Taliban hold military parade displaying US-made weapons in Kabul

The Taliban forces, on Sunday, held a military parade in Kabul, displaying captured American-made armoured vehicles and Russian helicopters as part of their ongoing transition from insurgents to regular standing armies. 

The Taliban have been insurgent fighters for two decades, but they have overhauled their forces using the large stockpile of weapons and equipment left behind when the former Western-backed government collapsed in August.

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The parade was held in conjunction with the graduation of 250 newly trained soldiers, according to Enayatullah Khwarazmi, a spokesman for the defence ministry. 

Dozens of M117 armoured security vehicles from the United States drove slowly up and down a major Kabul road, with MI-17 helicopters patrolling overhead. Many soldiers were armed with M4 assault rifles made in the United States. 

The majority of the weapons and equipment used by Taliban forces are those supplied by the United States to the American-backed government in Kabul in order to build an Afghan national force strong enough to fight the Taliban.

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With Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s departure from Afghanistan, those forces disintegrated, allowing the Taliban to seize control of major military assets. 

Taliban officials have stated that former Afghan National Army pilots, mechanics, and other specialists will be integrated into a new force, which has also begun wearing conventional military uniforms rather than the traditional Afghan attire typically worn by their soldiers. From 2002 to 2017, the US government transferred to the Afghan government more than $28 billion worth of defence articles and services, such as weapons, ammo, vehicles, night-vision gadgets, aircraft, and tracking systems, according to a report released late last year by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (Sigar). 

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Some of the planes were flown into neighbouring Central Asian countries by fleeing Afghan forces, but others were passed down to the Taliban. It’s uncertain how many are currently operational.