Here’s a roundup of the key developments from the day:
- US President Joe Biden has released a statement confirming the end of America’s 20-year military presence in Afghanistan .“Now, our 20-year military presence in Afghanistan has ended,” he said. “The past 17 days have seen our troops execute the largest airlift in US history, evacuating over 120,000 US citizens, citizens of our allies, and Afghan allies of the United States. Ending the mission as planned was “the unanimous recommendation of the Joint Chiefs and of all of our commanders on the ground”, he said.
- Taliban leaders have symbolically walked across the runway at Kabul’s international airport after the US withdrawal, marking their victory. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a livestream posted by a militant as he walked through the facility: “The world should have learned their lesson and this is the enjoyable moment of victory.”
- The Taliban also celebrated in the early hours of Tuesday morning by firing guns into the air across Kabul. Spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid declared, “At 12 o’clock tonight, the last American troops left Kabul airport, on which account Afghanistan was completely liberated and independent”.
- British forces are prepared to launch airstrikes to target so-called Islamic State terrorists in Afghanistan, the head of the RAF indicated, as the US-led military presence in the country came to an end. While the international community appears to have accepted the reality of Taliban rule, the UK and US remain willing to take on Islamic State, also known as Daesh.
- Hossain Rasouli, one of the two Paralympic athletes evacuated from Afghanistan in an emergency operation last week, has been able to take part in competition at Tokyo’s flagship Olympic Stadium. The 26-year-old, who is primarily a sprinter, competed in the T47 long jump on Tuesday morning.
- Dominic Raab has rejected US claims that Britain was indirectly responsible for the suicide attacks at Kabul airport this week because it insisted that the Abbey gate entry point to the site be kept open to allow British nationals to enter the airport. He said the “story was simply untrue”, adding nothing the UK did required Abbey gate to be kept open.
- Taliban forces clashed with militia fighters in the Panjshir valley north of the Afghan capital Kabul on Monday night, with eight members of the Taliban killed, a representative of the main anti-Taliban opposition group said.
- A day after the last US soldier left the country after 20 years of war, the effort to evacuate American citizens from Afghanistan has “shifted from a military mission to a diplomatic mission”, the national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said on Tuesday.
We’re closing this liveblog now. Thanks so much for joining us.
After two decades, America’s last soldier left without pomp, without ceremony, certainly without the grandeur of victory.
Bathed in the green light of a night vision scope, Maj Gen Chris Donahue, the final American pair of “boots on the ground”, walked up the rear ramp of an air force C-17 on Monday night.
In body armour and helmet, the commander of the US army’s 82nd Airborne Division carried his weapon in his right hand, his eyes downcast as his solitary walk ended America’ ill-starred mission in Afghanistan.
At precisely 11.59pm Kabul time, the final of five American C-17s was wheels up from Afghan soil. Donahue sent a final message to his troops: “job well done, I’m proud of you all”.
The image of Donahue’s lonely exit, posted publicly by US Central Command, may come to symbolise America’s humiliating, violence-plagued retreat from the country.
US president Joe Biden earlier insisted America’s exit from Afghanistan was not “remotely comparable” to the chaos of its departure from Saigon in 1975. A senator at the time, he remembers the damage done to US prestige by the black-and-white photographs of helicopters hurriedly airlifting people from the roof of a building near its embassy.
But those images too, have a contemporary iteration. Donahue is seen calmly leaving the airport but the anarchy there just days ago, with Afghans clinging to the side of US air force planes, may come to represent America’s exit.
Read the full story here:
Boris Johnson returned to the West Country on Sunday to spend several days with his family but Downing Street has insisted it is not a holiday and that he was “continuing to work”.
In a briefing to journalists, the prime minister’s official spokesman said Johnson had travelled to the west of England on Sunday, and would be returning to No 10 on Thursday.
Asked repeatedly if the short break from Downing Street was a holiday, the spokesman insisted it was not. “He’s away from the office, but he’s still working,” he said.
The prime minister had previously been criticised after deciding to head off on holiday in Somerset on Saturday 14 August, despite the perilous situation in Afghanistan, with the Taliban advancing rapidly.
Johnson was forced to cut short that break after just a day, being pictured at Taunton station with aides on Sunday 15 August, before chairing a meeting of the Cobra emergency committee back in Downing Street later that day.
The foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, also came under attack for choosing to go ahead with a holiday in Crete, before returning to tackle the mounting crisis.
Pressed on whether Johnson had felt free to leave his desk once the last UK personnel had been evacuated from Kabul on Sunday, his spokesman said:
I wouldn’t get into what dictates the prime minister’s diary.
Read more here:
Canada will take in and resettle 5,000 Afghan refugees who had been evacuated by the US, it was announced on Tuesday.
Immigration minister Marco Mendicino said:
We’re pulling out all the stops to help as many Afghans as possible who want to make their home in Canada.
Over the weekend, Canada and its allies received assurances from the Taliban that Afghan citizens with travel authorisation from other countries would be safely allowed to leave Afghanistan.
The UK and the US took a “joint decision” to keep Kabul airport’s Abbey Gate open last Thursday, British sources have said, despite what turned out to be a prophetic warning that a terror attack by Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) on western soldiers and gathering crowds was imminent.
The fresh briefing comes in the aftermath of an unusually detailed leak of the run-up to Thursday’s deadly bombings, which had claimed that the Americans had kept the gate “open longer than they wanted to” so the UK could finish its evacuation from Afghanistan.
British defence sources in effect disputed the leaked account, arguing in a fresh briefing that both countries’ militaries had agreed to keep the Abbey Gate open, in what was described by the UK as a “joint decision” despite the acknowledged risk.
More than 170 Afghans and 13 US marines were killed in a double bomb attack at the Abbey Gate and the nearby Baron hotel, also being used by British officials. Responsibility for the atrocity was claimed by ISKP, the Afghan affiliate of the global terror group.
Over the weekend, Politico reported on the US military’s thinking in the run-up to the attack, in which senior officials discussed on Wednesday in Washington how to prepare for what they feared was an imminent “mass casualty event”.
Commanders had concluded that the Abbey Gate was potentially the highest risk location, but it was nevertheless kept open because it was being used by the British to conclude an already accelerated evacuation.
According to notes of meetings obtained as part of the leak, R Adm Peter Vasely, the commander of US forces in Afghanistan, told senior colleagues that the Abbey Gate, was not closed on Thursday afternoon Kabul time as had been planned.
If accurate, that would imply the decision was not necessarily consensual, as the new British account suggests.
Read more from my colleagues Dan Sabbagh and Patrick Wintour here:
Downing Street has insisted Boris Johnson has “full confidence” in Dominic Raab and said there are no plans for a reshuffle of the cabinet.
The prime minister’s official spokesperson said:
No plans for any reshuffle. The prime minister has full confidence in his foreign secretary.
More from this afternoon’s Downing Street press briefing:
No 10 has denied suggestions that the UK pushed to keep the Abbey gate at Kabul airport open before the deadly terrorist attack.
The prime minister’s official spokesperson said:
It’s simply not true to suggest that we pushed to keep the gate open. In response to the change in travel advice ahead of the attack last week the UK moved operations out of the Baron hotel.
Asked about the state of relations between London and Washington, the PM’s spokesperson said: “The US continues to be our strongest ally.”
Downing Street also said it was increasing staff in countries neighbouring Afghanistan in order to help evacuate the remaining people left behind.
We are beefing up the number of staff in neighbouring countries, Foreign Office and other staff, to support that. That’s something that we’re in the process of arranging, these surge staff.
He could not put a number on how many staff would be deployed.
A day after the last US soldier left the country after 20 years of war, the effort to evacuate American citizens from Afghanistan has “shifted from a military mission to a diplomatic mission”, the national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said on Tuesday.
At least 100 US citizens are believed to remain in Kabul, from where the last US flight left on Monday. Many Afghan allies of the US and other nations were also left behind in a country now controlled by the Taliban.
Sullivan was answering fierce criticism over the evacuation, including from Republicans who have seized on the admission that not all Americans were airlifted out. The hawkish Arkansas senator Tom Cotton, for example, slammed “a disgraceful lack of leadership from an incompetent president”.
Speaking to ABC’s Good Morning America, Sullivan said:
Leadership means taking a look at the situation and asking the hard question, ‘What is going to be in the best interest of the United States of America, those American citizens still in Afghanistan and those Afghan allies?’
And [Joe Biden] got a unanimous recommendation from his secretary of state, his secretary of defense, all of his civilian advisers, all of his commanders on the ground, and all of the joint chiefs of staff, that the best way to protect our forces and the best way to help those Americans was to transition this mission.
Sullivan added:
On 14 August when this evacuation mission began, we believe that there were between 5,500 and 6,000 Americans in Afghanistan … we got out 97% or 98% of those on the ground, and a small number remain.
We contacted [them] repeatedly over the course of two weeks to come to the airport: 5,500 or more did that. The small number who remain we are committed to getting out, and we will work through every available diplomatic means with the enormous leverage that we have and that the international community has to make that happen.
Such leverage with the Taliban, he said, included “humanitarian assistance that should go directly to the people of Afghanistan, they need help with respect to health and food aid and other forms of subsistence and we do intend to continue that”.
Secondly, when it comes to our economic and development assistance relationship with the Taliban, that will be about the Taliban’s actions, it will be about whether they follow through on their commitments their commitments to safe passage for Americans and Afghan allies, their commitment to not allow Afghanistan to be a base from which terrorists can attack the United States or any other country, their commitments with respect to upholding their international obligations.
It’s going to be up to them.
A spokesperson for the UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, has said it is too early to decide if, and how, the government will work with the Taliban on tackling Islamic State in Afghanistan.
At Tuesday afternoon’s Downing Street press briefing, the spokesperson said this would partly depend on whether the Taliban upheld pledges on issues such as respecting human rights.
At this stage it is too early to dictate if and how we would work with the Taliban going forward. A lot will depend on their actions from now. As we have said throughout, we intend to put pressure on them to uphold these standards and claims.
A resident of Kabul has said he and his family were unable to sleep last night due to the noise of gunfire as the Taliban celebrated the departure of US troops from Afghanistan.
The man, who is not being named to protect his security, told the PA news agency the Taliban were shooting into the sky until 3.30am.
Firing began when US last airplane took off from airport… we didn’t [sleep] because of gunshots.
He added that many people in the capital are already suffering from money, food and medicine shortages amid shop closures and border restrictions.
Some of them [are] selling their house items to get some food or medicines for his or her family.
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