The United States–Taliban deal, signed on 29 February 2020, is considered one of the most critical factors that caused the collapse of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF).

[40] Following its rapid defeat across the country, the Afghan National Army was left in chaos, with only two units remaining operational by mid-August: the 201st Corps and 111th Division, both based in Kabul.

[66] At 11:00 p.m. local time, Ghani eventually publicly announced on Facebook that he had fled in an attempt to avoid a bloody battle and that "the Taliban [had] won with the judgment of their swords and guns".

[67] In another account, he defended his actions: "Two different factions of the Taliban were closing in from two different directions ... and the possibility of a massive conflict between them that would destroy the city of five million and bring havoc to the people was enormous."

[57] Following the collapse of the central government, a handful of Afghan politicians, including the Speaker of the House of the People Mir Rahman Rahmani, fled the country and traveled to Pakistan.

[74] One Kabul woman told The Guardian that female students had been evacuated from their university dormitories before the Taliban could reach them, and that university-educated women across the city were hiding their diplomas.

[88] After the fall of Herat on 13 August, the US and UK announced the deployment of 3,000 and 600 of their troops, respectively, to Kabul Airport in order to secure the airlifting of their nationals, embassy staff, and Afghan citizens who worked with coalition forces, out of the country.

[95] A US drone strike aimed at presumed Islamic State members suspected of planning a suicide bombings at the Kabul airport killed a family of 10 civilians in an adjacent car, including 7 children and an employee of a US aid organization.

[99] Other figures closely associated with the US-backed Afghan government, including Gul Agha Sherzai, the former governor of Nangahar province, congratulated Taliban on their victory.

[105][106] According to North Press, a Syrian news outlet, the morale of jihadist and extremist groups in regions such as Syria and Iraq, including Tahrir al-Sham, had risen dramatically following the fall of Kabul.

– discuss][108] Colin Clarke, research director at the Soufan Center stated that he was "expecting a heavy wave of propaganda [from jihadist groups], especially with the upcoming 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks".

[117] Afghan author Khaled Hosseini has also shared his concerns over the future of women's rights in Afghanistan,[118] and expressed his hope that the Taliban would not return to the "violence and cruelty" of the 1990s.

[119] Human Rights Watch stated that "standing beside Afghan women in their struggle, and finding tools to pressure the Taliban and the political will to do so, is the least—the very least—the international community could do".

[120] Amnesty International stated that the situation was "a tragedy that should have been foreseen and averted" and called for governments to "take every necessary measure to ensure the safe passage out of Afghanistan for all those at risk of being targeted by the Taliban".

[125] In the UK, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab faced calls to resign after it was revealed he had gone on holiday to Greece just prior to the fall and had refused attempts to contact him as developments occurred.

[127][128][129][130] Former American presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump, each of whom had overseen significant developments in the War in Afghanistan, also faced criticism.

German politician Armin Laschet, minister-president of North Rhine-Westphalia and successor to Angela Merkel as CDU/CSU leader, stated that it was "the biggest debacle that NATO has suffered since its creation and it's a change of era that we are confronted with".

British parliamentary Foreign Affairs Select Committee chairman Tom Tugendhat stated that the collapse was "the biggest single policy disaster since Suez".

[136] Journalist Nick Turse argued that "without a true reevaluation this time around, the US risks falling into well-worn patterns that may, one day, make the military debacles in Southeast and Southwest Asia look terribly small".

[141] US intelligence assessments originally concluded Kabul would fall within months or weeks following withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan, though the security situation rapidly deteriorated, leading President Joe Biden to concede on 16 August that "this did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated".

General Bismillah Khan Mohammadi, former ANA chief of staff and interim minister of defence, tweeted "They tied our hands from behind and sold the country.

According to Maley, the collapse of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is due to Biden's inexperience in the field of foreign policy, Western lack of understanding of Afghan society, and the legitimization that the Taliban received with the Trump-led US–Taliban deal.

He concluded by quoting former British prime minister David Lloyd George, who said in 1940 that "our promissory notes are now rubbish on the market", stating that, as a result of its failures over Afghanistan, the Biden administration is rapidly heading in a similar direction.

[149] Former American defense secretary Leon Panetta compared the fall of Kabul to the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba in 1961, saying that "President Kennedy took responsibility for what took place.

[157] Reporters argued that Biden's comments did not age well, as embassy staff burned documents and "helicopters were pictured hovering above the compound, shuttling diplomats to the airport" less than a month later.

[161] Ibrahim al-Marashi of California State University, San Marcos compared it to the 2014 Northern Iraq offensive, in which IS overran large parts of Iraq and proclaimed a caliphate, arguing that the collapses were caused by the imposition of "rigid, hierarchical American military doctrine" on the Afghan and Iraqi militaries, that the Taliban and Daesh were more cohesive armed groups, and that the NATO-backed Afghan and Iraqi governments had "allowed networks of patronage and corruption to take root".

[169] The day after the fall of Kabul, 16 August, most of the city's streets had been deserted, save for those leading to the airport, with businesses shuttered and security checkpoints unmanned.

American retaliation followed soon and three days later, out of fear of a bloody repetition, the US wrongfully targeted a white car with a drone strike, killing 10 civilians including seven children.

[201] With the fall of Kabul, former Northern Alliance members and other anti-Taliban forces based in the province Panjshir, led by Ahmad Massoud and former vice president Amrullah Saleh, became the primary organized resistance to the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Accurate studies in crisis areas like Afghanistan are difficult to conduct because it is hard to have a large number of participants and a smaller sample size weakens the results.