Sorry to spoil your morning coffee, but let’s recall that terrible day when thirteen U.S. soldiers were killed in Afghanistan. Remember that day when President Biden back in 2021 decided to walk away and leave a ton of military equipment behind? It was bad, really bad.
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Well, whatever happened to those weapons anyway? Many of us predicted that they’d fall in the hands of the bad guys. Here is one story I found over at BBC, proving how right we were:
Half a million weapons obtained by the Taliban in Afghanistan have been lost, sold or smuggled to militant groups, sources have told the BBC – with the UN believing that some have fallen into the hands of al-Qaeda affiliates.
The Taliban took control of around one million weapons and pieces of military equipment – which had mostly been funded by the US – when it regained control of Afghanistan in 2021, according to a former Afghan official who spoke to the BBC anonymously.
As the Taliban advanced through Afghanistan in 2021, many Afghan soldiers surrendered or fled, abandoning their weapons and vehicles. Some equipment was simply left behind by US forces.
The cache included American-made firearms, such as M4 and M16 rifles, as well as other older weapons in Afghan possession that had been left behind from decades of conflict.
Sources have told the BBC that, at the closed-door UN Security Council’s Sanctions Committee in Doha late last year, the Taliban admitted that at least half of this equipment is now ‘unaccounted’ for.
A person from the committee said they had verified with other sources that the whereabouts of half a million items was unknown.
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In a report in February, the UN stated that al-Qaeda affiliates, including Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, and Yemen’s Ansarullah movement, were accessing Taliban-captured weapons or buying them on the black market.
The BBC put this to Hamdullah Fitrat, deputy spokesperson for the Taliban government, who told the BBC it took the protection and storage of weapons very seriously.
What a way to build an army? Get the U.S. to walk away, leave First World military equipment behind, and display the darn things in a military parade.
The real risk here is that these weapons could end up in the hands of people who know how to use them, and they will be used against U.S. soldiers in the region. I guess that no one in the Biden administration took that point into consideration. Furthermore, many of these weapons naturally ended up in the black market. I think that’s where cartels get their weapons. They pay with cash and they love briefcases full of liquidity at the black markets.
I’m not sure what we can do today. The harm is done, and hopefully a lesson learned. We could bomb one of these parades and remind them that they are using stolen equipment, or whatever that means to a group like this.
Again, what a way to build up your military inventory. Get the Democrats to run away and leave all of our stuff behind.
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Image generated by ChatGPT.