A Pentagon report reveals that billions of dollars in weapons and military equipment transferred to the Afghan government was left behind in Afghanistan after the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from the country.
In all, about $7 billion worth of hardware remained in the country after the Taliban seized control, according to the report prepared for Congress which was obtained by CNN.
This equipment is now in a country that is controlled by the very enemy the US was trying to drive out over the past two decades: the Taliban. The Defense Department has no plans to return to Afghanistan to "retrieve or destroy" the equipment, reads the report, which has been provided to Congress.
The US gave a total of $18.6 billion of equipment to the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) from 2005 to August 2021, according to the report.
Of that total, equipment worth $7.12 billion remained in Afghanistan after the US withdrawal was completed on August 30, 2021. It included aircraft, air-to-ground munitions, military vehicles, weapons, communications equipment and other materials, according to the Department of Defense report.
Almost 80 U.S. aircraft—with control panels smashed out—were left abandoned at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport when the United States pulled out last August. The United States left behind nearly 42,000 pieces of night vision, surveillance, biometric, and positioning equipment in the Taliban-controlled country.
By the time the last U.S. transport aircraft left Afghan airspace on Aug. 30, 2021, 70 percent of U.S. weapons given to the Afghan forces over the past 16 years were left in the country as well as nearly $48 million worth of ammunition.
The detritus is another hidden cost of the U.S. and NATO military withdrawal that ended two decades of Western involvement in the war-torn country.
The news comes as the Taliban have been on a killing spree against perceived opponents of the régime in recent weeks, and a spate of terrorist groups that the United States promised to monitor from “over the horizon” in bases in the Persian Gulf have also made a resurgence. The Taliban have also cracked down on human rights in the war-torn country, recently moving to ensure girls don’t go to school.
The Defense Department insists that it’s unlikely the Taliban could use the American weapons left behind because they require specialized maintenance and technical support that was once provided by U.S. contractors.
But officials familiar with the report are concerned that the Taliban could use the small arms, at least. There are more than 250,000 automatic rifles, 95 drones, and more than a million mortar rounds that require little training to use. And if the Taliban don’t use the systems, the cash-starved militant group could pass them on to American adversaries or they could find their way into the hands of terror groups.
The Pentagon insists that U.S. forces were able to destroy or render inoperable much of the equipment and weapons provided to Afghanistan before the troop withdrawal, a figure that amounted to $18.6 billion.
