Under the proposed ceasefire deal, Afghan political leaders would broker some kind of power-sharing deal, including former president Hamid Karzai, who has stayed in Kabul and is now leading talks with the Taliban on the shape of their new leadership, Bloomberg reports. That might have given those who wanted to flee a slightly longer window to escape, without having to negotiate Taliban checkpoints in the city. Perhaps even a land corridor could have been agreed.

Ghani instead took heavy-handed steps to prevent an exodus of his citizens, ordering the passport office to stop issuing new documents the week before Kabul fell, according to reports. And when days later he fled by helicopter as the Taliban moved into Kabul, the opportunity was gone for ever.

From exile, Ghani put out a statement on Facebook saying he had left to avoid bloodshed. There were certainly very real fears of bloody street-to-street fighting if the Taliban had moved into the densely crowded capital, but the chaos that followed his departure has created its own immediate suffering, and may leave a much longer legacy of pain.