Departing US general’s ghostly image books place in history

Major General Chris Donahue, commander of the US Army 82nd Airborne Division, XVIII Airborne Corps, boards a C-17 cargo plane at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. (AFP)

Carrying his rifle down by his side, Major General Chris Donahue, commander of the storied 82nd Airborne Division, became the last US soldier to board the final flight out of Afghanistan a minute before midnight on Monday. Taken with a night vision device from a side window of the C-17 transport plane, the ghostly green and black image of the general striding toward the aircraft waiting on the tarmac at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai Airport was released by the Pentagon hours after the United States ended its 20-year military presence in Afghanistan. As a moment in history, the image of Donahue’s departure could be cast alongside that of a Soviet general, who led an armoured column across the Friendship Bridge to Uzbekistan, when the Red Army made its final exit from Afghanistan in 1989. Completing a military operation that with the help of allies succeeded in evacuating 123,000 civilians from Afghanistan, the last plane load of US troops left under cover of the night. Though it is a still image, Donahue appears to be moving briskly, his face expressionless. He is wearing full combat gear, with night vision goggles atop his helmet, and rifle by his side. He had yet to leave Afghanistan behind, and reach safety. The US-backed Afghan government had already capitulated and Kabul had fallen to the Taliban a little over two weeks before the August 31 deadline for US troops to depart. The final US evacuation of Kabul will be judged by how many people were brought out, and how many were left behind. But Donahue and his comrades will carry harrowing images from their chaotic last days in Kabul; parents passing babies to them across the razor wire, two young Afghans falling from a plane climbing high in the sky, and worst of all, the aftermath of an Islamic State suicide bomb attack outside the airport on August 26 that killed scores of Afghans and 13 of their own.