New Delhi: Departing Marines from the Kabul airport gave a one-finger salute to the Taliban and ISIS, scrawling obscene messages on the facilitys walls — but were told by commanders to erase the graffiti before they left, New York Post said.
The Marines were ordered to destroy equipment the military was leaving behind at Hamid Karzai International Airport as the withdrawal was winding down, the Wshington Post reported. They smashed electronics with sledgehammers, shattered windows and stripped armoured vehicles to render them useless to the Taliban.
But many of the Marines, still seething over the deaths of 13 US service members outside the airport in an ISIS-K suicide bombing, left some choice words for the terrorists.
Pictures showed a group of Marines posing in front of a wall at the airport with the words “F–k isis, AFG 2021” scrawled across it in black paint. In another picture, a serviceman stands before a tiled wall near a wash basin.
“F–k ISIS + Taliban” was written on the wall, along with a drawing of a penis.
A Marine told the Washington Post that they were ordered to wash the taunting messages away and clean up the debris before they left the airport.
“My boys had to go… pick up every last piece of… trash for who? The Taliban?” the Marine, who was not identified, told the newspaper.
“It was a slap in the face to us,” the Marine said.