The pictures are of chaos and raw fear.
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As the Taliban take control of the Afghan capital, Kabul, panic has set in among those whom the victors may target for cooperating with the old regime and western organisations, including those of Australia.
Who are the Taliban?
The Taliban (or "students" in the Pashto language of Afghanistan) emerged in the early 1990s as a hard-line Islamist group in northern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan.
They came to prominence - and to power - after the occupying Soviet Union had been defeated. They ruled from 1996 until the American-led war after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington in 2001. Those attacks were organised by Al Qaeda, which the Taliban government allowed to operate in Afghanistan.
Beliefs
The Taliban are devout Muslims of the Sunni sect which looks to Saudi Arabia for inspiration (and often for money).
They enforce a very severe form of Sharia (Islamic law).
When they ruled Afghanistan previously, there were public executions and amputations for those found guilty of theft.
Men had to grow beards and women had to be completely covered with the burka.
Soccer was banned. So was music apart from religious chants. Entertainment like television and cinema were also forbidden.
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Women
When they ruled until 2001, women who were unaccompanied in public places could be beaten.
In provinces already controlled by the Taliban now, leaders have told local religious leaders to provide a list of girls over the age of 15 and widows over the age of 45 for "marriage" with Taliban fighters, according to Vrinda Narain of the Centre for Human Rights at McGill University in Montreal.
"If these forced marriages take place, women and girls will be taken to Waziristan in Pakistan to be re-educated and converted to 'authentic Islam'," she said.
"Offering 'wives' is a strategy aimed at luring militants to join the Taliban. This is sexual enslavement, not marriage, and forcing women into sexual slavery under the guise of marriage is both a war crime and a crime against humanity."
In areas controlled by the Taliban, girls over the age of 12 have been denied education and women have been deprived of jobs.
Refugees
The flight from the Taliban has so far been internal, from the provinces to Kabul but with the fall of the capital that could spill outwards.
"The human toll of spiraling hostilities is immense," the United Nations Assistance Mission warned a few days ago.
"Nearly 400,000 were forced from their homes since the beginning of the year, joining 2.9 million Afghans already internally displaced across the country at the end of 2020."
But does it affect Australia?
The Taliban take-over touches Australia in a variety of ways.
There may be pressure - and a moral obligation - to accept refugees. Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Tuesday said 430 Afghan "locally engaged employees" had been repatriated since April, and 1800 had been moved to Australia in total.
He said Australia's humanitarian program had capacity to take more, and while he confirmed no Afghan visa holder will be returned while the security situation remained volatile, Mr Morrison declined to answer when pressed on whether they would be granted permanent residency.
The fall of Kabul is also a defeat for Australia akin to Vietnam. Of the 39,000 Australians who served in Afghanistan, 41 died.
Defeat may affect the public attitude to military engagement in future.
There is a matter of honour. The lives of the Afghan people who helped Australian troops and diplomats are now in danger.
As former prime minister John Howard (who ordered the troops in) told this masthead: "I'm very concerned to see that those Afghans who risked their lives to help Australians are taken care of.
"And that those who really did take the big risks and are genuinely at risk, they should be given visas to come to Australia.
"I do not want to see a repetition of what happened all those years ago in Vietnam when people who'd been very close allies of Australia were just abandoned."
President Trump again?
It is too early to say how this will play out in American politics but it's easy to see how it may play out.
The right-wing press in the United States is likening President Biden to one-term president, Jimmy Carter.
"The utterly nauseating and unnecessary abandonment of Afghanistan to its fate recalls a similar humiliation at the hands of Islamist radicals in the Jimmy Carter administration," as a columnist in Rupert Murdoch's New York Post put it.
The seizure of US embassy staff in Iran dominated the news for the last 14 months of Mr Carter's administration. Without doubt, it contributed to his defeat in the 1980 election.
Might the fall of Kabul do the same for Mr Biden in 2024?
It might, particularly if American lives are lost or hostages taken.
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Crime
Afghanistan does not have oil so the frequent charge that western intervention is driven by the need to secure it does not apply.
But Afghanistan has been a major source of a good which some westerners crave: heroine.
It may be that the Taliban get tough on cultivation of raw materials but another view is that it benefits too much from the proceeds.
As the UN Office on Drugs and Crime reported in 2009: "Ever since their return as insurgents into southern Afghanistan (in 2005) the Taliban - and other anti-government forces - have derived enormous sums of money from the drug trade."
According to the organisation, they tax farmers and lorry companies and extort protection money from labs. "In 2006-2007, the drug-related funds accruing to insurgents and warlords were estimated by UNODC at US$200 to US$400 million a year."