By Maya Carlin
A skirmish along the Iranian-Afghanistan border broke out last weekend, resulting in a gun fight that killed three people.
Video footage depicting the debacle circulated widely on social media, which covered the aftermath of a dispute about water. In the footage, Taliban fighters in the Nimroz province of Afghanistan used American-made armored Humvees and a Navistar 7000 transport truck on the border.
The Taliban fighters appear to be operating an M240 machine gun, AK rifles and RPG-7 Launcher with PG-7V rocket from inside the vehicle. According to Al-Jazeera, Tehran claimed that the three killed were Iranian while the Taliban purported that one of the deaths was from its side.
Hostility fueled by water issues
The Helmand River flows from Afghanistan into Iran, making water security a major point of contention between the two countries. Earlier this month, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi urged the Taliban not to restrict the flow of water from this river, since drought impacts both countries.
While Afghanistan’s Acting Foreign Minister claimed that the Taliban was committed to following the 1973 water treaty between the two countries, the militant group also noted that the drought in the country “should not be overlooked.” Although water security has remained an issue for both nations for decades, the recent uptick in hostilities could indicate future conflict.
Taliban Uses Soviet and American weaponry
Much of the military equipment the Taliban utilizes today was captured from the Soviet Union in the 1980’s or repossessed from the U.S. withdrawal in Afghanistan in 2021. The Biden administration’s hasty and chaotic troop withdrawal from Afghanistan was riddled with issues.
Most significantly, 13 U.S. service members lost their lives in a suicide bombing that erupted as thousands of civilians were attempted to flee the country prior to the Taliban’s full takeover. The militant group follows a strict and narrow interpretation of Sharia law, which the Taliban uses as justification for carrying out crimes against humanity and rampant discrimination.
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Another staggering consequence of America’s hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan was the sheer amount of weaponry left behind. According to a congressionally mandated report from the U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. personnel left behind $7 billion worth of military equipment that was transferred to the Afghan government over the course of sixteen years. In the most recent years of the war, Taliban militants had been discovered dressed like American special operation forces and wielding a number of U.S. weapons and armored vehicles-including Humvees.
As detailed by Vice, “After the collapse, a Taliban official told Al Jazeera that it had taken more than 300,000 light arms, 26,000 heavy weapons, and around 61,000 military vehicles when it took over the country. He said the plan was to use these weapons and the Soviet-era armor to create a “grand army.”
Earlier this year, reports revealed that some American weapons left behind in Afghanistan have made it as far to the disputed South Asian region of Kashmir. In the upcoming years, we should expect to see additional pop-ups of American weaponry across the region, made possible by the chaotic nature of the U.S. Afghanistan troop withdrawal.
Maya Carlin, a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive, is an analyst with the Center for Security Policy and a former Anna Sobol Levy Fellow at IDC Herzliya in Israel. She has by-lines in many publications, including The National Interest, Jerusalem Post, and Times of Israel. You can follow her on Twitter: @MayaCarlin.
