Last US troops leave Afghanistan.

[Neferti]

Last man out of Afghanistan: Two-star general and 30-year Army veteran Christopher Donahue is revealed as the final American soldier to board a plane out of Kabul Airport



https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... board.html

[Valkie]

Perhaps I was too fast in my condemnation of the yanks leaving working equipment for the animals and monkeys to play on.

It appears that the yanks havr destroyed most of it.

And the monkey muzzos are not happy........sucks to be them ha ha ha ha

Final chapter is plane tragic


KABUL: The abandoned war machines of a defeated superpower were fit only for the scrap heap as the Taliban swarmed into Hamid Karzai international airport. They littered the hangars around the runway, smashed and inoperable, after the last US plane had lifted off, the fading sound of its engine and the chatter of Taliban celebratory fire bringing to an end the West’s 20-year war in Afghanistan.

Walking through the wreckage of perforated metal, cut wiring and shattered control panels, among the clothes and uniforms left by evacuated civilians and fleeing Afghan soldiers, the Taliban celebrated the immensity of their victory.

“Not a single foreign soldier left in Afghanistan – the victory of our jihad could never be sweeter,” said Mohsen, a 23-year-old soldier from the Taliban’s elite Fateh unit.

“But the infidels destroyed everything,” he added.

“There is little left for us to capture here. Our country is liberated but the Americans have left us with junk.”

In the preceding hours, the last remaining US troops had withdrawn behind a final cordon lined with upturned vehicles and coils of razor wire, after handing the perimeter over to the Taliban: a last defensive position described as being “like the Alamo” by one US official.

They ensured not a single helicopter or plane among the fleet of 73 being left behind could serve the Taliban, scrupulously destroying all their engines and control systems.

Most of the coalition’s abandoned trucks and personnel carriers were similarly disabled, although the Taliban managed to find several working armoured vehicles and a special forces dune buggy, which they raced around the empty runways in victory laps.

As storm clouds darkened the morning sky, the aftermath of withdrawal looked sombre: a mechanical graveyard of drooping rotors, tilted wings, holed fuselages and pools of hydraulic fluid.

So complete was the destruction that neither the smallest room nor the biggest hangar appeared unmarked. Computers and screens had been smashed along with aircraft and Humvee engines; even the plates in the departure lounge were broken.

At the departure gates was a jumble of razor wire, bullet casings, glass, water bottles and human excrement.

Anas Haqqani, younger brother of the Taliban’s deputy leader, Sirajuddin Haqqani, and an emerging figure among the insurgents’ new generation, was quick to condemn the scorched-earth tactics of the US departure.

“This is a civilian international airport,” he said. “Yet the Americans have left it destroyed and inoperable, which means it will be very difficult for us to start any flights without extensive work first.”

A combination of absent airport staff, who fled the country with the allies, and the destruction in the last days of the evacuation has left Kabul airport without air traffic control. And US civilian aircraft are now banned from operating over Afghanistan unless given authorisation.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid described the day as one of proud liberation. “It is a historical day,” he said at the airport. “We are proud that we liberated our country from a great power.”

Describing the exact same moment, the US commander overseeing the evacuation, General Frank McKenzie, said in a Pentagon briefing after the last American plane had cleared Afghan airspace: “There’s a lot of heartbreak associated with this departure. We did not get everybody out who we wanted to get out.”

Outside the Kabul airport perimeter, one Afghan who had worked with the allies but failed to get out said: “For those of us left behind, today is not a day of victory but one of fear. The only certainty we have is that tomorrow will be a day of even greater fear.”

The London Times