WASHINGTON/KABUL (REUTERS/AFP) - The United States on Monday (Aug 30) said it had completed the withdrawal of its forces from Afghanistan following a chaotic airlift nearly 20 years after it had invaded the country in the wake of the Sept 11, 2001, attacks on America.
A senior Taliban official said on Tuesday (Aug 31) the the Taliban had "made history", as celebratory gunfire was heard across the Afghan capital after the last US troops pulled out.
"We made history again. The 20-year occupation of Afghanistan by the United States and Nato ended tonight," said Mr Anas Haqqani, a senior official in the hardline Islamist movement, in a tweet.
"I am very happy that after 20 years of jihad, sacrifices and hardship, I have this pride to see these historic moments."
Taliban spokesman Qari Yusuf said: “The last US soldier has left Kabul airport and our country gained complete independence”, Al Jazeera TV reported on Monday.
US President Joe Biden said in a statement after the withdrawal that the world would hold the Taliban to its commitment to allow safe passage for those to want to leave Afghanistan.
“Now, our 20-year military presence in Afghanistan has ended,” said Mr Biden, who thanked the US military for carrying out the dangerous evacuation. He plans to address the American people on Tuesday afternoon.
The operation was completed before the Tuesday deadline set by Mr Biden, who has drawn heavy criticism from both Democrats and Republicans for his handling of Afghanistan since the Taliban took over Kabul earlier this month after a lightning advance.
More than 122,000 people have been flown out of Kabul since Aug 14, the day before the Taliban - which harboured the Al-Qaeda militant group blamed for the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington - regained control of the country.
The chief US diplomat in Afghanistan, Mr Ross Wilson, was on the last C-17 flight out, Marine General Frank McKenzie, the head of the US Central Command, told a Pentagon news briefing.
“Every single US service member is now out of Afghanistan. I can say that with 100% certainty,” General McKenzie said.
Two US officials said “core” diplomatic staff were among the 6,000 Americans to have left. Gen McKenzie added the final flights did not include the fewer than 250 Americans who expressed a desire to leave but could not get to the airport.
“There’s a lot of heartbreak associated with this departure. We did not get everybody out that we wanted to get out. But I think if we’d stayed another 10 days, we wouldn’t have got everybody out,” Gen McKenzie told reporters.
The emergency air evacuation came to an end before a Tuesday deadline set by Mr Biden, who inherited a troop withdrawal deal made with the Taliban by his predecessor Donald Trump and decided earlier this year to complete the pullout.
The US and its Western allies scrambled to save citizens of their own countries as well as translators, local embassy staff, civil rights activists, journalists and other Afghans vulnerable to reprisals.
The evacuations became even more perilous when a suicide bomb attack claimed by Islamic State - enemy of both the West and the Taliban - killed 13 US service members and scores of Afghans waiting by the airport gates on Thursday.
Mr Biden, who faced intense criticism at home and abroad over his decisions, promised after the bloody Kabul airport attack to hunt down the people responsible.
The departure took place after US anti-missile defences intercepted rockets fired at Kabul’s airport.
A US official said initial reports did not indicate any US casualties from as many as five missiles fired on the airport. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the rocket attacks.
In recent days, Washington has warned of more attacks, while carrying out two air strikes. It said both hit Islamic State targets, one thwarting an attempted suicide bombing in Kabul on Sunday by destroying a car packed with explosives, but which Afghans said had struck civilians.
The US said on Saturday it had killed two Islamic State militants with a drone attack. On Sunday, US officials said a drone strike killed a suicide car bomber suspected of preparing to attack the airport.
Most of the more than 20 allied countries involved in airlifting Afghans and their citizens out of Kabul said they had completed evacuations by Friday. Britain, closely involved in the war from the start, said on Saturday it had finished evacuations and withdrawn the last of its troops.
The chaotic scenes outside the airport for the past two weeks, where thousands thronged every day to try to get past the gates, were a bitter coda to the West’s two-decade involvement in Afghanistan.
While the Taliban have sought to present a more moderate face to the world and erase memories of the harsh fundamentalist rule they practised in the 1990s, the desperation by many Afghans to flee the country showed clearly the fear of the Islamist group.
Their seizure of the city on Aug 15, after the Western-backed government collapsed without a fight and President Ashraf Ghani fled, completed a rapid campaign that saw them sweep up all the country’s major cities in a week.
It is unclear whether the US pullout represents the end of American military involvement in Afghanistan – given Washington’s interest in punishing Islamic State for the airport attack and keeping the country from becoming a haven for militants.
Now in full control of the country, the Taliban must revive a war-shattered economy but without being able to count on the billions of dollars in foreign aid that flowed to the previous ruling elite and fed systemic corruption.
Cut off from some US$9 billion (S$12.11 billion) in foreign reserves and missing thousands of educated specialists who have joined the exodus, the inexperienced new administration must deal with a collapse in the Afghani currency and rising food inflation.
Banks remain closed, despite promises they would reopen, and the economic hardship facing those left behind has worsened dramatically.
At the same time, the population outside the cities is facing what UN officials have called a catastrophic humanitarian situation worsened by a severe drought. The UN refugee agency says up to half a million Afghans could flee their homeland by year-end.
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2021-08-30 23:45:21Z
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