Surreal” was the word used by 60 Twinkles pressman Sharyn Alfonsi and patron Ashley Velie to describe their recent trip to Afghanistan where they reported on the philanthropic extremity in the war- torn country.

The brace began working on the story following the Taliban preemption amidst the United States military pullout.

“Afghanistan is in deep extremity right now because of a number of reasons,”Velie told 60 Twinkles Overtime.” (Those reasons) primarily being lack of cash, lack of any way for people, average citizens, to pay for food, for health care, for day-to- day musts. Everything has absolutely been firmed there, shut off, nothing.”

The trip from theU.S. to Afghanistan included stops in Qatar and Pakistan before Alfonsi and Velie and their platoon boarded a United Nations flight from Islamabad to Kabul. It’s one of the many means of transportation into the landlocked nation. Since the Taliban preemption, marketable breakouts have stopped.

Velie spent months communicating with the Pakistani consulate and the Afghan charge in New York, which is unaffiliated with the Taliban and has ties to the former government. The charge told 60 Twinkles they could give visas but couldn’t guarantee safe passage or entry into Afghanistan and would need to be released of all responsibility should commodity be during the trip.

The passage wasn’t short of fraught moments in the new Afghan paradigm. Alfonsi and Velie noted that checkpoints formerly manned by American colors, transnational abettors, and the Afghan army had been taken over by the Taliban. Taliban dogfaces wore drudgeries discarded by western forces and manned Humvees left behind by the American army after nearly two decades of war. The experience at each checkpoint varied grounded on the position and the time of day.

“I can not stress enough how strange that scene is of seeing these Taliban fighters, not in their traditional dress, Afghanistan dress, that we are used to seeing, but in American dogfaces’uniforms,” said Alfonsi.”They were wearing helmets, elbow pads, kneepads, night vision goggles, effects for when you are on a copter. And they are wearing those on the side of the road … I can only imagine what it would be like to see notoriety who’d spent so important time in the service there driving up to see that. It was surreal.”

At one checkpoint, Alfonsi and Velie recalled the tense moments after the platoon’s vehicles were stopped and girdled by roughly 40 fortified Taliban dogfaces. The men began requesting passports and identification be handed over. Alfonsi said she hid a phone with a shadowing device in her charge. The fighters opened the box and took out helmets and armored vests 60 Twinkles frequently travels with when reporting from dangerous places. After roughly 45 twinkles and multiple calls made by the platoon’s Afghan fixer to Taliban’ officers,’the platoon was allowed to drive the final five twinkles to the Taliban guarded hostel.

There were surely moments when we did not feel safe,”Alfonsi told 60 Twinkles Overtime.”Whether you were in the auto in business and fussing about being a target that way, or walking through a fiefdom, or sitting down with the Taliban, I suppose that our heads were on a swivel the entire time we were there.”

60 Twinkles traveled to Afghanistan hoping to solicit a member of the Taliban leadership. Despite weeks of accommodations, it wasn’t guaranteed. The evidence came toward the end of the trip that Taliban Health MinisterDr. Qalandar Ebad would do a sit-down with Alfonsi. The 60 Twinkles platoon snappily traveled to a Taliban run polio vaccine clinic where they met the 41- time-old urologist who was lately appointed to his clerical post.

Alfonsi said fortified Taliban fighters stood over cameramen Thorsten Hoefle, Massimo Mariani, sound mastermind Anton van der Merwe and counsel Jim Williams as they set-up the interview. It lasted for roughly 70 twinkles.