As some veteran foreign correspondents pointed out, watching Taliban insurgents storm into the northern Afghan city of Kunduz on Monday and declare their intention to govern according to Islamic law seemed to echo the way the city was taken by Western-backed, Islamist mujahedeen in 1988, just days after the withdrawal of Soviet troops.

Then, as now, Afghan government forces vowed to retake the city swiftly, as a superpower that controlled the skies above the country seemed unable to impose its will on the ground.

There is, however, one obvious difference between the Islamists of the two eras. The Taliban of the 21st century, armed with mobile phones and Internet connections, moved quickly to declare victory on social networks before an expected counteroffensive from government troops massed at an air base on the outskirts of the provincial capital.