Americans withdraw from Afghanistan — 1 year on

While US troops guarded the area inside the security perimeter around Kabul airport, Taliban fighters controlled the territory outside. The Taliban ruled out any extension to an August 31 deadline to pull out foreign troops, describing it as a "red line."

Thousands of desperate Afghans scrambled to find a way to get out of the country. At the end of August 2021, they wanted to escape it at all costs, fearing a return to the Taliban's brutal rule of the country between 1996 and 2001.

A Taliban fighter guards the site of an August 26, 2021 suicide attack at the Kabul airport as the US and its allies prepared to end a chaotic airlift. The twin blasts, claimed by and Islamic State affiliate, killed 170 Afghans and 13 American service members.

Following the suicide attack, the caskets of the 13 deceased US military service members were brought home. The war in which they fought started and ended with the Taliban in power — despite billions of dollars spent trying to rebuild the conflict-wracked country.

Rockets were fired at Kabul's airport on August 30, where US troops were racing to complete their withdrawal from Afghanistan and evacuate allies under threat of 'Islamic State' group attacks. The US military announced it had completed its withdrawal from Afghanistan after a brutal 20-year war a day later.

Taliban members celebrated after the US pulled all of its troops out of Afghanistan. More than 70,000 Afghan and Pakistani civilians are estimated to have died as a direct result of the war, according to figures from the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs's Cost of War initiative.

The US departure from Bagram air base — the nexus of the country's longest war — has seen the collapse of the economy of the same-named nearby town with its rows of shuttered shops and warehouses. Those that remain open have seen sales plummet. It shows how some Afghan's fortunes became heavily tied to the conflict and foreign aid.

One year after the US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, many former US military service members are still haunted by what happened in Afghanistan, particularly by the twin suicide attack at Kabul airport in 2021. Some of them are still trying to help Afghan friends however they can.