Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.

My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.

As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.

What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,

poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.

If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds.

This is the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Zach Brophy.

With the Taliban in control of Afghanistan once more, I'm taking you back to the early days of the

movement that is now imposing its strict rules on the country.

I've been speaking to Ahmed Rashid, a journalist who has followed its rise since the beginning. In the early 1990s, Afghanistan was in the grips of a brutal civil war.

Warlordism, banditry and lawlessness ruled the land.

There were reports, very vague reports of this mysterious group down in the south in Kandahar,

young people who were coming together and trying to end the civil

war.

And I was very interested to meet any such group and I had travelled down to Kandahar.

Ahmed Veshid is a Pakistani journalist based in Lahore.

He has been covering Afghanistan's conflicts for decades.

He didn't know what to expect when he went to Kandahar in the winter of 1994.

Many of them had been wounded.

Somebody had no leg, somebody had no arm.

Many of them who had such severe wounds,

they weren't even fully able to walk or carry anything or shoulder a gun.

...