America lost its longest war five years ago. This is what victory looks like for the Taliban

From the final years of the US-backed republic to life under the Taliban, an eyewitness chronicles Kabul’s journey from hope and despair to peace without either “When Ashraf Ghani goes, we’ll go with him. And he’ll go when the Americans do.”The conversation took place on the balcony of a luxury high-rise in Shahr-e Naw, central Kabul. The man speaking to me was a young government employee, and Ashraf Ghani was serving his second term as president of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. It was May 2017. The republic had four years and three months left.A city living on borrowed time Afghanistan at the time could best be described with a line from Dickens: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… we had everything before us, we had nothing before us.” Kabul was both deeply Westernized and full of contradictions. The former was fueled by the abundance of foreigners and foreign aid; the latter by the unending fighting and terrorist attacks.Downtown, you could find nightclubs throwing Valentine’s Day and Halloween parties, modeling agencies, coffee shops serving cheesecake, bowling alleys, and tattoo parlors. On the outskirts, tent camps were expanding to accommodate intern...