The reason we can't get the answer we want to the question we ask is that we have asked the wrong questions and have identified the wrong problems. We need to reassess the problem and ask different questions. We need to stop making this all about US.
If we did successfully reorient as you recommend sir, I think we'd find that we should have left some five to six years ago.

We don't want warlords in the fight, but that's precisely who were up against the Taliban in the vein of the Northern Alliance. ANSF is not, as you well know, the Northern Alliance reincarnate, despite the injection of the various soldiers from the tribes that dominated the Northern Alliance.

Looking at the wiki about the NA, I found these quotes from Massoud interesting to note:

Ahmad Shah Massoud remained the only leader of the United Front in Afghanistan. The Taliban repeatedly offered Massoud a position of power to make him stop his resistance. Massoud declined. He explained in one interview:

"The Taliban say: “Come and accept the post of prime minister and be with us”, and they would keep the highest office in the country, the presidentship. But for what price?! The difference between us concerns mainly our way of thinking about the very principles of the society and the state. We can not accept their conditions of compromise, or else we would have to give up the principles of modern democracy. We are fundamentally against the system called “the Emirate of Afghanistan”."[20]

"There should be an Afghanistan where every Afghan finds himself or herself happy. And I think that can only be assured by democracy based on consensus."[21]

Massoud wanted to convince the Taliban to join a political process leading towards democratic elections in a foreseeable future.[20][22] He also stated:
"The Taliban are not a force to be considered invincible. They are distanced from the people now. They are weaker than in the past. There is only the assistance given by Pakistan, Osama bin Laden and other extremist groups that keep the Taliban on their feet. With a halt to that assistance, it is extremely difficult to survive."[21]

In early 2001 the United Front employed a new strategy of local military pressure and global political appeals.[23] Resentment was increasingly gathering against Taliban rule from the bottom of Afghan society including the Pashtun areas.[23] In total, estimates range up to one million people fleeing the Taliban.[24] Many civilians fled to the area of Ahmad Shah Massoud.[12][25] National Geographic concluded in its documentary "Inside the Taliban": "The only thing standing in the way of future Taliban massacres is Ahmad Shah Massoud."[12] In the areas under his control Massoud set up democratic institutions and signed the Women's Rights Declaration.[8] At the same time he was very wary not to revive the failed Kabul government of the early 1990s.[23] Already in 1999 the United Front leadership ordered the training of police forces specifically to keep order and protect the civilian population in case the United Front would be successful.[8] In early 2001 Ahmad Shah Massoud addressed the European Parliament in Brussels asking the international community to provide humanitarian help to the people of Afghanistan.[24] He stated that the Taliban and Al Qaeda had introduced "a very wrong perception of Islam" and that without the support of Pakistan and Bin Laden the Taliban would not be able to sustain their military campaign for up to a year.[24] On this visit to Europe he also warned that his intelligence had gathered information about a large-scale attack on U.S. soil being imminent.[26]
I've always played the alternate ending mental game and wondered what would be going on in Afghanistan if he hadn't been assassinated.