Several times, as I clung to the gear shift of a Russian jeep hurtling alongside deep ravines, contemplated life as a hostage in the upper Panjshir Valley and felt my toes going numb hiking over a snowed-in mountain pass, I thought of Haji Qadir.
I'd interviewed the former governor of Nangarhar province before his brother Abdul Haq, a hero of the jihad against the Soviets, was executed by the Taliban last week.
Sitting cross-legged on blue velvet cushions, Mr Qadir stuck a bare foot out and clamped his own ankle with both hands, simulating an animal trap. "If the Americans continue in this way," Mr Qadir said, "the day is coming when they will be caught like the Russians." Afghanistan does not welcome visitors.
At best, its people accost foreigners with the insistence of beggars. Their cruelty to one another is legendary; in the past decade thousands of prisoners were dumped in wells and blown up with hand grenades, or left to suffocate in shipping containers in the desert.
Westerners go there at their peril. Three French colleagues and I hired a worn-out Russian jeep - the best we could find in Jabal Saraj - for the journey through the Hindu Kush mountains to the Tajik border. After six hours, our driver Emon announced that the gearbox was broken. Each time we started up a steep slope, he threw the jeep into first gear and shouted "mocambi", the signal that I was to wrestle the lever down.
That night we stopped in a remote village where we were given dry bread and tea in a cramped mud hut.
A few hours later, I woke to a terrible racket. While Celine, Remi and I slept in our sleeping bags, Jean-Baptiste discovered we were prisoners. He shook the wooden door and shouted, as the villagers who'd shut us in with a padlock laughed.
Jean-Baptiste eventually broke a plank and prised the padlock off. In the morning, the owner of the hut demanded to be paid for the damage.
By then we had other worries. A storm overnight left the village mired in mud, and the first snow on the peaks above us. Several hundred men from the 01 division of the "Islamic State Army" were, like us, heading north. Emon the driver followed two Kamaz army lorries.
We advanced slowly, waiting in the cold each time the trucks broke down or got stuck. At one stop, the division commander Mohamed Akram introduced himself and we took souvenir photos, not realising we were about to trek over the mountains together.
At 4,900 metres, the Anjoman Pass is higher than Mont Blanc. The surrounding peaks average 6,000 metres. Most years, the first snow falls in early November - we were unlucky.
The pass remains snowed in until mid-summer.
The Kamaz trucks and our jeep driver put on snow chains, but as we approached Anjoman it was obvious we could not drive through 50 cm of snow. It was already 3 p.m. and we had to decide: hike over Anjoman at the risk of freezing in a new storm or darkness, or turn back to Jabal Saraj, where we might wait weeks for a helicopter.
A soldier named Shesdat carried my canvas bag with the strap across his forehead.
Another fighter, Shirin Agha, wore my computer across his chest, its strap forming an "X" with his Kalashnikov webbing. Several dozen of us set out in single file through the snow. In running shoes, I worried about frostbite until I realised that one of the mujahedeen wore sandals with socks, another sneakers with no socks.
Despite the support of Iran, Russia, France, India and the grudging assistance of the US, the United Front is as impoverished as Afghanistan itself.
In the afternoon light, with a half moon rising, the snow-covered mountains were so spectacular that we were seized with a kind of euphoria.
The mujahedeen plunged Kalashnikovs and rocket launchers into the snow in lieu of walking sticks. Once we'd started the icy descent, a reckless soldier abandoned the snaking path to race headlong down the mountainside, shouting "Commando, Commando".
An old soldier with a grey beard struggled under a heavy machine-gun. Each time he slipped on the ice, the others laughed without mercy.
Another fighter fell far behind. Word reached the front of the procession that his shoes had broken. Commander Akram found a spare pair and placed them on a rock, then fired his Kalashnikov in the air to show the hapless soldier where the shoes were.
It was dark when we reached an army encampment on the far side of Anjoman. We hired another jeep, and reached the northern capital of Faizabad the following afternoon. By chance, the first Antonov in 10 days was preparing for take-off. We half pleaded, half stormed our way on to the plane, which was ferrying 30 of President Burhanneddin Rabbani's bodyguards to Tajikstan, en route for training in Iran.
We hadn't realised that the transport aircraft was bound for the Russian airbase at Kurgonteppa, not Dushanbe. When the Afghan bodyguards had disembarked, there were 11 journalists and aid workers left.
We had no authorisation to fly to Dushanbe - or to leave the airbase - a Russian colonel informed us. For despite a decade's independence, Russia still runs Tajikistan. We would have to spend the night on the tarmac at Kurgonteppa, the colonel threatened.
I'd met a man in Jabal Saraj who paid US$1,500 for a Tajik visa. When he flew to Dushanbe last year, the Russians arrested him at the airport, threw him into a crowded, lice and flea-infested cell for 20 days, then dumped him over the Afghan border.
Frightened though he was, the Afghan was about to restart the desperate process, in the hope of reaching Europe.
But we were privileged Westerners, playing Scrabble as we waited for the Soviet-era bureaucracy to sort itself out. A decrepit bus with a Tajik bodyguard who looked like a sumo wrestler eventually came for us. "They call me Hurricane," the bodyguard boasted.
Hurricane saw us through highway check-points with gates like level crossings - designed by Moscow decades ago to control the masses. Dushanbe was the last stop before showers, food, beds with sheets and sans fleas.
About the same time, Commander Akram, Sheshdat and Shirin Agha would be arriving on the front line at Taloqan, trapped in a war that every Afghan dreams of escaping.
