When Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar arrived at Afghanistan’s Kandahar airport from Doha on a Qatari Air Force C-17 on Tuesday, he was welcomed by jubilant Islamist militants as a conquering hero. Yet Baradar’s success had come not on the battlefield but in the dealmaking room.

Back in 2010, Baradar, then a top Taliban military leader, had been arrested in the Pakistani port city of Karachi in a joint operation by Pakistani and US spies. Eight years later, he was freed, supposedly at Washington’s behest, and flown to Doha to head the Taliban political office. This is the de facto embassy of the militant group that ruled Afghanistan under strict Islamic law from 1996 until the US-led invasion in 2001.

In Doha, Baradar represented the Taliban in talks with US president Donald Trump’s administration, which culminated in the February 2020 deal for withdrawal of all US troops from Afghanistan. That, in turn, paved the way for the Taliban’s seizure of the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Sunday, after an almost unobstructed sweep across the country, as Afghan army units, demoralised by the loss of US support, stood down.