This is intercepted.

I'm Wurtzerhussain, a reporter with the intercept.

It's about 1 a.m. on the 17th of August, 36 hours since the Taliban took control of the Afghan capital Kabul.

In a surprisingly peaceful transition of power with the Afghan government led by Ashraf Ghani.

That's Andrew Quilsey, a photographer and writer of Beast in Kabul.

The remaining 15 or so provincial capitals felt the Taliban in a matter of days, bringing the then-incurrent group to the gates of Kabul.

Late on the night of the 14th of August, it was a sleepless night that night for Kabul's residents who were anticipating the next date to begin violently.

It was only a hastily cobbled together agreement between the government and the Taliban that would see a peaceful transition of power.

In just a short time, we saw the Taliban take over Afghanistan.

The Taliban seizing back power nearly two decades after 9-11, taking over the capital of Kabul in just a matter of days.

The Afghan president has fled the country and US troops have taken control of the city's airport, where thousands of Afghans are also desperate to leave the country.

US and UK troops are engaged in evacuating their citizens while the international community tries to define its response to the Taliban's lightning speed victory.

If anything, the developments of the past week reinforced that any US military involvement Afghanistan now was the right decision.

American troops cannot and should not be fighting an war and dying an war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves.

When the agreement was made that would see the government fold, most of the Afghan security forces shed their uniforms and left their posts across the city.

Former members of the national army and the national police could be seen walking from military infrastructure around the city carrying sacks of belongings.

And within a matter of hours, security vacuum developed in the city, looting began, thieves dressed up to look like Taliban, robbed people in the street.

And within a matter of another few hours, the Taliban made a hasty decision to send their fighters into the city to fill the vacuum left by the retreating, disappearing Afghan security forces.

We'll be hearing more from Andrew in a few minutes.

The two-decade long US war in Afghanistan has come to a conclusion with the US having suffered what appears to be a stunning defeat.

After spending over a trillion dollars in fighting a war that resulted in thousands of US casualties and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Afghans, the US is leaving the country with a Taliban firmly in power.

Vanessa Gizarri, National Security Editor for the Intercept, has spent years reporting in Afghanistan after the US launched the war.

...