America’s longest war is over – they chose to walk away but ended up running
In the end, it was the Taliban, with their volleys of gunfire, who announced the Americans had gone – uncomfortably apt really, given they have been calling the shots for the past few weeks.
For days, in Washington, the US administration had refused to say quite when their Afghanistan withdrawal would be complete.
For obvious security reasons they wouldn’t confirm precisely what ’31 August’ meant. Was it as that day began? Was it midnight at the end of that day? US time, or Afghan time?
It turned out to be just before midnight as 30 August became 31 August.
In the darkness, the last American plane pulled up and away from the tarmac of Hamid Karzai International Airport.
It brought to an end two weeks of total chaos, but also a remarkable airlift like no other in history.
Through the day, the planes had left, one after the other, banking sharply to avoid the rocket fire from below.
This is what the end of the chaotic exit looked like; the end of a 20-year-old war. A country and a people left to a future, unknown.
At the Pentagon in Washington, an announcement came eventually to confirm what the Taliban images had already shown us.
“I’m here to announce the completion of our withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the end of the military mission,” Marine Corps General Frank McKenzie, the commander of US Central Command said.
“The last C-17 lifted off from Hamid Karzai International Airport on August 30, this afternoon, at 3:29 pm, East Coast time, and the last manned aircraft is now clearing the airspace above Afghanistan.”
The US has completed its withdrawal from Afghanistan after the last of its planes took off from Kabul airport.
An hour or so later from the State department, America’s top diplomat emerged from a brutal fortnight for American leadership, looking forward, not back.
“Now, US military fights have ended, and our troops have departed Afghanistan. A new chapter of America’s engagement with Afghanistan has begun. It’s one in which we will lead with our diplomacy. The military mission is over. A new diplomatic mission has begun,” Antony Blinken said.
“The main point I want to drive home here today is that America’s work in Afghanistan continues. We have a plan for what’s next. We’re putting it into action,” he continued, concluding, “we’ll honour all those brave men and women in the United States and many other countries who risked or sacrificed their lives as part of this long mission.”
And with that, America’s longest war was over. They chose to walk away, and they ended up running, taking their allies with them. A deadline set by the American president had been met, but at what cost?
The United States has strained key relationships with close allies.
In the UK, the worth of the so-called ‘special relationship’ has become a central debate.
In Brussels, NATO members have had it confirmed, if they didn’t already know, that without America, their alliance is pretty worthless.
In Moscow and Beijing, they received the same message. The masters inside the Kremlin and at Zhongnanhai will see this episode as more evidence that the American president is beholden to a weary and insular American public in ways that Putin and Xi are not. The advantages, for them, are there to seize.
Then there is terrorism. The return this weekend of the bodies of 13 troops killed by ISIS terrorists last week in Kabul was the tragic image that undermined the president’s justification for the withdrawal.
The ISIS-K suicide attack at the airport killed 13 US service personnel and dozens of civilians. Pic: AP
Afghanistan is still a home for terrorists. America is leaving a country broken, not fixed.
“There are probably at least 2,000 hardcore ISIS fighters in Afghanistan now, and of course many of those come from the prisons that were opened a few days ago,” General McKenzie admitted in the same briefing where he declared the mission to be at an end.
“So that number is up and it’s probably as high as it’s ever been in quite a while and that’s going to be a challenge for the Taliban I believe in the days to come,” the General added.
From the White House, the president released only a statement defending the withdrawal and thanking his troops. He will address the nation later today.
For now, the fundamental unanswered questions were left for his spokesperson.
“Is the US more or less safe today than we were before the Taliban took over,” Jen Psaki was asked.
“Well again, we are not going to do anything that’s going to allow terrorists to grow or prosper in Afghanistan,” she said.
Repeatedly the administration have ignored or plainly denied the fact that al Qaeda and the Taliban remain close and the hard line Haqqani Network, whose number include some of America’s most-wanted, now hold key posts in the Taliban.
In New York, a UN Security Council meeting was an attempt to find optimism and some common ground between the Americans, Russia and China.
They hope that the Taliban can prove it is a different entity from the one it once was. The evidence isn’t very encouraging but the UN will hold the mullahs to their word to allow the continued safe passage of Afghans and foreigners out of the country.
The last member of the US armed forces to leave Afghanistan. Pic: @18AirborneCorps
As night fell in Washington, an image was released which will define a military endeavour that proved politically impossible and so tragically bloody.
Through the green of a night-vision lens, it showed the last American soldier to leave the battlefield – Major-General Chris Donahue, commander of the 82nd Airbourne Division. Afghanistan behind him.
Iran says “indirect talks” over the country’s rapidly advancing nuclear programme have taken place with US officials, with more to come next week.
The discussions on Saturday took place in Muscat, Oman, with the host nation’s officials mediating between representatives of Iran and the US, who were seated in separate rooms, according to Esmail Baghaei, a spokesperson for Iran’s foreign ministry.
After the talks concluded, Oman and Iranian officials reported that Iran and the US had had agreed to hold more negotiations next week.
Oman’s foreign minister Sayyid Badr Albusaidi tweeted after the meeting, thanking Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi and US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff for joining the negotiations aimed at “global peace, security and stability”.
“We will continue to work together and put further efforts to assist in arriving at this goal,” he added.
(L-R) Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi meets his Omani counterpart Sayyid Badr Albusaidi. Pic: Iranian foreign ministry/AP
Iranian state media claimed the US and Iranian officials “briefly spoke in the presence of the Omani foreign minister” at the end of the talks – a claim Mr Araghchi echoed in a statement on Telegram.
He added the talks took place in a “constructive atmosphere based on mutual respect” and that they would continue next week.
American officials did not immediately acknowledge the reports from Iran.
Mr Araghchi said before the meeting on Saturday there was a “chance for initial understanding on further negotiations if the other party [US] enters the talks with an equal stance”.
He told Iran’s state TV: “Our intention is to reach a fair and honourable agreement – from an equal footing.
“And if the other side has also entered from the same position, God willing, there will be a chance for an initial agreement that can lead to a path of negotiations.”
Reuters news agency said an Omani source told it the talks were focused on de-escalating regional tensions, prisoner exchanges and limited agreements to ease sanctions in exchange for controlling Iran’s nuclear programme.
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Trump on Monday: ‘We’re in direct talks with Iran’
President Donald Trump has insisted Tehran cannot get nuclear weapons.
He said on Monday that the talks would be direct, but Tehran officials insisted it would be conducted through an intermediary.
Mr Trump also warned Iran would be in “great danger” if negotiations fail.
“Hopefully those talks will be successful, it would be in Iran’s best interests if they are successful,” he said. “We hope that’s going to happen.”
He added Iran “cannot have a nuclear weapon, and if the talks aren’t successful, I actually think it will be a very bad day for Iran”.
The comments came after Mr Trump’s previous warnings of possible military action against Iran if there is no deal over its nuclear programme.
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Saturday’s meeting marked the first between the countries since Mr Trump’s second term in the White House began.
During his first term, he withdrew the US from a deal between Iran and world powers designed to curb Iran’s nuclear work in exchange for sanctions relief.
He also reimposed US sanctions.
Iran has since far surpassed that deal’s limits on uranium enrichment.
Tehran insists its nuclear programme is wholly for civilian energy purposes but Western powers accuse it of having a clandestine agenda.
Mr Witkoff came from talks with Russian president Vladimir Putin on Friday, as the US tries to broker an end to the war in Ukraine.
Palestinian student activist Mahmoud Khalil can be deported from the US, an immigration judge has ruled.
Mr Khalil, a postgraduate student at Columbia University’s school of international and public affairs, has been a prominent figure in the university’s pro-Palestinian student protest movement.
The 30-year-old has held a US permanent residency green card since 2024 and his wife is a US citizen.
Mahmoud Khalil. Pic: AP
Mr Khalil was detained at his Columbia apartment building in Manhattan on 8 March, as agents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) told him his student visa had been revoked.
It marked the first arrest in President Donald Trump’s crackdown on students who joined campus protests against the war in Gaza.
Mr Khalil, who acted as a mediator between protesters and university officials during pro-Palestinian demonstrations at New York’s Columbia University last year, is not accused of breaking any laws.
But the Trump administration says noncitizens who participate in demonstrations like he has should be expelled from the country for expressing views that the administration considers to be antisemitic and “pro-Hamas”.
On Friday, immigration judge Jamee E Comans ruled that the government had the right to deport him, saying its belief that his presence posed “potentially serious foreign policy consequences” was enough to satisfy requirements for his deportation.
Mr Khalil, centre, surrounded by reporters outside the Columbia University campus in April last year. Pic: AP
He said the government had “established by clear and convincing evidence that he is removable”.
Mr Khalil’s lawyers have said they plan to fight the ruling via the Board of Immigration Appeals and can also pursue an asylum case on his behalf.
The judge gave them until 23 April to seek a waiver.
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His lawyer Marc van der Hout said after the ruling: “Today, we saw our worst fears play out: Mahmoud was subject to a charade of due process, a flagrant violation of his right to a fair hearing, and a weaponisation of immigration law to suppress dissent.”
Mr Khalil, who was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria and holds Algerian citizenship, remains in the Louisiana immigration detention centre where federal authorities transferred him after his arrest.
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Jewish protesters against war in Gaza chant ‘Bring Mahmoud home now’
His defence team has said it is seeking a preliminary injunction from the federal court in New Jersey, which would release him from custody and could block the Trump administration from arresting and detaining people for supporting Palestinian people in Gaza.
The Trump administration has been cracking down on pro-Palestinian protesters at universities across the country.
After his arrest last month, the president said: “This is the first arrest of many to come. We know there are more students at Columbia and other universities across the country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump administration will not tolerate it.”
There have also been protests over the arrest of Mr Khalil, including by a Jewish group against the war in Gaza who stormed Trump Tower in New York last month.
Local police said 98 were arrested on charges including trespassing, obstruction and resisting arrest.
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