President Bush had very little to say about the conflict when he appeared in public with President Putin of Russia that day, preferring to promise a reduction in the nuclear stockpile. Pakistan called for a demilitarised zone inside Kabul, but nobody was telling that to the wild-eyed Alliance fighters who fired guns into the air and strutted around like members of an outlaw gang that had just become the police. The UN announced it would send an emergency multinational force of peacekeepers into the city, but not for days. There was not, however, the descent into chaos and slaughter experienced during previous “liberations” in Afghanistan.In this ravaged land, still scattered with ruined buildings and the twisted, sand-blasted metal of vehicles destroyed in conflicts years ago, it seemed appropriate that the first song played on the radio after years of silence was a lament. “Kabul Jaan” (My Sweetheart Kabul), was an exile’s song of longing for the city, sung by Farhad Darya, who had been living in America for a decade.Members of al-Qa’ida were hit when an unmanned Predator drone aircraft sent Hellfire missiles down on a building where they were meeting. The Pentagon later claimed to have killed Mohammed Atef, deputy to Osama bin Laden and one of those accused of planning the terrorist attacks on 11 September.

The retreating Taliban fighters took with them eight Western aid workers who had been imprisoned for preaching Christianity, but then abandoned them at a prison in Ghazni, 50 miles south of Kabul. They spent the next day in hiding while local commanders contacted the Red Cross.Haji Mulla Khaksar, deputy interior minister in the Taliban, was said to have remained in Kabul and defected, using his insider knowledge of where Bin Laden might be as a bargaining tool. As reports were made of “mass defections” in the southern stronghold of Kandahar, the movement’s supreme leader, Mullah Omar, used a radio broadcast to urge his remaining supporters to regroup and “scatter the enemy”.The Taliban withdrew from Jalalabad at noon on Wednesday 14 November, its leaders leaving by Russian helicopter from the lawns of the Qasir Shahi, once the winter retreat of the King of Afghanistan. The last man to wear that crown, Zahir Shah, said he would wait safely in Rome until it was clear what kind of new government would fill the power vacuum in his country. One of his old rivals also decided to stay away a little longer: Burnahuddin Rabbani, leader of the Northern Alliance and a former president, was expected to come down from the Panjshir Valley on Wednesday and ride into Kabul in glory, but he did not turn up.Tony Blair was in more confident mood in London, telling the Commons that the Taliban was in “total collapse”. Afterwards he used the Pashtun department of the BBC World Service to remind Afghans that there was a reward of $25m for the capture of Bin Laden. He also promised that the West would not abandon their country as it had in the past.American aircraft continued to target caves and tunnels where the enemy might be hiding, and claimed to have hit an al-Qa’ida house in Kandahar They also began dropping food parcels again.

Commentators began to talk as though the war was won, but White House press secretary Ari Fleischer urged caution. “Just because Kabul has fallen is no guarantee that al-Qa’ida will be captured shortly.”Early on Thursday 15 November the eight stranded Western aid workers were picked up by US special forces helicopters as the Taliban launched a counter-attack on Ghazni. Pakistan sent troops to reinforce its borders, but turned a blind eye to hundreds of exiled fighters passing through the Khyber Pass on their way to Jalalabad with commanders who had run the city until 1996. They arrived to find it abandoned, so they gathered in the abandoned Qasir Shahi to discuss who would take overall control. All of them hated the Northern Alliance.Elsewhere, the pace of the conflict was beginning to slow down as fighting gave way to negotiations. The city of Kunduz in the north of the country was surrounded but the 20,000 Taliban fighters inside refused to surrender.

Commanders of six Pashtun tribal groups met in Quetta, Pakistan, to consider making a settlement with Mullah Omar. They opposed the Taliban but were desperate to prevent the Alliance coming south.Mullah Omar agreed to speak to the BBC on Thursday but he would not do so on a satellite telephone for fear of being traced and bombed So a colleague held the phone up to a two-way radio. The situation in Afghanistan was related to a bigger cause, he said “That is the destruction of America. The plan is going ahead and, God willing, it is being implemented, but it is a huge task beyond the will and comprehension of human beings.”As he spoke, 100 members of the Special Boat Squadron were flying into Bagram airport, 30 miles from Kabul, in two Hercules transporters The SAS on the ground had already made sure it was safe. This was seen as the first step towards the deployment of 4,000 British troops being held on 48-hour stand-by. “Let me emphasise that this conflict is not over,” Tony Blair said in London.