The Taliban won’t seek to rule Afghanistan on their own anymore, the document assured, and a new constitution “would pave the way for power-sharing in the next government.” When the republic’s delegates returned to Kabul, many enthused about how much the Taliban had evolved from the ruthless regime that ruled Afghanistan in the 1990s.

For the next nine years, the Taliban continued to lull the world with conciliatory messaging as they pursued a bloody war at home in parallel with diplomatic efforts to secure their ultimate goal: an American military withdrawal.

“Monopoly of power is a story of failure. That is why we want to have all on board,” Suhail Shaheen, now the Taliban’s ambassador-designate to the United Nations, said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal six weeks before the group seized Kabul, deposed the Afghan republic and monopolized all power. “Past experiences have shown that you will ultimately fail and will not bring durable peace.”…

America’s increasing impatience with its longest overseas war drove the pace of these talks—removing one by one the Taliban’s incentives to compromise.