Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers celebrated three years in power on Wednesday with a military parade paying homage to their homemade bombs used in war, fighter aircraft, and goose-stepping security forces.

The Taliban’s armed forces towed Soviet-era tanks and artillery pieces through the former US air base in Bagram, where Chinese and Iranian diplomats were among hundreds who gathered for the parade and speeches.

The former Bagram base once served as the linchpin for US-led operations against the Taliban for two decades.

A swarm of motorbikes strapped with yellow jerry cans, often used to carry homemade bombs during the fight against international forces, also rumbled past assembled officials.

There were also US-made armoured personnel carriers, the black-and-white flag of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan — the Taliban government’s formal name for the country — fluttering above them.

Helicopters and fighter aircraft flew over the base, where Taliban fighters were once imprisoned, about 40 kilometres north of Kabul.

Taliban forces seized the capital on August 15, 2021, after the US-backed government collapsed and its leaders fled into exile. The anniversary is marked a day earlier on the Afghan calendar.

Their government remains unrecognised by any other state, with restrictions on women, who bear the brunt of policies the United Nations has called “gender apartheid”, remaining a key sticking point.

“Three years have passed since the dreams of girls have been buried,” Madina, a 20-year-old university student in Kabul, told AFP. “It’s a bitter feeling that every year, the celebration of this day reminds us of the efforts, memories, and goals we had for our future.”

Prime Minister Mohammad Hassan Akhund, who had been scheduled to appear at Bagram, praised the Taliban authorities’ victory over “Western occupiers” in a statement read by his chief of staff.

The Taliban government has “the responsibility to maintain Islamic rule, protect property, people’s lives, and the respect of our nation”, he said.

‘Victory’

Security has been a key priority for Taliban authorities as they consolidated their grip on power over the past three years, implementing laws based on their strict interpretation of Islam.

However, attacks by the militant Islamic State group remain a threat, and extra security was deployed in Kabul and in the Taliban’s spiritual home of Kandahar in southern Afghanistan ahead of the “day of victory”.

Helicopters also flew over the Ghazi stadium in Kabul, where hundreds of men gathered to watch an exhibition of athletics and performances of Taliban anthems.

The Taliban takeover is marked both in mid-August around the date Kabul fell and at the end of the month, when the last foreign troops left Afghanistan after a chaotic withdrawal.

The black-and-white standard decorated streets and trucks full of young men that choked Kabul streets. Happy young boys carried a large flag in the Green Zone, once a secure enclave of foreign embassies, saying “We’re ready to do a suicide attack!”

While many Afghans expressed relief at the end of 40 years of successive conflicts, the economy remains stagnant and the population is mired in a worsening humanitarian crisis.

A joint statement from international non-governmental groups warned of the growing aid funding gap, with 23.7 million people in need of humanitarian assistance.

Women have been squeezed from public life — banned from many jobs as well as parks and gyms — and barred from secondary and higher education.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) reiterated calls for pressure on the Taliban government to lift restrictions on women.

“The third anniversary of the Taliban’s takeover is a grim reminder of Afghanistan’s human rights crisis, but it should also be a call for action,” said Fereshta Abbasi, HRW’s Afghanistan researcher.