Imran Ullah has just returned home to Pakistan after retreating with Taliban forces from the Afghan front line north of Kabul which was captured by the opposition Northern Alliance this week.
The 22-year-old, from a staunchly pro-Taliban district outside the north-western city of Peshawar, says he intends rejoining the Islamic militia's new guerrilla war in southern Afghanistan as soon as he can.
Imran is dressed in Timberland-style suede boots and wears a heavy leather jacket over his traditional baggy pyjama-like shirt and trousers. He wears his dark beard long, in keeping with Taliban's strict ban on shaving.
He says the Taliban ordered its 30,000 troops to retreat from the front line at Bagram airbase last Monday after intense US bombing of their position, accompanied by a major attack by Northern Alliance forces.
The relentless aerial bombardments had damaged their arms and ammunition supplies and they were suffering severe food shortages. "Our trenches were destroyed," he said. "The bombing was so huge that you could tell the time on your watch by the light of the blast. Many people started vomiting blood. It was coming from their mouths, ears and noses."
Imran said he and some Pakistani colleagues stayed on after the Taliban troops fled the frontline early on Monday evening. Eventually they too were forced to retreat, heading south towards the capital Kabul which they reached at 6 a.m. on Tuesday, a few hours ahead of Northern Alliance troops.
Imran claims the Taliban's leader, Mullah Omar, ordered his troops to vacate Kabul because he did not wish to visit death and destruction upon its citizens as occurred when the Northern Alliance last seized the city in 1992.
"There were no Taliban there when we arrived and the people were looting the shops and started taking personal revenge out on each other. Those dead bodies you saw on TV were not Taliban but local people shot over personal enmities," he said.
Imran made his way east by bus to Jalalabad and then crossed over hills with some 40 other colleagues into Pakistan's North West Frontier Province. He is one of thousands of ethnic Pashtun Pakistanis to have joined the Taliban, most of who are from the same ethnic group.
Despite the Northern Alliance's gains, Imran says he is confident the Taliban will return to power in Afghanistan, as rival opposition factions would be weakened by factional fighting.
Imran was seated in a house in the quiet and pretty farming village of Mujahid Abad in the Charssada district outside Peshawar. Mujahid Abad translates roughly as the place of mujahideen, or holy warriors.
Outside the mosque several feet from the house are the graves of three generations of Pakistani men who were martyred while partaking in a jihad, or holy war. The third grave is fresh, recently decorated with multi-coloured tinsel and shiny metallic paper flowers. I
It is that of Latif Mohammed Ishaq (27) who was killed in his sleep last month when a US bomb dropped on a Taliban camp in Darul Aman near Kabul.
Beside Latif's grave is that of his father who died in 1989 while engaged in jihad against Soviet troops occupying Afghanistan. The grandest grave, surrounded by a green metal grille draped with tinsel, is that of Latif's grandfather, killed while fighting in Kashmir in 1958.
Latif's 22-year-old cousin, Rafiq, says all his extended family have the "same devotion to jihad" and the defence of Islam.
Before going to Afghanistan, Latif had spent a year in the disputed Kashmir region where Islamic guerrillas have been fighting Indian security forces since 1989, seeking its independence or its merger with Pakistan. "He went to Kabul with a mission to take part in the fight of the Taliban against America to uphold an Islamic government," said Rafiq.
In a shady courtyard at the rear of the house, the women of the neighbourhood gathered to recite verses of the Koran in Latif's memory. They sat on a carpet in a large circle around thousands of dark beads with which they silently count out 16,000 verses, each bead representing one verse.
The male interpreter cannot enter this all-female area as only close male relatives can mingle with women. Rafiq leads the way and introduces Mohammed's young bride, his mother and grandmother. They show a large photograph of him, his pale amber eyes staring out behind dark hair and a beard. He is wearing a green combat-style sleeveless jacket and a military baseball cap worn back to front. "I am very proud of Latif," says his widowed mother. "He is in paradise."