Afghanistan crisis: Committee on price control to be established

Taliban fighters stood aboard captured Humvees as they prepared for a parade Wednesday of plundered US military hardware, including possibly a Black Hawk helicopter, in their southern Afghan spiritual heartland. A long line of green vehicles sat in single file on a highway outside Afghanistan's second-biggest city of Kandahar, many with white-and-black Taliban flags attached to aerials, according to an AFP journalist. Fighters manned the controls of the multi-purpose trucks -- used by US, NATO and Afghan forces during Afghanistan's 20 years of war -- while others clambered over the vehicles at Ayno Maina, a town on the outskirts of the city.

In the last call between US President Joe Biden and his Afghanistan counterpart before the Taliban seized control of the country, the leaders discussed military aid, political strategy and messaging tactics, but neither Biden nor Ashraf Ghani appeared aware of or prepared for the immediate danger of the entire country falling to insurgents, a transcript reviewed by Reuters shows. The men spoke for roughly 14 minutes on July 23.

After ending the 20-year US war, President Joe Biden hopes America's economic might can serve as leverage on the Taliban to shape the new Afghanistan. But experts question how much the triumphant Islamists can be swayed. Since their stunningly swift takeover of Afghanistan in August, the Taliban leadership has sought a rebranding from the notorious zealotry of the 1996-2001 regime and voiced hope for a stable relationship with the United States. Likely underlying the Taliban's stance is the harsh reality that they must now run one of the world's poorest countries, where foreign assistance led by the United States accounted for 75 percent of public expenditure in 2019.

The Taliban cheerfully started discharging their weapons in the air across Kabul as the final few American soldiers were about to leave the city’s airport, celebrating the Unites States’ exit as the defeat of a superpower that had spent over $2 trillion fighting a war for 20 years.