Taliban parade in triumph at Kabul airport after US withdrawal from Afghanistan

The Taliban, New Rulers of Afghanistan, were triumphant at the Kabul airport Tuesday, with their special forces agents and their flag, after the withdrawal of the last American soldiers.

The main spokesman for the Taliban, Zabihullah Mujahid, led a group of managers on the slopes. His normally impassive face wore a big smile this time.

The Taliban special forces, called “Badri 313”, in their impeccable camouflage suits, they posed for photos, raising American weapons and waving the white flag of the movement, on which the beginning of the “shahada”(Islamic profession of faith) is written in black.

Kabul’s civilian airport, long considered one of the safest places in the country, was looted. Empty cartridges could be seen on the ground near all entrances.

In the 15 days following the fundamentalists’ seizure of power on August 15, the vicinity of the airfield was occupied by a huge crowd desperately trying to board one of the international community’s evacuation flights.

But many more Afghans were locked outside this area at a series of Taliban checkpoints. On Tuesday, all of these barriers on the road leading to the airport were dismantled except one.

The attitude of the fundamentalists also changed: they now showed their joy by shaking hands with motorists and their passengers.

Destroyed aircraft

Ensuring the security of Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport is a key issue. The Taliban do not stop insisting that they will not accept international military aid.

Inside the compound, there were dozens of planes and helicopters that the United States had given to the Afghan regular army, empty, after American troops destroyed them before leaving.

Some 73 aircraft were “demilitarized”, that is, they were out of service, according to the head of the US Army’s central command, General Kenneth McKenzie. “Those devices will not fly again,” he said. “They cannot be used”.

The glass in their cabins was smashed and their tires blew out.

Some 70 MRAP armored vehicles resistant to antipersonnel mines, at a cost of one million dollars each, and 27 Humvee vehicles were also disabled at the end of the evacuation operation that allowed to remove in two weeks about 123,000 people, mostly Afghan.

The US military also destroyed its C-RAM missile defense system that stopped five rockets fired by the Islamic State group at the airport on Monday.

It takes “a long and complex procedure to dismantle these systems,” explained the general. “So we demilitarized them so they can’t be used again.”