Kabul’s sudden fall ends U.S. era
Taliban sweep into capital as diplomats flee and panicked civilians race to leave the city
Taliban fighters poured into the Afghan capital on Sunday amid scenes of panic and chaos, bringing a swift and shocking close to the Afghan government and the 20-year American era in the country.
President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan fled the country, and a council of Afghan officials, including former President Hamid Karzai, said they would open negotiations with the Taliban over the shape of the insurgency’s takeover. By day’s end, the insurgents had all but officially sealed their control of the entire country.
The speed and violence of the Taliban sweep through the countryside and cities the previous week caught the U.S. military and government flat-footed. Hastily arranged U.S. military helicopter flights evacuated the sprawling U.S. Embassy compound in Kabul, ferrying U.S. diplomats and Afghan Embassy workers to the Kabul military airport. At the civilian airport next door, Afghans wept as they begged airline workers to put their families on outbound commercial flights even as
most were grounded in favor of military aircraft.
Amid occasional bursts of gunfire, the whump of U.S. Chinook and Black Hawk helicopters overhead drowned out the thrum of traffic as the frenzied evacuation effort unfolded. Below, Kabul’s streets were jammed with vehicles as panic set off a race to leave the city.
The toll of war fell heavily on Afghan armed forces in recent years. But no amount of U.S. training and materiel — at a cost of $83 billion — was sufficient to create a security force willing to fight and die for a besieged nation that U.S. forces were leaving behind. Public declarations by, first, President Donald Trump and then President Joe Biden calling for a quick and total troop pullout sent morale plummeting across Afghanistan.
In Washington, the speed of the collapse took the Biden administration by surprise, officials said — and left it with the realization that Biden will go down in history as the president who presided over a humiliating final act in a long and bedeviled American chapter in Afghanistan.
Now, Afghans suddenly face the prospect of complete domination by the Taliban again. In areas the insurgents have recently conquered, there is no sign they have turned away from the harsh Islamist code and rule by intimidation that characterized their government in the 1990s.
In the center of Kabul, people began painting over advertisements and posters of women at beauty salons, already fearing the return of the Taliban’s traditional bans against images of humans and against women appearing in public unveiled.
As darkness fell over Kabul, the U.S. Embassy warned Americans still in Kabul to shelter in place rather than try to reach the airport. Witnesses at the civilian domestic terminal said they were hearing occasional gunshots nearby. Thousands of people had crammed into the terminal and filled the parking lots, desperately seeking flights out.
The U.S. Embassy, the epicenter of American nation-building efforts, was shuttered by the end of the day Sunday after sensitive documents had been shredded or burned, officials said. The U.S. flag was lowered and transferred to the military airport staging area.
At the former NATO Resolute Support landing zone near the U.S. Embassy compound, the deafening sound of helicopter after helicopter taking people out of the Green Zone reverberated across the small airfield.
Kabul’s streets were clogged to a standstill by cars and taxis loaded with luggage and personal items as thousands of Afghans raced to the airport. Some passengers abandoned their vehicles and trudged by foot, lugging their baggage through the rutted streets.
Bank guards fired into the air to scatter throngs of Afghans trying to withdraw cash from a branch that had shut down in central Kabul. Most shops were shuttered, cutting Afghans off from food and other supplies. Families crammed personal mementos and clothing into suitcases, then abandoned their homes as they pleaded and offered bribes to secure flights out of the city.
Some police officers stripped off their uniforms and melted into the civilian population. A New York Times journalist saw several policemen surrender to Taliban fighters. At Abdul Haq Square in the center of the capital, five men who appeared to be Taliban fighters gathered as cars drove by showing their support for the militants.
In a Twitter post addressed “Dear countrymen,” Ghani said he made the “hard choice” to leave Afghanistan in order to prevent bloodshed. He called on the Taliban to “protect the name and honor of Afghanistan.”
With rumors rife and reliable information hard to come by, the streets were filled with scenes of panic and desperation.
“Greetings, the Taliban have reached the city. We are escaping,” said Sahraa Karimi, the head of Afghan Film, in a post shared widely on Facebook. Filming herself as she fled on foot, out of breath and clutching at her head scarf, she shouted at others to escape while they could.
Early in the day, senior Afghan politicians were seen boarding planes at Kabul airport. Bagram Airfield was captured by Taliban forces midday on Sunday, as was the provincial town of Khost in eastern Afghanistan, according to Afghan news media reports.
It was only eight days ago that a remote provincial capital, Zaranj, in the far west, became the first to fall to the Taliban. Since then, one provincial capital after another has collapsed as the U.S.-trained Afghan security forces surrendered, deserted or simply stripped off their uniforms and fled. Taliban videos showed militants driving U.S. Humvees and waving M-16 rifles in the conquered cities.
At the Kabul airport on Sunday, two Marines standing on the tarmac acknowledged that they were living a moment of history. A little earlier, they said, they saw someone exit a helicopter while cradling a poorly folded American flag: It had just been lowered from the shuttered embassy compound.