The Defense Ministry of Afghanistan once again asked Uzbekistan and Tajikistan to return the helicopters of the previous administration that were taken following the fall of the republic.
Inayatullah Khwarazami, the Afghan Defense Ministry’s spokesman, said that Kabul will take the helicopters in the near future.
“The helicopters are the property of the Afghan people. They should be returned to the current government, to the Ministry of Defense,” TOLOnews quoted him as saying.
Meanwhile, some analysts said that until the Islamic Emirate is recognized by the international community, it will be impossible to obtain these helicopters.
“Regarding the helicopters that were taken out of the country, there are a number of issues. First of all, I am not sure that the documentation of these helicopters is related to Afghanistan. The second issue is the issue of the Taliban government, which is not recognized by any country,” said Fahim Kohdamani, former diplomat of Afghanistan in Tajikistan.
The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has previously acknowledged that after the fall of the republic, the military of the previous government transferred more than 40 Afghan helicopters to Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The Taliban has consistently urged that these countries return the helicopters to Afghanistan.
Earlier, a US defense official said that the helicopters in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan would not be handed over to the Taliban.
At the end of April, Ismatulla Irgashev, the special presidential envoy for Afghanistan, explained why the Uzbek authorities did not return planes and helicopters to the Taliban.
In an interview with America Ovozi (Voice of America), he said that the aircraft that Afghan pilots had previously hijacked from their country to Uzbekistan belongs to the United States.
“The US government paid for them, they funded the previous Afghan government,” he said.
Ismatulla Irgashev stressed that the decision on the fate of aircraft should be made in Washington.
“We kept this military equipment under an agreement with the United States and informed the Taliban about this,” the diplomat said.
It should be recalled that after the seizure of power in Afghanistan by the Taliban, the pilots and personnel of the country’s Air Force began to leave the territory of the state en masse, flying on planes to third countries. Thus, more than 40 Afghan military planes and helicopters flew to Uzbekistan. Some of the planes also flew to Tajikistan.
The Prosecutor General’s Office of Uzbekistan reported that on August 14 and 15, 2021, 22 Afghan military aircraft and 24 helicopters landed in the country.
