Illustrative Image
While leaving Afghanistan, the United States left $85 billion worth of weapons and military equipment that fell into the Taliban’s hands.
The Sunday Times has published an illustrative infographic, showing the new Taliban’s equipment. The group will benefit from more than 22,000 Humvees, 42,000 pick-up trucks and SUVs, 16,000 night visions goggles and devices, 64,000 machine guns, and 358,000 assault rifles.
Click to see full-size image
Thanks to the United States, the Taliban is now equipped no worse than Tajikistan,Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan combined. At the same time, the Taliban fighters have much more combat experience than soldiers of the regular armies of these countries.
For perspective… $85,000,000,000 worth of military being left to Taliban Terrorists means that each and every man, woman, and child in American contributed about $265 to their terrorist cause assuming +/-320 mil citizens.
Well done Democrats! pic.twitter.com/fXefvP5cNH— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) August 29, 2021
The CSTO members lead by Russia are deeply concerned about the level of the Taliban’s Afghanistan militarization. As a result, numerous joint exercises are being held. Most recently, about 300 Russian servicemen and more than 60 pieces of equipment were transferred to Kyrgyzstan for the CSTO maneuvers. At the same time, 500 Russian soldiers are taking part in life-fire exercises of motorized rifle units in Tajikistan.
Large-scale joint exercises with Iran and China are also planned in the coming months.
Despite the disputes in their bilateral agenda, Russia and China, the two major Eurasian states, are united in their desire not to allow any other forces to interrupt their key interests in the Central Asia region.
The new threats will likely become one of the main factors that may dramatically strengthen military cooperation between the two countries, and which may even lead to the creation of a new military-political alliance in the near future.
This is what the Washington establishment is concerned about today.
Russia and China have been moving step by step towards creating a military alliance, at least of a defensive nature. If earlier the parties could assume a political union, now the whole dynamics of international relations, especially the events in 2020-2021 in Belarus and Afghanistan, pushed Beijing and Moscow to accelerate the processes that could lead to the creation of a new military-political alliance.
