The Taliban paraded billions of dollars worth of American military hardware around the streets of Afghanistan on Wednesday near the U.S.’s former airbase inside the country.
The Islamic extremist group, which is not recognized by any country as being the legitimate government of Afghanistan, touted U.S. military vehicles, helicopters, and weapons at the parade at Bagram air base.
The Department of Defense Inspector General said in a report a year after Afghanistan’s fall that the Biden-Harris Administration left behind “U.S.-funded equipment valued at $7.12 billion”, which fell into the Taliban’s hands, including “military aircraft, ground vehicles, weapons, and other military equipment.”
The hardware left behind included nearly a billion dollars worth of aircraft, over 40,000 military vehicles, more than 300,000 weapons, and tens of millions of dollars worth of ammunition.
Also left behind were nearly all communications equipment that the U.S. gave to Afghan forces and nearly all other advanced military electronics, including night vision and surveillance equipment.
The Biden-Harris Administration’s August 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan was chaotic and projected American weakness around the world. Many say that this moment of weakness played a factor in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to start a war by invading Ukraine just six months later.
Check out the military vehicles and helicopters left behind by the U.S. for the Taliban three years ago—now parading through the streets of Afghanistan… pic.twitter.com/viK2bw0CbI
— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) August 14, 2024
During the withdrawal, 13 service members were killed in a terrorist attack during evacuations at an airport in Afghanistan’s capital city of Kabul. When the soldiers were flown home, Biden was caught checking the time on his watch as their bodies were unloaded.
Since the U.S.’s withdrawal from the country, Islamic terrorist groups have reconstituted inside Afghanistan and have started growing at a rate that has alarmed many U.S. officials.