America has ended its longest war in Afghanistan, President Joe Biden announced on Tuesday, hours after the final US evacuation plane flew out of Kabul airport amidst celebratory gunfire from the Taliban, leaving the country in disarray and its future uncertain under the rule of hardline Islamist militants.

The last plane carrying US forces left Afghanistan on Monday around midnight, a day ahead of schedule, ending a 20-year war that left nearly 2,500 American troops dead and spanned four presidencies. The C17 aircraft’s departure from Kabul’s international airport was the final chapter in a contentious military effort, which eventually saw the US handing Afghanistan back to the very Islamist militants it sought to root out when American troops entered the country in 2001.