With its quick seizure of power, the Taliban also acquired U.S. military equipment left behind by the withdrawal or abandoned by Afghan forces.
By Alessandro Arduino | 24 August 2021
THE DIPLOMAT — Capturing the enemy’s weapons has been a standard guerrilla tactic for centuries. The American Army could not have succeeded against King George III without seizing the king’s food and armaments. It is one thing to capture weapons and other materiel; it is another to be given the enemy’s gear on a silver platter.
In the images of the Taliban fighters flooding the streets of Kabul, one detail attracts attention: the lack of the ubiquitous Kalashnikov. Few Taliban appearing now carry the signature weapon of insurgent fighters, the AK-47, and its countless variants from the handmade Pakistani versions to the updated Russian AK-19. Most of the Taliban in Kabul’s street seems to prefer American M4 carbines and M16 rifles with their many gadgets attached, from expensive optics to laser sights and flashlights, an uncommon picture in contrast to just a few weeks earlier.
The answer to the question concerning the source of these small arms is straightforward: war looting. Another and more important question needs an answer: The fate of the extensive military materiel that the U.S. left behind during its withdrawal or that which was in the hands of the Afghan forces that melted so quickly away as the Taliban advanced. […]
Taliban left a mountain of cash https://t.co/6bgwGF8Kpv
— Winter Watch (@New_Nationalist) August 28, 2021
Afghanistan: Black Hawks and Humvees – military kit now with the Taliban
By Vikas Pandey and Shadab Nazmi | 29 August 2021
BBC — A video recently posted on social media showed Taliban fighters looking on as an iconic piece of US materiel (military hardware) – a Black Hawk helicopter – was piloted across Kandahar airport.
The four-blade multi-purpose aircraft was just taxiing on the tarmac, but the exercise sent a message to the world: the Taliban were no longer a group of ragtag soldiers wielding Kalashnikov assault rifles on battered pickup trucks.
Elsewhere, since the fall of Kabul on 15 August to the hard-line Islamist group, the Taliban’s fighters have been pictured showing off a host of US-made weaponry and vehicles.
Some of them were seen in complete combat gear in social media posts and couldn’t be distinguished from other special forces from across the world. There was no characteristic long beard, or traditional salwar kameez outfit, and certainly no rusted weapons. They looked the part.
They seized these weapons after troops from the Afghan National Defence and Security Forces (Ands) surrendered one city after the other.
Some on social media said this made the Taliban the only extremist group with an air force. […]
WHAT WILL THE TALIBAN DO WITH THEIR NEW US WEAPONS?
The same thing they did with the equipment they got from the CIA, CHINESE & CARTER:
The CIA’s anticommunist jihad
President Jimmy Carter immediately declared that the (Soviet) invasion jeopardized vital U.S. interests, because the Persian Gulf area was “now threatened by Soviet troops in Afghanistan. But the Carter administration’s public outrage at Russian intervention in Afghanistan was doubly duplicitous. Not only was it used as an excuse for a program of increased military expenditure that had in fact already begun, but the U.S. had in fact been aiding the mujahideen for at least the previous six months, with precisely the hope of provoking a Soviet response. Former CIA director Robert Gates later admitted in his memoirs that aid to the rebels began in June 1979. In a candid 1998 interview, Zbigniew Brezinski, Carter’s national security adviser, confirmed that U.S. aid to the rebels began before the invasion:
According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the mujahideen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan [in] December 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: indeed, it was July 3, 1979, that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention…. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would….
That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap…. The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War.”
The Carter administration was well aware that in backing the mujahideen it was supporting forces with reactionary social goals, but this was outweighed by its own geopolitical interests. In August 1979, a classified State Department report bluntly asserted that “the United States’ larger interest…would be served by the demise of the Taraki-Amin regime, despite whatever setbacks this might mean for future social and economic reforms in Afghanistan.” That same month, in a stunning display of hypocrisy, State Department spokesperson Hodding Carter piously announced that the U.S. “expect[s] the principle of nonintervention to be respected by all parties in the area, including the Soviet Union.”
The Russian invasion in December was the signal for U.S. support to the Afghan rebels to increase dramatically.
Three weeks after Soviet tanks rolled into Kabul, Carter’s secretary of defense, Harold Brown, was in Beijing arranging for a weapons transfer from the Chinese to the ClA-backed Afghani troops mustered in Pakistan. The Chinese, who were generously compensated for the deal, agreed and even consented to send military advisers. Brown worked out a similar arrangement with Egypt to buy $15 million worth of weapons. “The U.S. contacted me,” [then-Egyptian president] Anwar Sadat recalled shortly before his assassination [in 1981]. “They told me, ‘Please open your stores for us so that we can give the Afghans the armaments they need to fight.’ And I gave them the armaments. The transport of arms to the Afghans started from Cairo on U.S. planes.”
By February 1980, the Washington Post reported that the mujahideen was receiving arms coming from the U.S. government.
SOURCE:
Afghanistan, the CIA, bin Laden,
and the Taliban
by Phil Gasper
International Socialist Review, November-December 2001
The idea the Taliban got these weapons as the result of a big “oopsie-daisy” is retarded.
Witness the number of mid-witts who actually believe that idea and lament the future of America.
Wellll! It looks like the Taliban might have read Richard Russell’s (Sky King) handbook, ‘How to Fly in 10 Minutes or Less’ or they are giving some of the people in Kandahar free rides over the city. Looks like a blast!
https://twitter.com/Holbornlolz/status/1432371405727977472
No, no, no Ed; you got this one all wrong! That video is from the new Six Flags amusement park that just opened in Kandahar. Kabul is getting a Dollywood
(Because hey, why the f*ck not? Plus it will attract the Israeli money and fat people from all over the U.S. who love “poppy seed infused” [everything in Amerika is “infused” these days] funnel cake, but can’t fit on the rides.)
and Kandahar got a Six Flags in the “withdrawal settlement”.
Have a good day.
Best,
SC
P.S. Oh yeah the thread question: Why they will invade Pakistan of course, every armchair geopolitical strategist and military gamer knows this one. Did this mirror even need to ask?