becomes more secure in the coming months it may remain virtually cut off from the rest of the country for some time. And then there’s still the issue of how to secure the city itself with a police force of grossly underpaid officers who claim they are on the take just to survive?

When I stopped at police headquarters at District #2, the commander there showed equal amounts of hubris and humility. Of course he said, he and his officers are heroes. But how else would you describe men who willingly walk the city knowing they could be target practice for the Taliban? And all for less than $200 a month.

I would like to hear what you think of the mission in Afghanistan. Let me know.

BAGRAM AIR BASE, AFGHANISTAN — I.E.D. or Improvised Explosive Device: The U.S. military calls it the Taliban’s weapon of choice and one look at the statistics and you know why.

Components for the construction of improvised explosive devices found by Afghan Border Police and Coalition Forces in Khowst Province.

The crude but lethal weapon is responsible for more than three quarters of all casualties in Afghanistan, says the U.S. Army, and I.E.D. attacks have tripled so far this year compared to last.

“It is a fact of modern warfare, this is the type of asymmetric attack they will use against us … and we have to be prepared to deal with that and this is a fight that’s worth fighting,” says Colonel Jeffrey Jarkowsky, Task Force Commander of JTF Paladin, a multi-disciplinary team trying to combat the most likely killer of coalition forces in Afghanistan.

And while armoured vehicles and constant training does save lives, intelligence plays a key role.

“It is critical, intelligence drives the fight overall in every aspect and for us it’s critical to use intelligence to determine who are the cells and the networks who are implacing the I.E.D.s,” says Colonel Jarkowsky.

With I.E.D. attacks literally everyday in Afghanistan now, the Taliban is adapting and learning. Like a virus mutating, the Taliban is learning from mistakes and adapting with new techniques.

“And so you’ve got this constant, constant, battle for wits really, it’s a battle for wits, it’s not a battle about armies or mass or weapons, it’s a battle about clever-nous” says Paul Cornish, a military analyst with London-based Chatham House. He adds that coalition forces know they must be smarter and more agile than the Taliban.

“The coalition are using more and more advanced technology, equipment and assets and so on and we’re beginning to see unmanned aerial vehicles being used in missiles attacks on very very local targets” says Cornish.

But I.E.D.s of all types kill more Afghan civilians than soldiers. In a security camera video released to the media by the Coalition forces, a 4×4 truck is seen navigating a check-point in Khost province. To the left of the truck, there is a steady stream of school children returning home from their last day of school. The video shows the 4×4 explode into a ball of fire. Fourteen children died in the explosion and scores were injured.

Back on base at Bagram, the trainer is yelling out orders: “Don’t pick anything up!” “Get on your knees to check the vehicle!” “Anything obvious could be a decoy!”. The soldiers know the drill already but the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 25Th Infantry Division from Alaska, is getting a refresher course. They are retracing the grim monotony of how to find I.E.D.s and dodge them, a task that has gone from Iraq to the battlefields of Afghanistan.

Here too now, as in Iraq, the hunt is on to find that that crude but effective weapon of war soldiers know all too well.

Click here to watch my report in video