Hundreds of M117 armored security vehicles from the United States drove slowly up and down the main Kabul route, with MI-17 helicopters flying above. Many troops were armed with M4 assault rifles from the United States.
Show of Strength and Power
In a recently published article in MSN News, on Sunday, Taliban fighters held a military parade in Kabul, displaying seized American-made armored vehicles and Russian helicopters as part of their gradual transition from insurgents to genuine standing armies.
The Taliban have been rebelling against combatants for two decades, but they have overhauled their troops using the massive stockpile of weaponry and equipment left behind after the old Western-backed government fell in August after Biden announced the full withdrawal of US troops in Afghanistan.
The majority of the weaponry and equipment used by Taliban troops are those given by the United States to the American-backed government in Kabul in order to build an Afghan national army capable of battling the Taliban, according to a published report in Press TV.
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New Reforms in Former Afghan Army
The parade was held in conjunction with the graduation of 250 newly trained troops, according to Enayatullah Khwarazmi, a spokesperson for the defense ministry. It should be noted that when Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country, the Afghan troops disintegrated, allowing the Taliban to seize control of important military assets.
Taliban leaders have said that former Afghan National Army pilots, mechanics, and other professionals would be incorporated into a new army, which has also begun wearing conventional military uniforms rather than the traditional Afghan clothes used by their troops, according to a published report in Financial Express.
Some of the planes were flown into neighboring Central Asian countries by retreating Afghan soldiers while others were passed down to the Taliban. It's uncertain how many are currently operating. Before flying out of Kabul's Hamid Karzai International Airport after a chaotic evacuation operation, US forces damaged more than 70 planes, dozens of armored vehicles, and deactivated air defenses.
Afghans Experience New Brutal Chapter as Tensions Escalate Between ISIS-K and Taliban
In October, two suicide attacks by ISIS-K at mosques killed more than 90 people and wounded hundreds more, raising worries that the Taliban will enable the Islamic State's campaign against Afghan Shiites to continue unabated. This questioned the capacity of the Taliban to handle the war-torn country against the ISIS-K.
Officials in neighboring Iran, a Shiite Muslim theocracy and self-proclaimed defender of Shiite Muslims around the world, have expressed concern over the fate of Afghan Shiites under Taliban rule, as well as the threat of resurgent ISIS-K launching attacks on Iranian soil, as a result of the attacks, as per The New York Times reports.
Furthermore, ISIS-K's first strike in Kandahar was the Taliban's traditional bastion which stunned the Shiite population. The week after the strike was a whirl of funerals and sadness for many. Every day, mourners flocked into a cemetery for bombing victims in one Shiite area, muttering prayers at the row of new graves.
