As for the ordinary citizens, it was easy to imagine the state of terror in which they lived from day to day as the imminent likelihood of a Taliban takeover loomed large. As repressive and frequently brutal as the existing regime might already have been, such a change could only be for the far, far worse. Many still remembered the chaotic violence that had swept the country after the communist government finally collapsed in ’92 and the rebels took control for the first time. It was hard to forget the image of the then Afghan president, Muhammad Najibullah, captured, castrated, murdered and then hanged from a traffic kiosk for all to see. Things would surely be even more terrible now, as the rebels thirsted for revenge for the treatment of so many of their comrades at the hands of the Americans. The Taliban’s seizure of power threatened a return to the days of fundamentalist tyranny. The forced marriages of young girls to their fighters. The ritual stoning and amputations, the mass executions in sports stadiums, the flogging in the streets of any man without a beard, and the genocidal massacre of anyone who opposed them.

In the capital city of Kabul, home to most of the country’s more liberal-minded citizens, many residents had consoled themselves that the Taliban’s move against their city would be months away, if indeed it happened at all. The American leaders had assured them that a US military pull-out wouldn’t mean the end of the United States’ involvement in the running of the country, or that its people would be abandoned to their fate.

But that hope had been dashed as the Americans started pulling out wholesale and events began to roll faster that anyone could have imagined. Zaranj was the first provincial centre to fall to the aggressive Taliban advance. The very next day a second capital, Sherberghan, fell too. The day after that, three more northern cities: Sar-i-pul, Takhar and Kundruz. Scenes of panic in Kabul as crowds crushed into the airport in their mad dash to get out before it was too late. Internet and phone networks collapsed. The roads were log-jammed with traffic.

And then, the news reached them that Kandahar City had now fallen too. Meanwhile, Taliban units continued to advance at a blinding pace. They took control of Herat, then of Ghazni, just seventy miles from the capital. The US Embassy in Kabul closed its doors and diplomats began feverishly destroying classified materials, while shifting their operations to the relative safety of the airport where three thousand US troops were expected to land at any time, not to repel the incoming rebel forces but to oversee the evacuation of US citizens and their allies.