The plan was as follows: send a respected commander and royalist on covert missions into Afghanistan to stir up a tribal revolt, split the Taliban and deprive Osama bin Laden of protection.
In the process, a strong post-Taliban grouping from Afghanistan's Pashtun majority could emerge under the banner of exiled king Mohammed Zahir Shah, setting the stage for a broad-based government.
And above all, Washington's "Operation Enduring Freedom" would have been limited to a few weeks of airstrikes and not be transformed into a long, drawn-out war in Afghanistan.
The two men assigned to the task had the perfect profile: Afghan, respected, well-connected and willing to take the risk of negotiating behind Taliban lines.
Abdul Haq won his heroic status for his battles against the Soviet occupation, and respect for keeping out of the mujahidin's brutal civil war of the 1990s.
His co-conspiritor, Hamid Karzai, could also play the jihad, royalist and Pashtun cards -- potential magnets for any Afghan alienated by the Taliban's puritanical brand of Islam and reliance on Arab and Pakistani fighters.
But it all went horribly wrong.
Hamid Karzai narrowly escaped with his life, Abdul Haq was executed by the Taliban, and analysts say gone with them are hopes the Taliban would crack under something other than overwhelming military pressure.
"Absolutely catastrophic. The worst news all war," was how a western diplomat described the failure of the missions, which according to one well-placed intelligence source were funded and co-planned with the CIA.
Furthermore, the failures sent the signal that when it comes to intelligence, the Taliban can keep up.
"It leaked, too many people were in the loop," one intelligence source said in an admission that could also be considered an understatement.
When Abdul Haq set out there was little secrecy surrounding his trip to the eastern Afghan province of Logar, home to many moderate elders isolated from the upper Taliban echelons and seen as potential defectors.
Before his mission, Abdul Haq met the press, advertising his presence along the Afghan border and doubtless raising alarm bells among Taliban sympathizers in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In Pakistan, news of Hamid Karzai's similar mission also emerged after the pair had already set off, destroying the covert nature of both operations. Tailing them both, Afghan sources said, were crack squads of Taliban fighters.
Of greater concern in the light of an intelligence failure, was that intelligence sources and diplomats described the plan as the pinnacle of a wider operation to identify so-called "moderate Taliban" and win them over from Taliban supremo Mullah Mohammad Omar and his influential "guest" bin Laden.
All attempts to court the defection of senior Taliban figures -- through complex negotiations or cash -- have so far failed, intelligence sources said.
A successful scenario for the plan would also have appeased the fears of Pakistan, a major past backer of the Taliban and nervous at seeing the powerful Pashtun community -- half of whom live in Pakistan -- losing power in Kabul.
"There was a two-pronged approach, a dual strategy," a European diplomatic source said.
"Try to split the Taliban while keeping them under military pressure. Now there is just one option left -- the military."
The US, analysts say, has now been forced to throw in its lot with Afghanistan's anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, a loose collection of mostly non-Pashtun ethnic groups and bitter enemies of Pakistan.
The Alliance, based here north of the capital Kabul and with another base wedged into the corner of the country near the Tajikistan border, is also far from ready to take on the Taliban on its own, or in the coming weeks.
Anti-Taliban forces have stretched supply lines now covered in snow and are running short of ammunition.
Washington is now faced with the complex logistics and politics of rapidly arming and coordinating with a new ally already allied with Russia and Iran.
"The mood of the war has moved from optimism, to frustration and now patience," a Western analyst here said.
"And it's a daunting military prospect and a geopolitcal minefield for the Americans. All is pointing towards a long operation."
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