US leaves controls, Taliban in cockpit
Taliban leaders walk across the runway in Kabul, marking their victory over foreign forces. They were flanked by the ‘Badri’ special forces
The Taliban group were in full control of Kabul’s international airport on Tuesday, after the last US plane left its runway, marking the end of America’s longest war.
Vehicles carrying the Taliban raced back and forth along the Hamid Karzai International Airport’s sole runway on the northern, military side of the airfield. Before dawn broke, heavily armed Taliban fighters walked through hangars, passing some of the seven CH-46 helicopters the state department used in its evacuations before rendering them unflyable.
Taliban leaders later symbolically walked across the runway, marking their victory while flanked by fighters of the insurgents’ “Badri” special forces unit. The elite Taliban team posed for pictures as journalists documented their arrival.
“Afghanistan is finally free,” Hekmatullah Wasiq, a top Taliban official, told The Associated Press. “The military and civilian side are with us and in control. Hopefully, we will be announcing our cabinet. Everything is peaceful. Everything is safe.”
Wasiq urged people to return to work and reiterated the Taliban pledge offering a general amnesty. “People have to be patient,” he said. “Slowly we will get everything back to normal. It will take time.”
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid addressed the gathered members of the Badri unit. “I hope you be very cautious in dealing with the nation,” he said. “Our nation has suffered war and invasion and the people do not have more tolerance.”
Taliban fighters draped their white flags over barriers at the airport as others guarded the civilian side of the airfield. Inside the terminal, several dozen suitcases and pieces of luggage were left strewn across the floor, apparently left behind in the chaos. Clothes and shoes also were scattered. A poster of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the famed anti-Taliban fighter, had been destroyed.
On Tuesday, after a night that saw the Taliban fire triumphantly into the air, guards now blearily on duty kept out the curious and those still somehow hoping to catch a flight out.
US military disable scores of aircraft before exiting
The US military disabled scores of aircraft and armoured vehicles as well as a high-tech rocket defence system at the Kabul airport before it left Monday, a US general said. Central Command head General Kenneth McKenzie said 73 aircraft that were already at Hamid Karzai International Airport were “demilitarised”, or rendered useless, by US troops before they wrapped up the twoweek evacuation of the Talibancontrolled country.
“Those aircraft will never fly again... They’ll never be able to be operated by anyone,” he said. “Most of them are non-mission capable to begin with. But certainly they’ll never be able to be flown again.”
He said the Pentagon, which built up a force of nearly 6,000 troops to 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 apiece - that it disabled before leaving, and 27 Humvees.