In this issue of TIME, writers of the Asian diaspora have eloquently explored the idea of journeying home. All have expressed mixed feelings, describing pain—or, at the very least, awkwardness—as well as joy, when thinking about home. Like my fellow voyagers, I, too, have been obsessed about going home. But I do not share any of their ambivalence. My emotions are raw, visceral—and unequivocal. To put it straight: I love my country; I hate those who oppressed it for so long; I helped fight to free it; if I had to, I would have killed to achieve that goal, and I was ready to die for it.

I took the long, hard way home. For years, I'd been telling the U.S. to do something about the Taliban, who were brutalizing Afghans and harboring terrorists. If you took them on, the risk was high that you would pay with your life. My father, a tribal leader who fiercely opposed the Taliban, was gunned down in Quetta, on the Pakistani side of the border with Afghanistan, where we had been living in exile. But it wasn't until after 9/11 that the Americans realized this was not just an Afghan problem but an international one.

Once Washington agreed to back me against the Taliban, I left for Afghanistan. I didn't think about being captured or killed—I just went. That was in early October 2001; I was in Quetta at the time, with my family. I told everyone that I was going to a friend's memorial service in town. I didn't even tell my wife what I was really up to. I only said that if I weren't back in a few days, it was because I was busy and she shouldn't worry. She was surprised, of course, but I didn't give her the opportunity to discuss my trip. I hurried away.

At the border, I met with three trusted friends. They had two motorbikes and a couple of handguns. I put on a salwar kameez and an Afghan-style turban. We simply rode into Afghanistan on the main highway.

First we stayed in a village near Kandahar's airport; then we moved to a house in the middle of town. That evening, American bombs began to fall around us. The war had begun. My cousins arranged for a taxi, an old Toyota station wagon, to take us into central Afghanistan. We stayed with a clergyman for several nights in the village of Tarin Kowt. His brother was a Taliban judge. In the afternoons, the brother would have tea with me and defend the Taliban.

Yet he never told them I was staying in the house. That's when it sunk in that the Taliban were on the run, that Afghans wanted change.

With about 60 fighters, I took to the mountains. Afghans were joining us all the time.

The Americans dropped us weapons, ammunition—and 16 members of the special forces. Once, the Taliban and al-Qaeda came close to capturing us, setting up an ambush with about 500 militiamen. But a village clergyman, who had risen to call the early-morning prayers, saw these armed men getting out of their vehicles and moving into the mountains. Instead of summoning the faithful to prayer, he ran to warn us.

We put up stiff resistance, and we had help from American bombers. The Taliban announced that they'd caught and hanged me. I knew my wife was hearing this, but I couldn't call her because my satellite-phone batteries were running out.

That encounter with the Taliban was one of their last stands. After that battle, wherever we went the Taliban would give up beforehand to the local villagers. At about the end of October, the Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar sent me a message. "What do you want?" he asked. I replied: "I want the Taliban and al-Qaeda to leave our country for the Afghans." Just weeks later, several top Taliban commanders drove up to my camp to surrender. That same day, I was named President. And three days afterward, I entered Kandahar, unarmed and in a noisy convoy with more than 1,000 supporters, to take up my post. The journey to rebuild Afghanistan had only begun, but I was finally, joyously home.