The humiliation of the west in Afghanistan is now complete

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Taliban fighters and local people sit on an Afghan National Army humvee on a street in Jalalabad province on 15 August (AFP via Getty Images)

The humiliation of the west in Afghanistan is now complete. Many will draw comparisons between the scramble of people to get out and the denouement in Vietnam in 1975.

There were good reasons for the initial incursion 20 years ago. It was quite proper for the US to want to get rid of the Al-Qaeda bases where so much evil was planned. But clearly something went wrong after that in the strategic thinking of the generals and politicians. Was it perhaps the dreaded “mission creep” – with delusions that Western countries could somehow do nation building in a culture utterly foreign to them?

Britain in the 19th century, Russia in the 1980s and now the US and UK have all had to leave this sad country with their tails between their legs. Hopefully there can be found some way of tempering the medieval practices and beliefs of the Taliban but it clearly won’t be easy.