Kabul has fallen, and with it, the hubris that Western countries can superimpose their idea of democracy anywhere they can land with their sophisticated arms and artillery. As the United States of America bids an ignominious goodbye to Afghanistan 20 years after it landed there in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, it has many questions to answer. The first question, obviously, is: Was the invasion really worth it?

After spending billions of dollars, carpet-bombing terrorist hideouts as well as commoners' homes with drones, and letting thousands of security personnel, civilians, opposition fighters, aid workers and others die in what seemed like an endless war, what is there for the "peacekeepers" to show except to concede that their approach was terribly short-sighted? At the end of the 20-year effort at rebuilding Afghanistan, the US administration could not even forecast how long it would take the Taliban, whom they sought to wipe out from the face of the earth, to enter Kabul once the last of the American troops had left.

It took not years, not months, but just over a week for the Taliban to enter the presidential palace in Kabul as Afghan security forces, which had been trained by US and NATO forces for 20 years, wimped and all but surrendered. Disturbing scenes from Kabul have made the rounds in mainstream and social media as thousands of people deserted the capital just as the Taliban made their way into the city. Thousands of others—foreigners and Afghans both—were seen congregating at Kabul's Hamid Karzai International Airport hoping to catch a flight out of the country before the Taliban took over.

One of the lucky few to be able to flee the besieged city was, of course, the president himself. Ashraf Ghani flew out of the country to save himself as it became increasingly apparent that he was in no position to save his people. By Sunday evening, images appeared of the Taliban reciting the Quran and having their photographs taken in the presidential palace. And on Monday, there were reports of gunshots and deaths of half a dozen people as the chaos continued, international airlines started cancelling their flights, and the airport closed down.

At the end, we have arrived at a situation where we have to be happy that the siege of Kabul happened without much bloodshed. And we have arrived at a point where we are hoping against hope that the Taliban have changed for the better. We have had to see a flicker of hope in the Taliban spokesman's assurance that they will not harm anyone willing to leave the country. Those of us in Nepal have had to hope that the hundreds of Nepalis—perhaps even thousands; the government has failed to even to come up with accurate data—who have been stranded there will get a lift in one of the last flights operated by other governments even as our own government remains clueless as to what it is doing to rescue its citizens.

The Afghanistan story is a sad tale of the failure of the US and its allies to gauge what exactly they were doing even as they lingered on for 20 years in a war-torn country. It is the story of a people damned to be ruled by the barbarians once again after 20 years of living under relative peace, at least in the cities, despite occasional incidents of violence. It is the story of hopes dashed, especially for young women, who had grown up taking for granted the fact that a young woman can play football, go to school, and roam around in the city without a burka and the company of a male family member.