The Taliban authorities say US weapons and military equipment left behind in Afghanistan after the collapse of the former government will not be returned to the United States. Abdul Qahar Balkhi, spokesman for the Taliban-run Foreign Ministry, told CBS that the equipment now belongs to Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
Balkhi made the remarks in response to a request from US President Donald Trump. Trump has repeatedly criticised the manner of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan under Joe Biden and called for the return of billions of dollars worth of military equipment left in the country.<\/p>\n
According to the Taliban Foreign Ministry spokesman, the administration does not trade in what he described as \u201cstate assets.\u201d In response to the argument that the equipment was paid for with US taxpayers\u2019 money, he said Americans \u201ckilled many people\u201d in Afghanistan and destroyed much of the country.<\/p>\n
CBS reported from Kabul that five years after the withdrawal of US forces, Taliban fighters are still using armoured vehicles, weapons and military equipment that had previously been provided to the security forces of Afghanistan\u2019s former government. The report added that some of this equipment has also been displayed at military ceremonies in recent years.<\/p>\n
According to figures released by the Pentagon, after the collapse of the former government\u2019s security forces in 1400, weapons and military equipment worth $7 billion fell into Taliban hands. The latest CBS report was published ahead of the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, after which the US war in Afghanistan began and lasted for nearly two decades.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Taliban says it will not return US weapons left in Afghanistan, rejecting Donald Trump’s demand for the equipment’s handover.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21367,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21368\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}