The Fall of Kabul occurred on 15 August 2021 when the Afghan capital of Kabul fell to the Taliban at the culmination of the 2021 Taliban offensive and the Afghanistan War. As Afghanistan's major cities fell to the Taliban in early August, the United States and United Kingdom sent troops to Kabul Airport to evacuate their nationals, embassy staff, and their Afghan civilian employees, and, on 15 August, the Taliban halted at the gates of Kabul as the Taliban leadership engaged in negotiations with the Afghan government to form a transitional government. It soon became clear that the Taliban would only accept an unconditional surrender from President Ashraf Ghani's administration, and their forces advanced into Kabul's outskirts regardless of their leaders' official declarations. In Kabul itself, food prices soared as food vendors raised their prices with the goal of buying transportation out of the country, while sales of burqa headdresses also skyrocketed as women anxiously prepared for the reimplementation of strict sharia law by a restored Taliban regime. In an episode which drew comparisons to the 1975 Fall of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War, US helicopters evacuated US diplomatic personnel from the American embassy in Kabul, and the Albanian government agreed to use Albanian soil as a transport hub for the evacuation efforts. At the same time, President Ashraf Ghani and Vice President Amrullah Saleh fled to Tajikistan, and, that night, Ghani proclaimed, "the Taliban have won with the judgement of their swords and guns." The Taliban proceeded to form a transitional government headed by President Abdul Ghani Baradar ahead of their planned restoration of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.