The United States completed its withdrawal from Afghanistan late on Monday, ending America's longest war and closing a chapter in military history likely to be remembered for colossal failures, unfulfilled promises and a frantic final exit that cost the lives of more than 180 Afghans and 13 US service members, some barely older than the war. Hours ahead of President Joe Biden's Tuesday deadline for shutting down a final airlift, and thus ending the US war, Air Force transport planes carried a remaining contingent of troops from Kabul airport. Thousands of troops had spent a harrowing two weeks protecting a hurried and risky airlift of tens of thousands of Afghans, Americans and others seeking to escape a country once again ruled by Taliban militants. In announcing the completion of the evacuation and war effort. Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of US Central Command, said the last planes took off from Kabul airport at 3:29 p.m. Washington time, or one minute before midnight in Kabul. A spokesman for the Taliban wrote on Twitter that with the full US military withdrawal "our country has gained full independence." "Praise be to Allah. heartfelt congratulations to all countrymen," he added. Taliban fighters had watched the last US planes disappear into the sky over Afghanistan and fired their guns into the air to celebrate their victory. "I cannot express my happiness in words. ... Our 20 years of sacrifice worked," Hemad Sherzad, a Taliban fighter stationed at Kabul's international airport. Taliban leaders symbolically walk across Kabul international airport's runway after US withdrawal, marking their victory. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken put the number of Americans left behind at under 200, "likely closer to 100," and said the State Department would keep working to get them out. He praised the military-led evacuation as heroic and historic and said the US diplomatic presence would shift to Doha, Qatar. Since Aug. 14, more than 123,000 people were evacuated out of Afghanistan by the US and allies including Britain, France, and Germany, the White House said on Tuesday. The airport had become a US-controlled island, a last stand in a 20-year war that claimed more than 2,400 American lives. The closing hours of the evacuation were marked by extraordinary drama. American troops faced the daunting task of getting final evacuees onto planes while also getting themselves and some of their equipment out, even as they monitored repeated threats — and at least two actual attacks — by the Daesh group's Afghanistan affiliate. A suicide bombing on Aug. 26 killed 13 American service members and some 169 Afghans. The final pullout fulfilled Biden's pledge to end what he called a "forever war" that began in response to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington and rural Pennsylvania. His decision, announced in April, reflected a national weariness of the Afghanistan conflict. Now he faces condemnation at home and abroad, not so much for ending the war as for his handling of a final evacuation that unfolded in chaos and raised doubts about US credibility. The US war effort at times seemed to grind on with no endgame in mind, little hope for victory and minimal care by Congress for the way tens of billions of dollars were spent for two decades. The human cost piled up — tens of thousands of Americans injured in addition to the dead, and untold numbers suffering psychological wounds they live with or have not yet recognized they will live with. More than 1,100 troops from coalition countries and more than 100,000 Afghan forces and civilians died, according to Brown University's Costs of War project. In Biden's view the war could have ended 10 years ago with the US killing of Osama Bin Laden, whose Al-Qaida extremist network planned and executed the 9/11 plot from an Afghanistan sanctuary. Al-Qaida has been vastly diminished, preventing it thus far from again attacking the United States. Biden said military commanders unanimously favored ending the airlift, not extending it. He said he asked Blinken to coordinate with international partners in holding the Taliban to their promise of safe passage for Americans and others who want to leave in the days ahead. Congressional committees, whose interest in the war waned over the years, are expected to hold public hearings on what went wrong in the final months of the US withdrawal. Why, for example, did the administration not begin earlier the evacuation of American citizens as well as Afghans who had helped the US war effort and felt vulnerable to retribution by the Taliban? It wasn't clear whether any American citizens who wanted to get out were left behind, but untold thousands of at-risk Afghans were. It was not supposed to end this way. The administration's plan, after declaring its intention to withdraw all combat troops, was to keep the US Embassy in Kabul open, protected by a force of about 650 US troops, including a contingent that would secure the airport along with partner countries. Washington planned to give the now-defunct Afghan government billions more to prop up its army. Biden now faces doubts about his plan to prevent Al-Qaida from regenerating in Afghanistan and of suppressing threats posed by other extremist groups such as the Daesh group's Afghanistan affiliate. The Taliban are enemies of the Daesh group but retain links to a diminished Al-Qaida. The final US exit included the withdrawal of its diplomats, although the State Department has left open the possibility of resuming some level of diplomacy with the Taliban depending on how they conduct themselves in establishing a government and adhering to international pleas for the protection of human rights. The speed with which the Taliban captured Kabul on Aug. 15 caught the Biden administration by surprise. It forced the US to empty its embassy and frantically accelerate an evacuation effort that featured an extraordinary airlift executed mainly by the US Air Force, with American ground forces protecting the airfield. The airlift began in such chaos that a number of Afghans died on the airfield, including at least one who attempted to cling to the airframe of a C-17 transport plane as it sped down the runway. The dangers of carrying out evacuations while surrounded by the newly victorious Taliban and faced with attacks by the Daesh group came into tragic focus on Aug. 26 when an suicide bomber detonated himself at an airport gate, killing at least 169 Afghans and 13 Americans. Speaking shortly after that attack, Biden stuck to his view that ending the war was the right move. He said it was past time for the United States to focus on threats emanating from elsewhere in the world. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "It was time to end a 20-year war." — Euronews
