numerically less significant, but except in Jalalabad, which fell the
day after Kabul, the fall of the main Pushtun centres took a little
longer. A prison riot by captured Taliban fighters in Mazar-e Sharif
cost the life of a CIA agent on 25 November before it was ruth-
lessly suppressed (Associated Press, 28 November). In the north,
hard-core Arab fighters had retreated into the city of Kunduz. On
26 November, after relentless pounding by B-52s, the city was
taken by United Front forces: most of the remaining Taliban forces
either fled or surrendered, although some intriguing reports hinted
that planes, most likely from Pakistan, had been evacuating
Pakistani Taliban every night for nearly two weeks with US consent
(Filkins, 2001b; Hussain, 2001). There were a large number of
Arabs in Kunduz, and the anti-Taliban forces showed them little
mercy: if anything, their loathing of the Arabs and Pakistanis led
them to treat Afghan Taliban a little less harshly than they might
otherwise have done. By the time the battle for Kandahar loomed,
the Taliban were on the point of collapse. Forces loyal to Hamed
Karzai, who had succeeded his father Abdul Ahad Karzai as
Popalzai tribal leader following the older Karzai’s assassination in
July 1999 formed one bloc threatening the city, from the north; in
addition, forces still loyal to Haji Abdul Latif’s son Gul Agha took
up positions to the east. A dispute broke out between two power
holders of an earlier era, Gul Agha and Mulla Naqib, but Karzai
succeeded in brokering an agreement between the two. Finally, on 9
December, exactly nine weeks after the bombing campaign had
begun, Karzai entered Kandahar in an unarmed convoy (Rohde
with Schmitt, 2001). The era of Taliban rule was over. And on 16
December, Secretary of State Powell stated that ‘We’ve destroyed al
Qaeda in Afghanistan, and we have ended the role of Afghanistan
as a haven for terrorist activity’ (Kifner with Schmitt, 2001).
Why did the Taliban fall so quickly?
The swift fall of the Taliban was the result of a number of differ-
ent factors. One was the loss of most support from Pakistan, which
left the Taliban bereft. Their military machine was significantly
266 The Afghanistan Wars