Determined to “stay the course of Islamic law,” the Taliban celebrated the third anniversary of their recapture of Afghanistan on Wednesday with a military parade at a former U.S. base and festivities and horn-honking concerts in Kabul.
The military parade took place for more than an hour at the former Bagram base – which was the nerve centre of operations against the Taliban insurgency – around fifty kilometres from Kabul, in the presence of senior Taliban officials.
A ballet of helicopters and fighter jets flew over the procession of dozens of Soviet military vehicles or those recovered by the Taliban from American forces and the Afghan army during their lightning victory three years ago.
A long line of Soviet BM-21 Grad multiple rocket launchers, ZIL-135 trucks and troop carriers paraded past the flower-filled stands where, among hundreds of guests, there were a few Chinese and Iranian diplomats.
The parade was joined by mobile heavy artillery and Soviet T-54 tanks or American tanks.
The Taliban also paraded turbaned motorcyclists carrying the iconic yellow jerrycans with which they have carried out so many deadly bomb attacks during their long insurgency.
In a message read to the audience, Afghan Prime Minister Mohammad Hassan Akhund vowed to “stay the course of Islamic law.”
Our leaders “must be mindful that our duties did not end with jihad [la guerre sainte]we now have the responsibility to maintain the course of Islamic law,” he said.
On August 15, 2021, the Taliban entered Kabul without resistance, leading to the flight of the government and the collapse of the US-led Western coalition that had ousted them from power 20 years earlier.
This anniversary is celebrated one day early, according to the Afghan calendar.
Horn Concerts
The celebrations then moved to Kabul, to the Ghazi stadium, where hundreds of men wearing caps and white T-shirts demonstrated combat sports and cycling.
“Independence brings joy to the people,” Khalid Hotak, 30, a practitioner of wushu, a martial art, told AFP. “Security is there. That’s freedom.”
But no women took part in the festivities. The Taliban have increased their liberticidal measures against women in three years, severely restricting their access to the world of work and education.
“Three years have passed since the girls’ dreams were buried,” said Madina, a 20-year-old Afghan woman who had to drop out of university.
But in Kabul, whose avenues and roundabouts were decked out with thousands of large black and white flags of the Islamic Emirate, crowds of men celebrated the anniversary with jubilation.
The area around the US embassy was congested with traffic, as pickup trucks loaded with Taliban and flags tried to force their way through, honking horns.
Some rode up to four on a motorbike, the Emirate flag flying. Pick-up trucks were full of young boys with their armed Taliban fathers. Some children wore headbands with the message: “Sharia or martyrdom.”
Thousands of Afghans had been invited to the capital from half a dozen central provinces for this “Victory Day”, declared a public holiday.
But on social media, many questioned the spontaneity of the celebration. Some Internet users claimed that entire schools had been forced to participate in the festivities.
“This is not Afghanistan’s Victory Day, but a black day,” an NGO worker told AFP via WhatsApp.
“These last three years have been some of the worst. People are hungry, young people have no work […] They want to leave the country.”
Headband and Kalashnikov
Many members of the security forces were crisscrossing the capital hanging from pick-up trucks, headbands around their foreheads and Kalashnikovs or other automatic rifles in their hands.
Security forces have been mobilised en masse, with the main risk appearing to be a new attack by the jihadist group Islamic State, after the one that left one dead in a Shiite district of Kabul last Sunday.
After three years of Taliban rule, while Afghanistan is now generally secure, it is struggling with anaemic growth, massive unemployment and a severe humanitarian crisis.
The Taliban government is still not recognized by any country.
But Kabul has made diplomatic gains by building ties with neighboring countries as well as China and Russia, and opened a dialogue with the West by participating in the Doha talks for the first time in June.