As it marked five years since seizing power in Afghanistan, the Taliban opted not to parade captured American military hardware at Bagram air base. Arpan Rai reports
The Taliban decided not to parade captured American military hardware on 15 August this year so as not to annoy US president Donald Trump, according to experts monitoring the subdued anniversary celebrations in Kabul.
Previous propaganda displays to mark what the Taliban call “Victory Day” – when hardline militants seized control of the country on 15 August 2021 – have included a show of force involving captured American tanks and Humvees at the former US-run Bagram air base north of the capital.
The historic Soviet-built airstrip was the main base for American forces following the invasion after 9/11. The size of a small city, its capture by the Taliban shortly after it was vacated by the US was a hugely symbolic moment during the withdrawal of Nato forces.
The largest grand parade held by the Taliban at Bagram was in 2024. It hosted an audience of nearly 10,000 men, including the Taliban’s acting defence minister Mullah Yaqoob and acting interior minister Sirajuddin Haqqani. It also invited senior diplomats from China and Russia, who were seen in attendance as American Humvees and M4 tanks rolled out on the tarmac.
The Taliban executed the grand parade on the two runways and over 100 parking spots for fighter jets – known as revetments for the blast walls which protect each aircraft. One of the runways, built in 2006, measures more than 12,000ft long. The air base also boasts a passenger lounge, a 50-bed hospital and hangar-sized tents filled with furniture.
Leaders of the regime made speeches aimed at an international audience, urging the diaspora to return and for the West to interact and cooperate with the country’s rulers.
In February this year, Mr Trump said it “makes him angry” to see the Taliban displaying American vehicles and equipment and “run them up on a little street”.
"We left a lot of it, although a lot of it, but very small, relatively, in Afghanistan. The Taliban has it. You know, they have their parade every year where they take our military vehicles and run them up some little street, and like it's their form of a military parade, and it makes me angry when I see that. Angry. When I see that, I get angry," the US president said.
David S Sedney, a senior commentator on US-Afghanistan ties, tellsThe Independent: “They didn't have that Bagram parade or celebration this year, and I think it's a reasonable analysis to say that was not necessarily a signal to Trump, but it was an effort not to make Trump more angry.”
"It wasn't a signal of reaching out. It was just a decision: 'We don't want to make Trump even more angry' because they've seen Trump... can act very illogically, and so they don't want to anger him. They didn't want to tick him off, but they still had to have a parade,” Mr Sedney, who served as the former deputy assistant secretary of defence for Afghanistan in the first cabinet of the Obama administration, said.
Hundreds of American Humvees have been left to rust in scrapyards across Afghanistan, five years after the US abandoned the trucks – so emblematic of its military campaign in the country – to the new Taliban regime. Satellite images from former Nato and US bases in several Afghan provinces show the US-made vehicles dismantled and hollowed out, with their parts haphazardly strewn around open-air garages and compounds.
The US forces tried to dismantle or destroy much of their machinery, from aircraft to computer systems, in the last weeks of their chaotic pull-out from Afghanistan after 20 years of war. But much still fell to the Taliban in August 2021 when the US-trained Afghan military crumbled and surrendered to the Islamist militants, according to US defence officials.
A senior spokesperson for the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate, Abdul Qahar Balkhi, said the weapons and military equipment left behind in Afghanistan belonged to the group and will remain under their control, with no chance of it being returned to the US.
In September last year, Mr Trump said he was negotiating with the Taliban to retake control of the Bagram airbase in Afghanistan.
“We want that base back,” he said, calling it one of the biggest airbases in the world. “One of the reasons we want the [Bagram] base back is because it is an hour away from where China makes its nuclear weapons. So a lot of things are happening,” he said.
Zabiullah Mujahid, the Taliban’s spokesperson, had dismissed these remarks from Mr Trump as “emotional” and said US officials should “refrain” from making “statements based on unsubstantiated information”.
Though there was no parade at Bagram this year, the US’s former presence in Afghanistan still featured in a rather more muted celebration, as Taliban fighters drove armoured vehicles past the former US embassy building in Kabul, displaying flags and banners declaring victory over American forces. Convoys of vehicles wound their way through the city, causing traffic jams.
"This is the street in front of the American embassy. It was heavily fortified with a massive security presence,” said Mr Sedney. “The Taliban have removed that and it is back the way it was 20 years ago. You can drive up and down it, and they had a parade, and they had several thousands of people lining the sides of that road, and the parade was of [the Taliban’s] ministry of interior vehicles and troops.”
The parade was led by Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Taliban’s interim interior minister who leads a powerful faction within the Taliban and is reported to be at odds with the ageing supreme leader Akhundzada in Kandahar.
“Sirajuddin Haqqani had a pretty nice little parade in a very symbolic area because it was right in front of the US embassy. That's actually much more insulting to the US than Bagram. They chose to do it. It was very clear,” Mr Sedney said.
A video shared by the Taliban’s interior ministry of the celebrations from inside the US embassy were similar to the 2021 celebrations when the Taliban fighters entered the presidential palace.
“They showed empty desks and places I've been to... So they were showing 'we have control of your embassy,' and then outside they were doing a victory parade saying 'we beat you'," he said.
Asif Durrani, the former Pakistan ambassador to Iran, says the Taliban cannot help but hark back to their defeat of the American enemy, even at a time when they are courting greater acceptance from the international community and normalised relations with the US.
“The Taliban lack the art of governance; therefore, whatever they did [as de facto authorities of Kabul] did not impact them domestically or abroad. Unfortunately, Afghan history is replete with such idiosyncratic practices where the ‘victor or vanquished’ psyche ruled the roost. That psyche still prevails,” Pakistan’s senior diplomat and former special representative to Afghanistan told The Independent, on the celebrations in Kabul.
Ultimately, it is a testament to Afghanistan’s pariah status that however it chooses to mark its victory will have little impact on either its neighbours or the US, Mr Durrani says. “What kind of victory parade is that, for an entity facing global isolation?”
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