Taliban enjoy moment of victory as focus shifts to challenges ahead

As guards dismantle barricades at airport, leadership holds talks on how the spoils of power will be shared

• Afghanistan - live updates
• Report: after 20 years, last US flight departs Kabul

The Taliban marked the start of their first day in full control of Afghanistan with celebratory gunfire, minutes after the last US plane of soldiers and their ambassador lifted off from Kabul airport, sealing Washington's humiliating defeat in its longest war.

Twenty years, tens of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars separated the arrival of the first US troops on Afghan soil after 9/11 and the Taliban's triumphant restoration in the Afghan capital.