Greg Norman
Fox NewsThu, 02 Sep 2021 00:00 UTC
© AFP Getty ImagesTaliban member inspects a damaged helicopter at Kabul airport.
Taliban fighters are feeling angry and betrayed Wednesday after discovering that Afghan National Army helicopters abandoned at Kabul's airport have been rendered inoperable by departing U.S. troops, according to a report. A U.S. Department of Defense spokesperson told Fox News on Wednesday:
"We disabled/demilitarized that equipment at Hamid Karzai International Airport prior to our departure."
An Al Jazeera reporter who toured a hangar on the military side of the airport
said in a video that the terrorist group
"expected the Americans to leave helicopters like this in one piece for their use. When I said to them, 'why do you think that the Americans would have left everything operational for you'? They said because we believe it is a national asset and we are the government now and this could have come to great use for us."
Meanwhile, the Taliban are hoping to get the commercial side of the airport reopened for flights in the coming days, Al Jazeera reports.
The flight carrying the last American soldier departed Afghanistan on Monday afternoon, marking an end to a nearly 20-year U.S. military presence inside the country.
"There's a lot of heartbreak associated with this departure," CENTCOM Commander Gen. Kenneth McKenzie
said of the closing down of evacuation operations. He acknowledged, "We did not get everybody out that we wanted to get out."
In addition to the people left behind in Kabul, McKenzie said the
U.S. also left behind equipment such as the C-RAM (counter-artillery, artillery and mortar) system that was used to shoot down rockets, as well as dozens of armored Humvees and some aircraft.The general added that the equipment had been disabled and in the end none of it was mission capable.
Comment: Well,
that decision is being raked over the coals by more practical-minded (and outspoken) individuals:
On Tuesday, Donald Trump said Washington should demand that the Taliban return each and every piece of American military hardware or crack down on the militant group.
Former US President Donald Trump has shared a video of the Taliban holding a military parade in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar to celebrate the end of the American troop exit from the nation.
The short clip, published on Trump's Telegram page on Thursday, showed what looked like US-made armoured vehicles, part of the American military hardware that was captured by the Taliban following its takeover of Afghanistan on 15 August.
The ex-POTUS wrote in Thursday's post:
"There is nothing disabled about the equipment that the United States gave to the Taliban. Just more made up lies!"
He was apparently referring to Monday's statement by General Kenneth F. McKenzie, the head of US Central Command, who said that American troops disabled armoured vehicles, aircraft, and weapons systems that they abandoned at the Kabul Airport before the remaining American servicemen boarded the last flights out of Afghanistan.
"We demilitarised those systems so that they'll never be used again. We felt it more important to protect our forces than to bring those systems back. [...] They'll never be able to be operated by anyone again."
Chief Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, for his part, said the only US equipment left operable at the airport was
"a couple of fire trucks and forklifts so that the airport itself can remain more operational going forward. [The Taliban] can inspect all they want. They can look at them, they can walk around, but they can't fly them. They can't operate them. We made sure to demilitarise, to make unusable, all the gear that is at the airport — all the aircraft, all the ground vehicles."
The claims came after Trump called on Washington to press Taliban fighters to immediately return the $85 billion worth of US military equipment the militant group seized after they came to power in Afghanistan on 15 August.
"If it is not handed back, we should either go in with unequivocal military force and get it, or at least bomb the hell out of it."
Shortly after the fall of Kabul, several videos were shared on social media appearing to show what looked like Taliban fighters posing next to UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters and apparently taking a joyride in one.
Do they not work? Or, was disablement a faux caveat created to head off political and public outrage, provide lucrative replacement contracts for the MIC and cover Joe Biden's a**? (Meanwhile, the Taliban thumb their nose and turn to China.)
Comment: Well, that decision is being raked over the coals by more practical-minded (and outspoken) individuals: Do they not work? Or, was disablement a faux caveat created to head off political and public outrage, provide lucrative replacement contracts for the MIC and cover Joe Biden's a**? (Meanwhile, the Taliban thumb their nose and turn to China.)