The Taliban are now brazenly showing off the US military equipment — including Black Hawk helicopters, dozens of armored vehicles and weapons — abandoned by US troops amid President Biden’s chaotic final exit from Afghanistan.
Islamist fighters staged victory parades Wednesday in Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second-biggest city, as they showed off the US military hardware they’ve seized.
Videos showed heavily armed Taliban fighters standing on top of a long line of captured Humvees and other tactical vehicles as they drive along a highway.
In embarrassing scenes for the US, a Black Hawk helicopter even flies circles overhead.
Many Taliban militants could also be seen cradling American M16 rifles and other weapons used by US, NATO and Afghan forces during the 20-year war.
The value of the weapons and equipment abandoned by the US was not immediately known, but it is likely to be in the tens of millions of dollars and potentially arms an enemy combatant.
It also isn’t clear exactly how much military inventory the Taliban have in their possession.
The Afghan air force was operating 167 aircraft, including helicopters and planes, at the end of June, according to the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), a US government watchdog.
Prior to Kabul falling, Uzbekistan revealed Afghan soldiers had fled to the neighboring country with 22 military planes and 24 helicopters.
It is not known how many other Afghan planes or helicopters, if any, were flown out amid the chaotic evacuations — but it leaves 121 aircraft potentially in the hands of Taliban fighters.
Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, head of US Central Command, on Monday rattled off a list of equipment the US left at Kabul’s airport when the final troops flew out.
It included a C-RAM rocket defensive system, about 70 vehicles designed to protect against blasts and at least 27 Humvees.
The US insists the military equipment it abandoned was deactivated prior to fleeing Kabul.
But the Taliban have also seized the hardware Afghan security forces were using — which was funded by the US during the decades-long war.
Biden, who has been savaged by critics over his handling of the deadly withdrawal, remained defiant Tuesday during an address to the nation.
“This is the right decision. A wise decision. And the best decision for America,” he said.
Despite 13 US service members and more than 170 Afghans dying last week in an ISIS attack outside Kabul airport, Biden hailed the operation as an “extraordinary success.”
“No nation has ever done anything like it in all of history; only the United States had the capacity and the will and ability to do it,” Biden said.
Earlier Tuesday, former President Donald Trump slammed the current administration for leaving weapons and military equipment in the hands of the Taliban.
Trump argued that “every screw, every nail” should have been taken.
“To leave that equipment, billions and billions of equipment, behind is insane,” he told Fox Business. “It’s inconceivable — that equipment is going to be coming at us for many years.
“It should be bombed. We cannot let them have that equipment.”
