The Taliban took a win this week after United States military forces were officially evacuated from Afghanistan. In the days after the United States troops departing Afghanistan, the Taliban had parades with American military equipment to celebrate the United States evacuation after nearly two decades of military engagement.
On Monday, the final American military plane left Afghanistan, marking the end of the Afghanistan War, which was the longest war in United States history. The Taliban held parades showing off their newly seized United States military equipment, including Black Hawk helicopters, armored tactical vehicles, and firearms.
There was a train of stolen Humvees going in a line outside Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second-largest city. There was also a United States Black Hawk helicopter flying above with the Taliban flag.
As claimed by Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction quarterly reports, the United States sent over a thousand Humvees to the former Afghan government between April 2020 and July 2021, which have costed more than $278 million, Barron’s reported.
As stated by CBS News, the cost for a UH-60L Black Hawk helicopter is $5.9 million.
A video shows Taliban militants flaunting United States firearms investigating a hangar at the Hamid Karzai International Airport, which had four CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters, as stated by New York Times reporter Christiaan Triebert.
It is not exactly known the exact amount of viable weapons that the United States has left in Afghanistan because of President Biden’s sloppy withdrawal, but one United States intelligence official told Reuters that the Taliban likely controls thousands of armored vehicles, including United States Humvees, and up to forty aircraft possibly including UH-60 Black Hawks, scout attack helicopters, and ScanEagle military drones.
The BBC stated that the Afghan Air Force was operating 167 aircraft, including attack helicopters and planes, at the end of June, according to a report by the U.S.-based Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.
Before the Taliban was able to take the capital of Kabul, Afghan soldiers left for Uzbekistan with twenty-two military planes and twenty-four helicopters, reported by the New York Post.
“The kinds of equipment we’re talking about, while certainly there’s a lethality component to it, it doesn’t pose a threat to the United States, it doesn’t pose a threat to neighboring nations,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said. “These are not the kinds of things that the Taliban can make great strategic use out of.”
Last week, former President Trump slammed the Biden administration for leaving so much United States military hardware behind for the Taliban.
“And not, nobody can even comprehend that much equipment. Thousands of vehicles,” Trump said. “It should be bombed. We cannot let them have that equipment.”
“I want every single nail, screw, and bolt,” he said of U.S. equipment in Afghanistan. “I then would have, with the exception of Bagram, which I would have kept, I would have bombed all of the bases, because I don’t want to give those bases to Russia, China, or even the Taliban. I would have bombed every base.”
In the city of Khost on Tuesday, Taliban supporters held fake funerals with coffins covered with the flags of the United States, NATO, and European nations, as stated by Reuters.