Kabul: The Taliban declared today the end of the war in Afghanistan after its fighters entered the capital Kabul and President Ashraf Ghani left the country on Sunday, Prensa Latina publishes.
Taliban political bureau spokesman Mohammad Naeem told Al Jazeera that the armed group would soon decide on the type and form of Afghanistan’s new government, and assured that citizens and diplomatic missions would be provided with security.
According to Al Jazeera in Kabul the Taliban control the streets of the capital where everything is quiet.
The Taliban sent 1,000 members of their special forces overnight and dominate all the checkpoints.
Dozens of fighters move in Afghan police and government vehicles patrolling the streets.
Meanwhile, the US State Department said that the evacuation of personnel from its embassy in Kabul was completed and they are at the Hamid Karzai International Airport, whose perimeter is secured by US troops.
The diplomats were airlifted from the embassy district in the city to the air terminal on Sunday when the Taliban entered the Afghan capital.
The White House announced that it will expand its “security presence” in Afghanistan to almost 6,000 soldiers, as the Pentagon authorized the deployment of an additional 1,000 troops to assist in evacuations.
According to a statement, the soldiers will focus “solely on facilitating” evacuation efforts and will “assume control of air traffic.”
Washington will relocate thousands of US citizens, local Kabul mission personnel and their families, and some Afghan citizens eligible for special immigrant visas from Afghanistan.
Before the arrival of the Taliban in Kabul, crowds of people rushed to leave the country and the airport of the capital became the scene of chaos and stampedes.
Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani resigned his post on Sunday and left the country, along with Secretary of State Hamdullah Muhib and the head of President Fazel Mahmood Fazli’s administrative office, for Tajikistan.
The Taliban triumph represents the military defeat of the United States, which left this nation in worse conditions than it was in October 2001 when Washington invaded the country after the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York, in an alleged crusade against terrorism.
This year, almost 360,000 Afghans were displaced by the conflict and there are several million refugees and more than 150,000 civilians killed and many injured by the war.
The United States spent billions of dollars a year from the US taxpayer in two decades, while losing three thousand soldiers and another 30 thousand were injured.