War-weary Afghans divided on Taliban rule as US forces depart; Taliban in talks with Qatar, Turkey to manage Kabul airport

DNA/News Desk

Kabul,– In the early hours of Tuesday, hails of gunfire filled the skies above cities across Afghanistan as the Taliban celebrated the final withdrawal of foreign forces after a 20-year US-led occupation of the country. Taliban are in talks with Qatar, Turkey to manage Kabul airport.

Just after midnight local time, US Central Command Commander, General Kenneth McKenzie, declared, “Every single US service member is now out of Afghanistan.” With those 10 words, McKenzie brought an official end to Washington’s longest-ever foreign incursion. As the final US military plane departed Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport, the Taliban looked on in triumph.

Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, took to Twitter, writing: “The last American occupier withdrew … at 12 O’clock and our country gained its full independence, praise and gratitude be to God.”

Members of the group spent the rest of the early morning hours of Tuesday in an ecstatic state of revelry, firing round after round into the pitch-black sky. They had defeated the foreign forces that had hunted them for 19 years.

By sunrise, though, it became clear to the Afghan people that the dawn had brought with it an uncertain future. After two decades of foreign occupation, the nation, currently being led by the Taliban, will be left to face the security threat of the Islamic State in Khorasan Province, ISKP (ISIS-K), an armed group, and potential economic insolvency with no indication of foreign assistance.

While the Taliban were in a celebratory mood, many Kabulis spent Tuesday in the manner they had spent the last week, waiting for hours in line outside banks, desperate to withdraw cash from automated teller machines, many of which remain switched off.

Omid, 26, said more than the absence of foreign forces, Afghans are concerned about being able to put food on the table in the coming days. He pointed to a line stretching for hundreds of metres outside the Azizi Bank branch near the Presidential Palace as proof of that very real fear.

“They’re all out here to buy flour and feed their families, but every 100 people that make it in, 2,000 others will go home empty-handed.”