No more US boots on ground in Afghanistan
WASHINGTON: The United States has concluded its military mission in Afghanistan, ending its longest war and bringing down the curtain on a 20-year-old sketchy campaign that ended with a frantic last-minute rush of evacuations and a suicide bombing that killed 13 Americans and 170 Afghans.
The last US military plane took off from the Kabul airport at 11.59pm local time on Monday, said General Frank Mckenzie, commander of the US Central Command. On the last C-17 out was the chief US diplomat in Afghanistan Ross Wilson.
The US has now left Afghanistan completely, barring an estimated 200 Americans still trying to leave, and scores of Afghans who worked for it and want to leave, fearing reprisal from the Taliban. The American embassy in Kabul was shut down a few days ago and its diplomats were operating from the Kabul airport before the exit. The mission will now conduct diplomatic operations with the Taliban government and consular operations out of Doha, Qatar.
“Our 20-year military presence in Afghanistan has ended,” US President Joe Biden said in a statement as he thanked military personnel for completing the “execution of the dangerous retrograde from Afghanistan as scheduled”.
Hours before Biden’s Tuesday deadline for shutting down a final airlift, air force transport planes carried a remaining contingent of troops from Kabul airport late on Monday. Thousands of troops spent two weeks protecting the airlift of tens of thousands of Afghans, Americans and others seeking to escape a country once again ruled by the Taliban.
An image from the Pentagon taken with night-vision optics showed the last US soldier to step aboard the final evacuation flight out of Kabul – Major General Chris Donahue, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken put number of Americans still in Afghanistan at under 200, “likely closer to 100,” and said the State Department would keep working to get them out.
The closing hours of the evacuation were marked by extraordinary drama. American troops faced the daunting task of getting final evacuees onto planes while getting themselves and some of their equipment out.
Mckenzie said 73 aircraft were “demilitarised”, or rendered useless, before American troops wrapped up the evacuation. He said the Pentagon, which built up a force of nearly 6,000 troops to occupy and operate Kabul’s airport when the airlift began on August 14, left behind around 70 MRAP armoured tactical vehicles – which can cost up to $1 million a piece – that it disabled before leaving, and 27 Humvees.
Before the last US troops left, they disabled scores of aircraft and armoured vehicles – as well as a high-tech rocket defence system – at the airport, a US general said. Cockpit windows were shattered, instrument panels smashed, and aircraft tyres shot.
The US left behind but disabled the C-RAM system – counter rocket, artillery, and mortar – that was used to protect the airport from rocket attacks.