Al Qaeda and the Taliban found each other useful when Mullah Muhammad Omar and the Taliban ruled Afghanistan. But toward the end, when it was clear that Osama Bin Laden was becoming a detriment to the Taliban and Afghanistan, Mullah Omar tried to find a graceful way to get him to leave. The ancient code of “Pashtunwali,” a strict code of hospitality which requires, among other things, that you not hand your guests over to their enemies, led Mullah Omar to reject requests to hand over Bin Laden. But if another place could be found for Bin Laden, then Mullah Omar would not be breaking the Pashtun code.

Hearing that a Chechen leader had offered Bin Laden hospitality, Mullah Omar inquired if Chechnya could be reached by road. The Taliban leaders back then were not sophisticated men, and knew little about the world at large.

When asked if Bin Laden could fly to Chechnya, he was reminded that a U.N. embargo meant that no international flight could land in Afghanistan.

When Bin Laden and Mullah Omar did leave Afghanistan, it was on horseback, and they were both on the run. But the code of hospitality was no longer Mullah Omar’s problem. The symbiosis between Al Qaeda and the Taliban continued because both were now fighting the United States. There also had been intermarriages between Al Qaeda Arabs and Pashtuns.

But the mistake the United States made was to turn its justified attacks against Bin Laden and Al Qaeda into a 10-year war against the Taliban — to treat both groups as synonymous rather than symbiotic. America risked the war morphing it into a war against the Pashtuns. Richard Holbrooke was roundly criticized for saying that the Taliban was woven deep into the fabric of Pashtun society, but he was right. That doesn’t mean that all Pashtuns are Talibs, but as the war drags on, and as long as the Pashtuns remain under-represented in the Kabul government, the war becomes more and more a nationalistic struggle for the Pashtuns.