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Taliban Badri special force fighters secure the airport in Kabul. Photo: AFP

Afghanistan: Taliban celebrates victory as last US troops leave

  • US troops exit Afghanistan after 20-year military presence
  • The Taliban must now govern poor, war-ravaged nation
Afghanistan

The Taliban 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 and leaving behind a quiet airfield and Afghans outside it still hoping to flee the insurgents’ rule.

Vehicles 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’ elite Badri unit.

“The world should have learned its lesson and this is the enjoyable moment of victory,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a livestream posted by a militant.

Later speaking to Al-Jazeera Arabic on the airport’s tarmac, Mujahid rejected having a caretaker government and insisted that Kabul remained safe.

“There will be security in Kabul and people should not be concerned,“ he said.

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Final evacuation flight leaves Kabul, ending 20 years of US presence in Afghanistan

Final evacuation flight leaves Kabul, ending 20 years of US presence in Afghanistan

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.

The airport had seen chaotic and deadly scenes since the Taliban blitzed across Afghanistan and took Kabul on August 15. Thousands of Afghans besieged the airport, some falling to their death after desperately hanging onto the side of an American C-17 military cargo jet. Last week, an Islamic State suicide attack at an airport gate killed at least 169 Afghans and 13 US service members.

But 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.

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“After 20 years we have defeated the Americans,” said Mohammad Islam, a Taliban guard at the airport from Logar province, cradling a Kalashnikov rifle. “They have left and now our country is free.”

“It’s clear what we want. We want Shariah (Islamic law), peace and stability,” he added.

Mohammad Naeem, a spokesman for the Taliban’s political office in Qatar, similarly praised the takeover in an online video early Tuesday.

“Thank God all the occupiers have left our country completely,“ he said, congratulating fighters by referring to them as mujahedeen, or holy warriors. “This victory was given to us by God. It was due to 20 years of sacrifice by the mujahedeen and its leaders. Many mujahedeen sacrificed their lives.”

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid (C) speaks to the media at Kabul’s airport. Photo: AFP

The UN Security Council adopted a resolution Monday, requiring the Taliban to honour a commitment to let people freely leave Afghanistan in the days ahead, and to grant access to the UN and other aid agencies.

But they did not agree to call for the creation of a “safe zone” in Kabul, as envisaged by French President Emmanuel Macron.

Talks are ongoing as to who will now run Kabul airport.

The Taliban have asked Turkey to handle logistics while they maintain control of security, but President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has not yet accepted that offer.

It was not immediately clear which airlines would agree to fly in and out of Kabul.

In Afghanistan’s capital, some of the gains of the last 20 years were on display as boys and girls rushed to school early Tuesday.

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One girl, Masooda, was hurrying to get to her fifth grade class at a private school. “I’m not afraid of the Taliban,” she said. “Why should I be?”

Students had been called back to school four days ago. The Taliban have said students will be segregated by sex, but in many schools that was already the practice, except for the early grades.

In Kunduz, 335km from Kabul, a father of four sons and two daughters said he was worried about the future of his children.

“The Taliban is forcing us to give our young sons to them, but I cannot save them because I don’t have a weapon,” the man “MJ” said, adding that the family has little to eat.

The man said his leg was seriously injured and his house was burned down during fighting in August between the Afghan National Army and the Taliban.

“The war may have ended physically but our daily battle for survival has not ended,” the man said. “With no international community around, we are left to fend for ourselves.”

He said he has applied for asylum in the US and Canada: “We just want to leave this country”.

The Taliban face what could be a series of major crises as they fully take over the government. The majority of the billions of dollars Afghanistan holds in foreign reserves is now frozen in America, pressuring its now-depreciating Afghani currency. Banks have implemented withdrawal controls, fearing runs on their deposits in the uncertainty. Civil servants across the country say they haven’t received their salary in months.

Medical equipment remains in short supply, while thousands who fled the Taliban’s advance remain living in squalid conditions. A major drought also has cut into the country’s food supplies, making its imports even more important and raising the risk of people going hungry.

Associated Press and Agence France-Presse

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