Taliban celebrates third year in power with parade showing captured US equipment.

 

Taliban fighters at the parade on a captured US vehicle. Fox News/AP.

The Taliban has celebrated their third year in power with a parade showing captured US equipment. Fox News. The parade happened at Bagram Airfield, which was a major base for the US during the 20 year war with the Taliban. The parade showed captured US vehicles, weapons and even helicopters. The Taliban has not been recognized as a legitimate government but they are attempting to reach out to other countries including the United States for diplomatic relations. The parade probably was made to shore up domestic stability, though it may also be a message towards the United States. 

My Comment:

It's amazing that we essentially don't talk about how the Taliban took over the entirely of the Afghanistan and led America to an embarrassing defeat. The failure is laid at the feet of Joe Biden and his Vice President Kamala Harris and that failure is a huge deal. But nobody talks about it anymore, even when the Democrats were trying to push out Joe Biden for being senile. 

Why did Afghanistan fail? Much of it has to deal with the incompetence of the Afghan government itself. But I put a lot of blame on Joe Biden as well. Donald Trump had negotiated a deal to leave Afghanistan but Biden broke the deal and that encouraged Afghanistan to attack earlier than we were prepared for. Had Biden simply kept to the schedule the Taliban probably would have won eventually but I doubt they would have been able to capture all of this equipment. 

These weapons were left behind during the evacuation of the country. The US government focused on evacuating people instead of weapons and that was probably the right thing to do, despite the failures in that area as well. But doing so left the Taliban all the weapons and vehicles they need to keep control of the country. 

This isn't entirely a bad thing. Though the weapons being in the Taliban hands has made resistance to their rule more difficult, it also means they are a formidable threat to ISIS in Afghanistan. ISIS-K is the largest and most dangerous remaining faction of the terror group and has been responsible to some of the larger more recent terror attacks, including the massive one in Moscow. Hopefully the Taliban uses these weapons to fight ISIS. 

The Taliban is sending mixed messages here. They are trying to get better relations with other countries including the United States, but it's hard not to see this parade as a pretty explicit middle finger to the United States. I doubt the Biden administration is happy to see voters reminded of one of their most massive and embarrassing diplomatic failures. Perhaps the Taliban know that Kamala Harris is going to lose and want to curry favor with Donald Trump? 

Regardless, it's important to not read too much into a single parade. This was mostly for domestic use as it shows the Taliban as being powerful and in charge. All those weapons and vehicles will deter any uprising and shows that the Taliban is still fully in charge of Afghanistan.