The Taliban cheered, whooped and cried "God is Great" just moments after one of their leaders signed an agreement that could lead to the United States' withdrawal from Afghanistan after more than 18 years of war, Eurasia Diary reports citing NBC.

On Saturday in this tiny Gulf kingdom, senior American officials shook hands with the group that, as the government of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, had sheltered Osama bin Laden, the Al Qaeda leader and the architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. The U.S. agreed to work toward lifting sanctions against the group, and Taliban leaders can even look forward to a possible meeting with President Donald Trump.

In short, after nearly two decades of war with the world's remaining superpower, the Taliban look like they not only have won the war, but they are also on the way to shedding their status as international pariahs.

"Even if we don't say that the U.S. is defeated in Afghanistan, it is an open secret now that they are defeated," said Anas Haqqani, a senior member of the Haqqani network, considered to be the most formidable of the Taliban's fighting forces, who was recently released from an Afghan jail in exchange for two Western professors taken hostage by the Taliban in 2016.

In the agreement aimed at ending Washington's military entanglement in Afghanistan — America's longest war — the U.S. agrees to withdraw all its forces from the country in 14 months, although a complete pullout would depend on the Taliban meeting its commitments, including cutting any ties to terrorist groups.

The war has taken an enormous toll on the insurgents. Brown University estimates that between 2001 and October 2018, some 40,000 opposition fighters were killed in Afghanistan. While it does not give breakdowns on how many of these fighters were Taliban members, they are by far the largest insurgent group in the country.

The war has also inflicted a deadly toll on the Afghan people. While the Taliban steadfastly deny they target civilians, according to the United Nations the group was responsible for almost half of the more than 10,000 civilians who were either injured or killed in Afghanistan last year.

There were around 2,400 U.S. military deaths between 2001 and 2018, according to Brown University's Costs of War project.