U.S. forces complete withdrawal from Afghanistan at 11:59 p.m. Monday, ending 20-year war.
KABUL — Taliban fighters watched the last U.S. planes disappear into the sky over Afghanistan just before midnight Monday and then fired their guns into the air, celebrating victory after a 20-year insurgency that drove the world’s most powerful military out of one of the poorest countries.
The departure of the U.S. planes marked the end of a massive airlift in which tens of thousands of people fled Afghanistan, desperate to escape as Taliban fighters rolled into the capital earlier this month.
“The last five aircraft have left, it’s over!” said Hemad Sherzad, a Taliban fighter stationed at Kabul’s international airport. “I cannot express my happiness in words. … Our 20 years of sacrifice worked.”
In Washington, Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, announced the completion of America’s longest war and the evacuation effort, saying the last planes took off from Kabul airport at 3:29 p.m. EDT — one minute before midnight Monday in Kabul.
“We did not get everybody out that we wanted to get out,” he said.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said fewer than 200 Americans remain in Afghanistan who want to leave, and the U.S. will continue to try to get them out. He added that American diplomats who had worked from the now-closed embassy in Kabul will be based in Qatar.
With its last troops gone, the U.S. ended its 20-year war with the Taliban back in power. Many Afghans remain fearful of their rule, and there have been reports of killings and other abuses in areas under Taliban control despite the group’s pledges to restore peace and security.
“American soldiers left the Kabul airport, and our nation got its full independence,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said early Tuesday.
The U.S. and its allies invaded Afghanistan shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attack on the United States, which al Qaeda orchestrated while sheltering under Taliban rule. The invasion drove the Taliban from power in a matter of weeks and scattered Osama bin Laden and other top al Qaeda leaders.
The U.S. and its allies began an ambitious effort to rebuild Afghanistan, investing billions of dollars in a Western-style government and security forces. Women, who had been largely confined to their homes under the Taliban’s hard-line rule, benefited from access to education and came to assume prominent roles in public life. But the Taliban never went away.
Eager to end the war, the Trump administration signed a peace deal with the Taliban in February 2020 that paved the way for the withdrawal. President Biden extended the deadline from May to August and continued with the pullout despite the Taliban’s rapid blitz across the country this month.