Afghanistan crisis: Committee on price control to be established

America's longest war ended ignobly, in the dead of night in Afghanistan. A giant C-17 transport laden with troops and the US ambassador flew out of Kabul airport a minute before midnight local time on August 31, the deadline set by President Joe Biden. That brought to an end a helter-skelter airlift that evacuated more than 120,000 people fleeing the harsh rule of the Islamist Taliban, who seized power a fortnight earlier -- two decades after US-led forces drove them from power. The land that had brutally rebuffed the British empire and the Soviet Union delivered the same result to the modern world's superpower.

The Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan has brought back bad memories to the country's ex-Soviet neighbours, who fear a jihadist threat and a refugee crisis. While the Islamist militants have never vied for territory beyond Afghanistan, their reign some two decades ago still wrought uncertainty in neighbouring Central Asia. Now the region's governments are steeling themselves against instability spilling over into their territory once again while locals are preparing for new neighbours at home. "If refugees come we will give them our home and our salt and bread," said Abdualziz Mukhamadjanov, a 26-year-old businessman in the city of Termez in southern Uzbekistan near the Afghan border.

The United States completed the withdrawal of its forces from Afghanistan, the Pentagon said on Monday, after a chaotic evacuation of thousands of Americans and Afghan allies to close out US involvement there after 20 years of conflict.