As insurgents carried out coordinated attacks in three areas of Kabul today, taking over a tall building overlooking the central diplomatic compounds and firing rocket-propelled grenades down on the US embassy, the Taliban were sending out text messages to journalists giving a blow by blow account of the assault.

Reports from the US compound said that hundreds of diplomats and staff had taken shelter in the embassy bunker. Presumably among them was the ambassador, Ryan Crocker, who was quoted in yesterday's Washington Post as saying: "It's better than I thought. The biggest problem in Kabul is traffic."

Today, the Taliban gave western officials something to keep their minds off city centre congestion. Crocker was appealing for 'strategic patience' back home, and offering evidence of progress. By carrying out a complex attack in the heart of the capital, the insurgents are seeking to demonstrate that such claims are illusory.

Security in Kabul has been fully transferred to Afghan control, and in the midst of the attack, the Nato secretary-general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, was tweeting that he was "confident Afghan authorities can deal with the situation". But the people of Kabul will be asking why this is taking so long, and wondering what happened to the security forces' vaunted 'ring of steel', the checkpoints and blast barriers around the city centre which were the partial cause of the traffic jams troubling Crocker.

Underlying those questions is a deeper sense of anxiety over what will happen once western combat troops leave in 2014. Rasmussen also tweeted that "Taliban trying to test transition but will not be able to stop it. Transition on track." That is a near certainty because the US and western European publics cannot stomach any more. But that does not translate into confidence the Afghan army and police can fill the vacuum. The fear of a return to the chaos of the nineties is tangible in Kabul and beyond. The real concern is that such attacks are a taste of what is to come, not the death throes of the insurgency.

Today's attack does not necessarily mean that the Taliban is opposed to talking peace. On the contrary, it could be a show of strength with future negotiations in mind. Mullah Omar's Eid message at the end of August, acknowledging contacts with the Americans and raising the possibility of power sharing, was widely seen as a significant change in tone, and not just by professionally optimistic western diplomats.

The Pakistani writer, Ahmed Rashid, described it as the "most forward-looking political message" the Taliban leader had ever sent.

By acknowledging that there have been contacts with the Americans, Mullah Omar is sending a clear message to his fighters that future political talks are a possibility, while signaling to the Americans that he may eventually be prepared to broaden the scope of the dialogue and those already participating in it.

Rashid says his sources insist the contacts between Washington and the Taliban are continuing, contrary to widespread reports that the Omar confidante, Tayyab Agha, had gone missing after his involvement in secret talks in the Gulf and in Germany was revealed in the press.

That might explain the reported US backing for the opening of a Taliban political office in Qatar. Or that could simply reflect desperation to have some concrete 'deliverable' to announce at the Bonn conference on Afghanistan in December.

It is far from clear who would staff any such office, or the extent to which they would represent Mullah Omar and the rest of the Quetta Shura. The other, deepening unknown is whether this old-school leadership can 'deliver' the insurgents carrying out attacks like today's.

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