8 Americans ponder US withdrawal from Afghanistan

They watched, waited and tried to help as the Afghan capital fell to the Taliban last year. "It was traumatic," said one.

A veteran who desperately tried to connect Afghans with Marines at the airport of Kabul when the Taliban took over. A retired ambassador stepped in to run the embassy. A young foreign service officer who lost her partner in an ambush.

A year after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, a group of Americans who served and worked across the country shared their frustrations, hopes and feelings of helplessness over a two-decade mission that still seems unfinished.

"I think about it every day."

Ross L. Wilson

On the morning of August 15, 2021, Ross L. Wilson, the Acting Ambassador at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, received a dire security update from U.S. military commanders. Gunfire erupted around the Afghan capital as Taliban fighters closed in and local security forces abandoned their posts.

At the same time, the Taliban were to storm prisons in the area and free thousands of detainees, creating a potential wave of extremists and other criminals heading towards Kabul.

It was the latest in a series of warnings over the previous month as the Taliban grew in strength across Afghanistan, and with them Mr. Wilson resignedly ordered the embassy closed and the evacuation of approximately 1,500 Americans and other personnel. Documents were hastily burned and equipment destroyed.

"It was traumatic," Mr. Wilson said, describing the events leading up to him, along with thousands of others, to flee Afghanistan at the end of August. . “People had to leave things behind – their possessions, their incredibly uprooted lives. And everyone thinks of their Afghan friends, including Afghan colleagues or employees, but also people they have come to know and care about. , a US marine had lowered the US flag from its mast outside the embassy and handed it to Mr. Wilson, who boarded a helicopter bound for the airport on the outskirts of the town. Not only remained the sprawling embassy compound, but also a mission that was far from over, even after nearly 20 years of war.

" At that time, there was more than a gigantic question mark over our ability to come back anytime in the very near future," Wilson said. "It's obviously a very sad day."

It was about to get worse.

Most of the personnel left Afghanistan that night- there or early the next day But Mr. Wilson and about 30 other American diplomats stayed for another two weeks, trying to find and evacuate other American citizens and permanent residents, as well as foreign allies, among the tens of thousands of panicked Afghans just outside the airport, begging for help. .

"They have to make choices: 'Yes, you will s can come in' or 'No sir, you can't,'" Mr Wilson recalled. of diplomats working at the airport gate for 12-hour shifts, amid gunfire and explosions, and against the constant roar of the crowd. "And you know, it's really hard."

"No one who wasn't there can really imagine how awful it was", he said.

Mr. Wilson was among the last four diplomats to leave Kabul, departing on the last US military plane which took off shortly before midnight on August 30. The flight headed to Doha, Qatar, where he was taken to a military hospital for tests and told he had the coronavirus. Few people wore masks during the long and devastating days at Kabul airport, but Mr Wilson had assumed the fatigue and other symptoms he was experiencing were the result of working 20 hours a day for five consecutive weeks .

He flew home...