Taliban Retakes Afghanistan
The Taliban entered Kabul on 15 August 2021 and the Afghan government collapsed, twenty years after an American-led coalition had removed them. The withdrawal had been agreed in Doha in February 2020, in a deal negotiated between the United States and the Taliban with the Afghan government excluded. It committed the Americans to leave by May 2021 in exchange for Taliban undertakings on terrorism and on talks with Kabul, and it required the release of some 5,000 Taliban prisoners. President Biden extended the deadline to August and confirmed the withdrawal. The collapse was faster than any assessment had predicted. Provincial capitals fell from early August, most without fighting: the Taliban had spent years negotiating surrenders with local commanders, and the Afghan army — nominally 300,000 strong, in practice far smaller because of ghost soldiers on the payroll — had been built to depend on American air support, contractor maintenance and logistics, all of which left with the Americans. President Ashraf Ghani flew out on 15 August without telling his own negotiating team. The evacuation from Kabul airport lifted around 124,000 people over two weeks in scenes of severe disorder, including people falling from a departing aircraft. A suicide bombing at Abbey Gate on 26 August killed 13 American service members and some 170 Afghans. Thousands of Afghans who had worked with the coalition were left behind. Girls have since been barred from secondary and higher education and women from most employment, parks and travel without a male relative. Some seven billion dollars of Afghan central bank reserves were frozen abroad, and the economy contracted by roughly a quarter.
- Year: 2021 CE
- Category: Military
