The Taliban advance has surprised everyone. Against the background of the painstaking and now completed negotiations in the Gulf City of Doha, the warlords have sliced through the defenses of the provincial cities, with five falling in one day.

Kandahar is Afghanistan's second city and hosted a massive concentration of Western troops, infrastructure and aircraft traffic throughout the U.S.-led military campaign that has ended suddenly after nearly 20 years.

There will be a trove of abandoned allied equipment waiting to loot, including trucks, armored vehicles, weapons, ammunition and supplies.

With the prospects for the capital Kabul looking bleaker by the day, all the Western countries involved in the campaign are rushing to redeploy troops in the region – this time to get their civilians out.

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Contractors, administrators, diplomats and medical staff are all now deemed vulnerable ahead of the collapse of the Afghan National Army.

There were hopes, however faint, that the peace negotiations might yield some kind of slowdown to the military rout taking place in the Afghan deserts.

But in the event, the talks appear instead to have evaporated, at least temporarily, leaving the international community struggling for optimism.

"We are continuing to engage with the Taliban in Doha," said United Nations spokesperson Stephane Dujarric.

"I mean, we are continuing to believe that there is a political solution that can be had. This doesn't mean that we are also blind to what is going on on the ground."

The redeployment of U.S. and European troops to secure safe passage for foreign nationals having to accelerate their departure plans is potentially embarrassing. Thus far, only junior State Department officials have defended the strategy.

"This is not abandonment," U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters.

"This is not an evacuation. This is not the wholesale withdrawal. What this is, is a reduction in the size of our civilian footprint."

But the UK government has been clearer with its rejection of the sudden departure and the dangers it involves.

UK Defense Minister Ben Wallace has labeled the withdrawal a "mistake" and has predicted the resurgence of al-Qaeda in the region as a result.

He singled out Donald Trump, the former US president, for criticism, describing his deals with the Taliban as "rotten" and expressed concerns over the twin threats of poverty and terrorism in states that fail.