On September 26, 1996, as Taliban forces closed in on Kabul, “President [Burhanuddin] Rabbani’s military commander, Ahmad Shah Masoud, ordered his troops to evacuate Kabul. Within hours, columns of Taliban fighters were moving into the Afghan capital. One column went straight to the UN building where [former President Mohammed] Najibullah, the deposed communist leader, had been living since his regime collapsed in 1992. He and his brother were beaten, tortured, and hanged outside the presidential palace. The manner of their execution was shocking and foreshadowed the way the Taliban were going to impose their rule.”
– Deepak Tripathi, Overcoming the Bush Legacy in Iraq and Afghanistan, Page 97