Taliban fighters entered Kabul largely unopposed as President Ashraf Ghani left the country, completing a rapid advance that had taken most provincial capitals in little over a week.
Tens of thousands of Afghans and foreign nationals crowded Hamid Karzai International Airport during an evacuation that lifted roughly 120,000 people over a fortnight. A suicide bombing at the airport's Abbey Gate killed 13 American service members and at least 170 Afghans.
The collapse followed the withdrawal agreement signed in Doha in 2020 and prompted extensive review of Western intelligence assessments and of the two-decade effort to build Afghan state institutions.
