Inside the new Afghanistan

The arrivals terminal of Kabul International Airport is cleaved by gender. Coalition forces rebuilt the airport during the occupation of Afghanistan, and it retains its modern style. But the Taliban have made it their own, and I enter the country amid a sea of waiting turbans to my left, veils to my right. Almost exactly five years earlier, on 15 August 2021, the Taliban seized this airport. Chaos ensued. The Americans carried out an 18-day operation in which more than 123,000 people were airlifted to safety — the largest non-combatant evacuation in U.S. military history. On 30 August, at 11:59pm local time, the final US military plane departed Kabul, one minute before President Joe Biden’s deadline for withdrawal. The airlift marked the end of the American-Afghan state that was born in 20