Fourteen years ago, on November 25th, 2001, I watched the Taliban surrender Kunduz to Northern Alliance forces. It was a tense and dramatic day. I entered the city, on foot, before dawn, with a column of mujahideen fighters, and, like them, was confused by the noise of aircraft taking off from the city’s airport. After daybreak, at a mustering point in the city, enraged mujahideen commanders told me that what we had heard was an exodus, by airplane, of large numbers of Pakistani and Al Qaeda fighters, as well as some senior Taliban figures, whom, they claimed, the Americans had allowed to leave the city.
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