These days, Suhail Shaheen is presented as the acceptable face of the Taliban. He’s the movement’s spokesman and part of its negotiating team in Qatar, soft-spoken and media savvy, who has pledged that Afghanistan's reborn Islamic Emirate won’t take out revenge on political rivals, won't stop girls from going to school, and won't enforce the burqa. He insists that the Taliban has learnt from some of its missteps when it was in power the first time round in the 1990s, and has promised “an inclusive government in which all Afghans will have participation”.
It’s almost twenty years since I met Suhail Shaheen. That was just a few weeks after 9/11. The American-led offensive was underway against Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, where the al-Qaeda attacks were planned and where Osama bin Laden had taken refuge.