As US President Joe Biden marks a decade since the killing of former al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, Afghan officials and security analysts are worried that terrorism could re-emerge as a threat in Afghanistan.
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"We followed bin Laden to the gates of hell - and we got him," Biden said on Sunday as he marked the anniversary of the events.
Ten years ago, US special forces killed bin Laden, the mastermind behind the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
"Now, as a result of those efforts, as we bring to an end America's longest war and draw down the last of our troops from Afghanistan, al Qaeda is greatly degraded there," Biden said.
Some 10,000 NATO soldiers involved in a training mission are currently withdrawing from Afghanistan by September 11 at the latest.
But violence continues. The Taliban overran a checkpoint in the south-eastern Ghazni province on Friday night. On Sunday, it remained unclear what had happened to some 30 soldiers there.
Afghan civilians also expressed fears about the withdrawal. As wealthier and liberal Afghans seek to leave the country, Kabul brokers said they had many properties for sale but no one wanted to buy them. Others tried to sell their cars and other goods to have cash available just in case.
Few have faith in the peace negotiations under way between the Taliban and the government. Ending the war through negotiations is the "least likely scenario," said the Afghanistan Analysts Network, a think tank based in Kabul.
Guido Steinberg, a regional expert at the SWP foreign policy institute in Berlin, also warned of a resurgence of terror after the withdrawal of the US.
He predicted the Taliban would gain power, and might ally with Al Qaeda, and warned this could potentially attract extremists from around the world.
US General Mark Milley described the Afghan military and police as "reasonably well equipped, reasonably well trained, reasonably well led."
He cited Afghan troops' years of experience against a resilient insurgency, but he declined to say they are fully ready to stand up to the Taliban without direct international backing during a potential Taliban offensive.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, spoke in an interview with Associated Press and CNN reporters flying with him from Hawaii to Washington just hours after the formal kick off of the withdrawal.
Asked whether he believes the Afghan forces can hold up under increased strain, Milley was noncommittal.
"Your question: The Afghan army, do they stay together and remain a cohesive fighting force or do they fall apart? I think there's a range of scenarios here, a range of outcomes, a range of possibilities," he said.
."On the one hand you get some really dramatic, bad possible outcomes. On the other hand, you get a military that stays together and a government that stays together."
Australian Associated Press
