Taliban Celebrates End of War in Kandahar

Yesterday the Taliban held a victory parade in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar. In videos posted to social media, members of the Taliban paraded hardware left behind by both Afghan and U.S. forces after the withdrawal of the last remaining American troops in Afghanistan. The Taliban also organized an air display with a seized Black Hawk helicopter flying past the celebration trailing a white Taliban flag. Taliban fighters were also seen walking through an abandoned aircraft hangar holding U.S. made weapons and posing for pictures in cockpits of planes that had belonged to the Afghan Air Force.

Earlier this week, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said the U.S. military had made “unusable all the gear that is at the airport — all the aircraft, all the ground vehicles,” and only left some fire trucks and forklifts operational. Efforts to reopen the Kabul airport also resumed yesterday after a team of Qatari technical experts arrived in the city. According to a source, the team traveled to Kabul on a Qatari jet at the request of the Taliban and ‘talks were ongoing at the level of security and operation’.