Jo Raphael: There's no way to call 'cut' on Afghani heartbreak

Hundreds of people run alongside a US Air Force C-17 transport plane, some climbing on the plane, as it moves down a runway of the international airport, in Kabul. Photo / AP

OPINION

It's like watching a scene from a movie.

Extras running to try to catch and hold on to an air force plane, while it is in motion.

An Apache helicopter buzzing over a desperate crowd, trying to clear a path for the aircraft.

US troops, set up to guard the runway but overwhelmed by the melee.

Except these people were not extras and there's no director calling "cut".

At least seven people died, according to US officials, trying to flee the Afghani capital, Kabul.

These and other heartbreaking scenes are unfolding after the US pulled out of Afghanistan this week, ending a 20-year occupation that started when the Taliban was overthrown by the US after the 9/11 attacks in 2001 for their support of al-Qaeda's Osama bin Laden.

US President Joe Biden says he will not "pass this war" on to another president.

"Our mission in Afghanistan was never supposed to have been nation-building," he says.

Former Prime Minister Helen Clark calls it a "massive step backwards".

Taliban leaders are trying to style themselves as freedom fighters rather than insurgents.

"Now it's time to test and prove, now we have to show that we can serve our nation and ensure security and comfort of life," Taliban co-founder Abdul Ghani Baradar says in a video posted to social media.

I don't believe it.

The Taliban regime has a cruel history of public stoning, torture, abuse, rape and revenge killings in the name of Islam.

I don't wonder for a moment that petrified citizens would rather risk death falling from the outside of an airplane than live under Taliban rule again.

It saddens me that the hard-fought freedoms of the Afghani people over two decades will now likely slip back into the dark ages – to the shock of the rest of the world.

Biden's reason for leaving makes some sort of sense but only in a scenario where the Afghan people had the will, means and strength to fight rather than flee.

He says: "Americans should not be dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight themselves".

The US severely underestimated the Taliban, who were clearly biding their time before surging back with unbelievable speed and power, and that was a fatal mistake.

The US should have made sure it was safe to leave Afghanistan and their withdrawal wasn't going to end up like this - almost ensuring the sacrifices and costs of the past two decades have been for nothing.

Now the fate of the Afghani people is at stake.

The scenes are playing out like a movie, but I predict it won't be a happy ending.