The US and Nato allies have agreed to withdraw all troops within 14 months if the militants uphold the deal.

President Trump said it had been a "long and hard journey" in Afghanistan. "It's time after all these years to bring our people back home," he said.

Talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban are due to follow.

(snip)

The move would allow US President Donald Trump to show that he has brought troops home ahead of the US presidential election in November.

The deal also provides for a prisoner swap. Some 5,000 Taliban prisoners and 1,000 Afghan security force prisoners would be exchanged by 10 March, when talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government are due to start.

The US will also lift sanctions against the Taliban and work with the UN to lift its separate sanctions against the group.

In Kabul, activist Zahra Husseini said she feared the deal could worsen the situation for women in Afghanistan.

"I don't trust the Taliban, and remember how they suppressed women when they were ruling," the 28-year-old told AFP.

This withdrawal of war correspondents from the field was compounded by a virtual void in diplomatic coverage last year. When negotiations by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo with the Taliban in Doha in February 2020 reached the current commitment to end the US military role in Afghanistan, the three broadcast networks devoted a grand total of five minutes to the promise to bring America's so-called longest war to an historic end.

Five minutes! Such were the demands on the news agenda of the looming coronavirus pandemic in the early spring of 2020. Coverage of all other developments was eclipsed by COVID. The networks had long since given up covering the war as a war. The pandemic meant that they barely paid attention to the prospect of peace.

“George W. Bush is the one who should be lambasted the most in this coverage… The original sin of the problem we’re seeing unfolding and everything that’s happened in 20 years is at his doorstep. ”

He continued criticizing the media coverage by saying, “The voices they’re putting on the air are all the voices that got it wrong from day one. All of the voices they’re having on the air criticizing — most of them — criticizing Joe Biden are all the ones that got it wrong for the last 20 years. Leon Panetta, George W. Bush — he hasn’t been on the air but people around him — all of them got it wrong, so why would we listen to them related to the pullout?”

At one point Dowd added this:

Keep in mind one thing, Brian. 5,000 people, while this was going on, died of covid in this country. 500 people died of gun violence in the last week in this country. And not a single American has died on the pullout in the midst of this chaotic situation in a political hurricane, and I don’t think the press fully understands what the context is for the American public. So when you understand the context not only of Afghanistan but the context of what’s going on in our country, there is far worse crisis situations, including the assault on our democracy, that get forgotten about in the midst of this.