What 'return' gift did the Taliban get from the US after returning from Afghanistan?

- Eyesight-Hershal Pushkarna

- Twenty years of Afghanistan's political grandfather America's vast arsenal now in Taliban hands

The Taliban today received an unsolicited gift of a wide range of weapons that the United States has unleashed in Afghanistan during the 20-year-long struggle to bring the Taliban to its knees.

Like a river, time flows in the same (forward) direction. Reverse motion has no scope, so it is not at least theoretically possible for an event to repeat exactly what happened in the past. Even so, owning one is still beyond the reach of the average person. The flow suddenly changes its course as if to take a U-turn while maintaining the forward motion of the flow — and the conditions created there make us feel as if we are repeating the past. Something similar has happened in Afghanistan. With the passage of time there has been a dramatic change in the course of twenty years. The hot sun of Taliban power began to set here in September 2001 and now it is rising again at noon in September 2021. The flow of time is flowing back to the same bank of history from where it passed two decades ago.

This time, however, the circumstances are different. This means that today's Taliban is stronger than it was in 2001. Cultivated in terms of armament. A variety of US-Russian-made weapons have come into its own. Rather, it should be said that the bumper jackpot of weapons is in his hands. These weapons are all the ones that the US itself brought to Afghanistan years ago to control the Taliban. Now the same weapons are in the hands of the Taliban superpowers. If we talk about pre-relationship:

3

On September 11, 2001, Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization crashed into a building adjacent to the World Trade Center in the United States. To respond to this unforgivable arrogance, the US launched a military operation called 'Operation Endow Ring Freedom' and landed an armed force in Afghanistan. Starting with 1,000 troops, the figure rose to tens of thousands in a year.

With sophisticated and highly lethal weapons, the United States cracked down on the Taliban to such an extent that by 2005 the organization had disintegrated. With the establishment of a stable government of President Hamid Karzai in the capital Kabul, it seems the Taliban will never raise its head again. But that assumption was misleading. In 2003, the United States sent troops stationed in Afghanistan to Iraq to oust Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, prompting the Taliban to strike. He launched a bloody war against the US military, so the US could not survive without more troops and armaments in Afghanistan. E.g. A total of 20,000 troops were deployed in Afghanistan in mid-2009. Two years later the figure reached 5,000. The following year, it surpassed 3,000, and by early 2010, there were 109,000 US troops on duty in Afghanistan.

The United States has struggled for twenty years to bring al Qaeda as well as the Taliban to its knees. During this period he stockpiled countless weapons in Afghanistan. The exact amount of weapons that came in and how many weapons were left behind after leaving Afghanistan in 2021 is a book of accounts, as it were, between two cartons of US Defense Department intelligence files. The result has not come to light. But the draft of the account is something like this:

Automatic rifles: In the period from 2009 to 2013, the United States found all the M16 and M4 models with 4,56,560 rifles, 1,6,85 pistols, 4,000 machine guns and about 17,800 shotguns. In 2014, another 40,000 M16 rifles and 4,54 M4 rifles were imported from the United States. Both of these weapons are extremely selective.

A bullet fired from a 15-inch-long barrel of an American M4 rifle at a speed of 5,000 feet per second is enough to hit a human target five hundred meters away. In the last 30 years, the United States has built a total of 500,000 M4 rifles, thousands of which have fallen into the hands of the Taliban today. (An Advat: The arsenal of the commandos of our dry forces, the Special Forces, includes the M4 rifles.) The weapon, which has a 20-inch-long funnel, pierces targets up to 200 meters away. Given that it has 3 million nuggets to date, is there anything to ask about its efficiency? The Taliban have also found thousands of M16-type rifles among the weapons that the United States unleashed during its departure from Afghanistan.

As far as cartridges are concerned, in the last two years (2020-21) the US has delivered an estimated 1,200,000 rounds of ammunition for M16 and M4 models to Afghanistan. Given this huge figure, it is not possible to predict the extent to which the cartridges have been rocked in previous years.

Grenades and grenade launchers: During 'Operation Enduring Freedom', the US used hand grenades and rocket propelled grenade launchers against the Taliban. The number of grenade launchers, which could be fired from hundreds of feet away from the target, was 35, 4. Since half of this supply he gave to the Afghan army, it now belongs to the Taliban. According to a report, an unexpected lottery of about 40,000 US-made hand grenades has also hit the Taliban.

Armored Vehicles: When it is raining bullets, grenades and mortar shells from the enemy on the battlefield, it becomes impossible to move forward for resistance. At such times, specially made armored vehicles with thick iron shields become inevitable. Not only can armed soldiers sit in it and advance towards the enemy, but they can also fire bullets from a small crevice formed in the vehicle. In its crackdown on the Taliban, the United States deployed about 30,000 armored vehicles between 2004 and 2014. In 2015, another 2,018 such vehicles were wrecked at various locations in Afghanistan. Naturally, the US military could not bring all the vehicles home with it when it withdrew from Afghanistan.

Aircraft / Helicopters: During the twenty years of military operations in Afghanistan, the United States has used a number of transport ('Shinook') as well as combat ('Black Hawk' ') helicopters and aircraft, of which 16 have been donated to the Afghan Air Force. Today, the Taliban are all in control. In 2014, India gifted eight Russian-made Mi-24 attack helicopters to Afghanistan to ensure a stable government in Afghanistan and control the Taliban. Now it too has fallen into the hands of the Taliban.

This is a very serious matter, as the Mi-24 is a very stingy helicopter. The helicopter has to be called a flying arsenal, given the arsenal that can be loaded under the wings as well. The firing of a four-barrel Gatling cannon, fitted to the part of a peacock, causes the sphere to automatically expand into a larger circle due to the rotation of the sphincter during firing. (Imagine a garden fountain). Each barrel of the cannon emits 12.5 millimeter spheres of 20 grams, like a large bullet, which travels through the barrel at a speed of 2,000 kilometers per hour. The Mi-24 has a stock of 1,20 such artillery pieces. Also true are the anti-tank missiles, which are capable of blowing up targets at a distance of three and a half kilometers.

Bhasmalsur bomb: The US has developed a special GBU series of bombs to destroy Taliban hiding in natural caves in the mountains of Afghanistan. The bomb, which was released from the plane, is laser-guided. The pilot of the plane travels following a trained laser beam, for which a laser detector sensor is fitted in the hollow of the bomb. The mora of the bomb has been covered with transparent glass so that these machines can 'read' the laser beam accurately. There are two ways to direct a bomb that can smash a hard target with a blast of about 115 kilograms:

(1) The pilot of the aircraft scratches the target with a laser before releasing the bomb. The bomb's laser guidance system becomes operational at the same time, recording the location of the target and dropping it in that direction.

(2) A military officer stationed on the ground pin-points the target with Glow Ball Positioning System / GPS. With the help of Google Maps, just as our vehicle reaches its destination, the GBU bomb also reaches the right address according to the latitude-longitude statistics.

Regardless of the method of guidance, a GBU bomb released from an airplane or helicopter is never missed. Explosive high-explosive explosives produce such shock waves that any strong structure standing within a radius of about 30 feet cannot withstand the impact of an explosion. The GBU bomb also destroys a 5 feet thick wall of cement-concrete with its highly explosive ammunition.

3

Knowing all this, the question arises as to whether the uneducated Taliban in the Pathani suit are capable of handling sophisticated aircraft-helicopters and narrow bombs like the GBU. Not at the present stage. But in terms of management training, he has sent military experts from Arab countries to Afghanistan. Retired Arab technicians who have served in the country's air force, as well as pilots, have been detained at exorbitant prices. The team is in charge of repairing and operating the aircraft-helicopters.

Today, Taliban soldiers dressed in US military uniforms, carrying US M16 and M4 rifles, are seen roaming the streets of Afghanistan in US armored vehicles. All this stuff was brought here years ago with the intention of controlling them. Today, through him, he himself has gained political control over Afghanistan. What an unpredictable time it is sometimes!