In Kabul, the Taliban hold a military parade with weaponry produced in the United States as a show of Strength.

KABUL (Reuters) – On Sunday, Taliban fighters performed a military parade in Kabul, displaying captured American-made armoured vehicles and Russian helicopters as part of their gradual transition from insurgents to genuine standing armies.

The Taliban have been rebel combatants for two decades, but they have overhauled their troops using the massive stockpile of weaponry and equipment left behind after the old Western-backed government collapsed in August.

The parade was held in conjunction with the graduation of 250 newly trained troops, according to Enayatullah Khwarazmi, a spokesman for the defence ministry.

Hundreds of M117 armoured security vehicles from the United States drove slowly up and down a main Kabul route, with MI-17 helicopters flying overhead. Many soldiers were armed with M4 assault rifles produced in the United States.

The majority of the weaponry and equipment used by Taliban troops are those given by the United States to the American-backed government in Kabul in order to build an Afghan national force capable of battling the Taliban.

With Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s departure from Afghanistan, those troops disintegrated, allowing the Taliban to seize control of important military assets.

Taliban officials have stated that former Afghan National Army pilots, mechanics, and other professionals will be incorporated into a new army, which has also begun wearing conventional military uniforms rather than the traditional Afghan clothes used by their troops.

From 2002 to 2017, the US government transferred to the Afghan government more than $28 billion worth of defence articles and services, including weapons, ammunition, vehicles, night-vision devices, aircraft, and surveillance systems, according to a report released late last year by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (Sigar).

Some of the planes were flown into neighbouring Central Asian countries by retreating Afghan soldiers, but others were passed down to the Taliban. It’s uncertain how many are currently operating.

Before flying out of Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport after a chaotic evacuation operation, US forces damaged more than 70 planes, dozens of armoured vehicles, and deactivated air defences.