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because kabul airport has fallen, although we have to understand that losing that as an exit route severely limits and has severely limited our ability to evacuate people. those left behind don t have much hope to hold onto. many are in fear, others displaced, struggling to find food. tomorrow marks the end of america s longest war. its legacy is uncertain as the future of afghanistan. rajini vaidyanathan, bbc news. joining me now is sir simon mayall, who is former deputy chief of the uk defence staff and was a security envoy to iraq when islamic state first came to prominence. thank you forjoining us and can i ask you first of all about those
but some of the fundamentals are the same. and it is easy to forget that we didn t really go into afghanistan in 2001 to create a switzerland in central asia. we did it for our own security reasons. and then we got dragged into an idea that we could completely reform afghan society. 0n the security side, we have had 20 years of at least suppressing terror attacks coming from afghanistan and in the meantime, of course, we had the whole generation of nearly half the whole generation of nearly half the population of afghanistan who have grown up in a totally different world to the one that was existing under the taliban before 2000 won, and one can only hope that some of that may have a moderating impact on the current taliban leadership. but we should not be under any illusions that the taliban, to the extent of the leadership has stayed in power by driving a more extremist agenda that will continue to attract their own supporters. that will continue to attract their own sweden- that wi