The final moments of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan had been captured in two pictures that had been a reversal of the American invasion practically 20 years in the past: A U.S. soldier leaving as Taliban fighters took management.
U.S. Central Command identified the final soldier to depart as Maj. Gen. Chris Donahue, the commanding common of the 82nd Airborne. He was boarding the final flight out of Kabul’s airport. Shortly after, the Los Angeles Occasions posted a video of its Center East bureau chief, Nabih Bulos, getting into the airport with Taliban fighters.
The picture of Maj. Donahue, a firearm in his proper hand, boarding a C-17 aircraft Monday night time, is shrouded within the inexperienced tint suggestive of night time imaginative and prescient goggles.
Close by, and shortly after, a handful of Taliban fighters had been recorded casually strolling into an airport hangar. The second was captured in a 30-second video, considered practically two million instances on Twitter, by Mr. Bulos.
The overhang is brightly lit. Fighters stroll by an empty swivel chair and towards one facet of the hangar, the place a number of helicopters sit unoccupied.
The fighters, in response to Mr. Bulos, had been getting into “what was solely minutes in the past” an American patrolled portion of the airport. In another video posted by Mr. Bulos, Taliban troopers shoot celebratory gunfire into the air.
The 2 pictures seize the unlikely switch of energy between america, which invaded the nation in 2001, and the Taliban, which has waged a bloody marketing campaign to return to energy ever since.