On August 26, 2021, a suicide bomber detonated explosives outside Abbey Gate at Kabul’s airport, killing 13 U.S. service members and more than 170 Afghan civilians. The attack, claimed by ISIS-K, pierced the fragile perimeter of the evacuation mission and turned a logistical sprint into a moral reckoning. Images of Marines carrying the wounded through sewage-filled canals became the defining tableau of America’s longest war ending not with ceremony but with triage.