KABUL: The United States (US) completed the withdrawal of its forces from Afghanistan on Monday, ending 20 years of war that culminated in the Taliban’s return to power.
Forced into a hasty and humiliating exit, Washington and its NATO allies carried out a massive but chaotic airlift over the past two weeks, but still left behind tens of thousands of Afghans who helped Western countries and might have qualified for evacuation.
Celebratory gunfire rang out in Kabul after completion of the US pullout that ended America’s longest war.
A contingent of Americans, estimated by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken as under 200 and possibly closer to 100, wanted to leave but were unable to get on the last flights.
President Joe Biden, in a statement, defended his decision to stick to a Tuesday deadline for withdrawing US forces even though it meant not everyone who wanted out could get out.
“Now, our 20-year military presence in Afghanistan has ended,” said Biden, who thanked the US military for carrying out the dangerous evacuation. He plans to address the American people on Tuesday afternoon.
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General Frank McKenzie, commander of the US Central Command, told a Pentagon briefing that the chief US diplomat in Afghanistan, Ross Wilson, was on the last C-17 flight out, which left at one minute before midnight in Kabul.
“Every single US service member is now out of Afghanistan. I can say that with 100% certainty,” he said.
“There’s a lot of heartbreak associated with this departure. We did not get everybody out that we wanted to get out. But I think if we’d stayed another 10 days, we wouldn’t have gotten everybody out,” McKenzie told reporters.
