Taliban Celebrate ‘Defeat’ of US as Last Soldiers Leave Kabul

The Taliban shot fireworks and guns in the air in celebration after taking control of Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, hours after US Air Force transport planes carried out the last troops remaining in Afghanistan, ending the 20-year war. The Taliban exulted in what they called their “defeat” of the Americans, and announced that “the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is a free and sovereign nation.” The US Embassy in Qatar will continue to assist US citizens remaining in Afghanistan. “We did not get everybody out that we wanted to get out but I think if we stayed another 10 days, we wouldn’t have gotten everybody out who we wanted to get out,” the commander of the US Central Command, Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., told reporters on Monday afternoon. He estimated that the number of American citizens left behind to be in the “very low hundreds.”