No, it’s not just the headline. The afghani military gave up very quickly and surrendered in many areas. The harder battles fought were almost exclusively civilians picking up arms or small regional areas who wanted to remain independent from the taliban.

The military and defense fell faster than even the most conservative international estimates for how long they would hold out and it’s the main reason why we were scrambling at the end to get out before Kabul and the airport were entirely overrun. We had planned to have at a minimum months longer until they got anywhere near the capital.