The Taliban has announced a new government from Kabul, 20 years after they were driven from power.
For a generation that grew up with education, international investment and hope in a democratic future, reading that line must feel scarcely believable.
So how did the previous administration fall so quickly? The Taliban went from taking control of their first major city to arriving at the gates of Kabul in just 10 days.
But the capital, it was assumed, would be different. Most observers believed that Kabul would hold until a negotiated agreement could take place. On Sunday 15 August, that all changed. Within hours, the president and his top officials had fled. What was left of the Afghan army and police forces changed out of their uniforms, and went into hiding.
The Western-backed Afghan government, backed by trillions of dollars in military support and training over two decades, had simply melted away.
Through interviews with insiders who were there, BBC News has pieced together an account of how Afghanistan's government unravelled during those chaotic and frantic last few hours.
The mood among the inner circle of Ashraf Ghani, the Afghan president, was concerned, but not panicked, high-level sources told the BBC. A plan to secure the capital had been drawn up, and was being discussed with General Haibatullah Alizai, the chief of the army staff, and Admiral Peter Vasely, the top US military officer in Afghanistan. Central to the plan were negotiations to halt the Taliban advance outside the city gates.
Sami Sadat, a former Afghan army commander in Helmand, the country's largest province, was drafted in to head a new Kabul security team. The plan was to fight if necessary, but ideally to try to secure a peaceful settlement with the Taliban. If that couldn't be achieved, then the Kabul administration wanted at the very least to buy time for evacuations.
But even as Lt Gen Sadat met his top team, Taliban were taking over the largest city in the north of the country, Mazar-e-Sharif, and were beginning to pour into the eastern city of Jalalabad. Both cities were falling with barely a fight.
Kabul was the last city standing.
Ashraf Ghani, a former academic and IMF official, had been president of Afghanistan since September 2014. Critics within the Afghan government told us he had consistently failed to assess the Taliban threat accurately during the final weeks of their advance.
But no doubt at the forefront of his mind was the fate of former President Mohammed Najibullah. In fact Mr Ghani went on to reference this moment of history when he later explained his reasons for leaving.
Mr Najibullah was captured by the Taliban when the group took over Kabul in 1996. Taliban fighters dragged him out of the UN compound where he was sheltering and tortured him. After killing him they hung his body from a traffic light outside the presidential palace.