Mullah Akhtar Mohammed Osmani, the Taliban’s military leader for southern Afghanistan, sat stolidly, his great bulk supported in an overstuffed chair to my left. It was October 2, 2001, and events had been hurtling forward since the terrorist attacks of September 11. President George W. Bush had delivered an ultimatum to the Taliban in his State of the Union address on September 20: Hand over al-Qaeda’s leadership or share their fate. But the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan had not yet begun, and I still saw a chance, however small, for a peaceful way out. That was why, as the CIA station chief in Islamabad responsible for both Pakistan and Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, I was having this meeting with a top Taliban official.
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