NATO's war in Afghanistan, which by one estimate resulted in the deaths of 243,000 - most of them Afghans - has finally come to an end. The Taliban is victorious, but what kind of victor it will be remains to be seen.

There are some promising signs: the relatively bloodless culmination of the Taliban's offensive, where many cities surrendered as a result of deals negotiated with local security forces or elders; the talks with former adversaries in Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah; the absence of systematic revenge killings - although there have been isolated accounts of executions and the monitoring of US-allied Afghans. It is also unclear what the situation is in Panjshir, which has resisted the Taliban takeover.

Ethnically, the Taliban has diversified from the exclusively Pashtun movement it was in the 1990s. As early as 2009, the Peshawar shura of the Taliban established a front dedicated exclusively to non-Pashtuns; Tajiks, Turkmens, Uzbeks and some Hazaras have joined the ranks of the Taliban in recent years. It was partly by expanding its presence in the multiethnic north that the Taliban was able to withstand Obama's surge against its southern heartlands; a fact that was once again underlined by the swift capitulation of northern cities in the recent offensive.

In recent years, Shia Hazara communities have also sought and received the protection of the Taliban against ISIL. And after the takeover, the Shia in Kabul were able to carry out Muharram processions in peace.

Nevertheless, like any ruling dispensation in Afghanistan, the Taliban remains Sunni and Pashtun-dominated, and its just-announced interim government gives every impression of being a government of the victors. True, these victors have been arguably more generous and more willing to speak to their defeated opponents than the US was in 2001.

Nevertheless, they will need to reflect that until they provide them, and Afghanistan's minority communities in general, a stake in governance, they will struggle to command broad legitimacy either locally or internationally.

Finally, the status of women under a Taliban-dominated regime has rightly raised concerns. The Taliban has made positive, though vague noises, supporting the right of women to work and be educated through university level, within an "Islamic framework". What that means has yet to be spelled out, and it is possible to imagine more or less concerning scenarios.

Frustration at the unwillingness of Taliban officials to give a clear answer resulted in women's marches on the streets of Kabul and Herat, and the Taliban's rough-handed dispersion of these protests is not a reassuring sign.

Any honest analysis of the future of women in Afghanistan, however, has to take cognisance of the following qualifications: first, that what are frequently described as "the gains of the last 20 years" were often gains limited to a minority of women and girls from among the minority of Afghans who are urbanised, whereas the losses imposed on Afghan women by a relentless and brutal war - in deaths, injuries, trauma, insecurity, economic loss - were more broadly shared.

Second, that Western powers prominently used the cause of women's rights as a justification for continuing war, and by so associating and tarnishing women's rights with the occupation, ensured they would become unnecessarily controversial and vulnerable once the mood of society turned against that occupation.

And third, that regressive attitudes to women in Afghanistan neither originated with nor are limited to the Taliban; in many places, they simply reflect the cultural norm, and the work of changing that norm is a much more challenging and arduous process that can only occur over time within Afghan society.

In its rhetoric, the Taliban is undoubtedly a movement transformed from its suspicious and insular antecedents. It seeks international legitimacy and at least some of its leadership recognise that the kind of rule it tried to impose in the 1990s is, and always was, unsustainable in Afghanistan.