The Taliban have seized billions of U.S. weapons left in Afghanistan, including possibly 600,000 assault rifles, some 2,000 armored vehicles and 40 aircraft, including Black Hawks, according to reports.
The United States gave the Afghan military an estimated $ 28 billion in armaments between 2002 and 2017, including seven brand-new helicopters delivered to Kabul just a month ago.
The war chest also included the supply of at least 600,000 infantry weapons, including M16 assault rifles, as well as 162,000 communication equipment and 16,000 night-vision goggles.
In just two years from 2017 to 2019, the United States donated 7,035 machine guns, 4,702 humvees, 20,040 hand grenades, 2,520 bombs and 1,394 grenade launchers, the Hill noted, citing a report from the U.S. Special Inspector General for the Reconstruction of Afghanistan (SIGAR).
“Everything that has not been destroyed is from the Taliban now,” a U.S. official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
Admitting gun confiscations, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Tuesday that the White House does not “have a complete picture” of what “has fallen into the hands of the Taliban.”
But the current assessment is that it includes 2,000 armored vehicles, including U.S. Humvees, and up to 40 aircraft, possibly including UH-60 Black Hawks, reconnaissance attack helicopters, and ScanEagle military drones, another official told Reuters.
Videos have already captured Taliban fighters triumphantly opening confiscated weapons boxes, including U.S.-made M4 rifles and M16 rifles, The Hill reported. They have also been seen with US Humvees.
The war chest will give the Taliban a huge advantage in eliminating resistance.
U.S. officials also fear that weapons of war could be handed over to U.S. adversaries such as China and Russia, or even more terrorist groups such as ISIS.
“This poses a significant threat to the United States and our allies,” Rep. Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the foreign affairs committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, told Reuters.
President Biden’s administration has not ruled out airstrikes to destroy larger equipment such as helicopters, but fears it will antagonize the Taliban while people are still being evacuated, sources told Reuters.
On Wednesday, more than two dozen Republican senators demanded a “full account” of what has been confiscated and plans to recover it.
“It is unconscious that high-tech military equipment paid for by U.S. taxpayers has fallen into the hands of the Taliban and its terrorist allies,” the 25 senators told Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
His control of the planes is what worries him most. The United States gave more than 200 to Afghan forces, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).
Up to 50 were believed to have been used by Afghan pilots to flee the Taliban, who this week demanded their return. But the rest of the stock included Black Hawks, which was supposed to be the Afghan army’s biggest advantage over the Taliban.
It has left U.S. officials clinging to the hope that the plane will prove too complicated to maintain and fly for the Taliban to use it effectively, with a leader this week admitting the group had no trained pilots.
“Ironically, the fact that our computers break down so often is a life saver,” a third official told Reuters.
But just having night-vision goggles, of which the United States has donated at least 16,000 since 2003, is a big plus.
“The ability to operate at night changes the game,” a congressional aide told Reuters.
No matter how much the Taliban use it, it is already a huge shame for the United States.
“Clearly, this is an indictment of the American security cooperation company in general,” Elias Yousif, deputy director of the International Policy Security Assistance Center, told The Hill.
“It should really raise a lot of concerns about what is the largest enterprise that is happening every day, whether in the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa or East Asia.”
With publishing cables