We now feel the consequences of marginalising the Taliban

It was a mistake not to include the Taliban in the post-2001 state-building effort.

As the world is coming to grips with the sudden change of regime in Afghanistan, it is important to reflect on what led to this point. So far analyses have focused on the corruption and weakness of the Afghan state set up after the US-NATO invasion of the country in 2001 and on the disarray in the Afghan armed forces. But it is important to consider another aspect of the story – the Taliban’s refusal to negotiate with the Afghan government, which it saw as illegitimate and its determination to wipe it out. Why was the group so relentless on this? Much of it has to do with decisions that were made mainly by the invading Western forces and their Afghan allies in the 2000s to exclude the Taliban from the nation-building experiment they launched.