About a month ago, the Afghan Ministry of Defense posted photos of seven brand new helicopters arriving in Kabul from the United States on social media.
“You will continue to see a steady drumbeat of this type of support in the future,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told reporters at the Pentagon a few days later.
Within a few weeks, however, the Taliban had confiscated most of the country, as well as all weapons and equipment left behind by the fleeing Afghan forces.
The video showed the advancing insurgents inspecting long lines of vehicles and opening boxes of new firearms, communications equipment, and even military drones.
“Anything that has not been destroyed now belongs to the Taliban,” a US official told Reuters on condition that it was not destroyed.
Current and former US officials say there are concerns that these weapons could be used to kill civilians, may be confiscated by other militant groups such as the Islamic State to attack US interests in the region, or even potentially against them Opponents like China and Russia could be surrendered.
President Joe Biden’s administration is so concerned about the guns that it is considering a number of options.
Military vehicles handed over by the United States to the Afghan National Army in February 2021. Some of these vehicles fell into the hands of the Taliban in their offensive against Afghan forces in recent weeks (Reuters photo)
Officials said air strikes against larger equipment like helicopters are not ruled out, but there are concerns that the Taliban would be angry at a time when the United States’ primary goal is to evacuate people.
Another official said that while final numbers are not yet available, the current intelligence assessment says the Taliban scouted more than 2,000 armored vehicles, including U.S. Humvees, and up to 40 aircraft, possibly UH-60 Black Hawks Combat helicopters, control and ScanEagle military drones.
“We have seen Taliban fighters armed with US-made weapons that they have confiscated from the Afghan armed forces,” Reuters said in an email.
“MORE LIKE TROPHIES”
The speed with which the Taliban swept across Afghanistan is a reminder that Islamic State militants took weapons from US-supplied Iraqi forces, which offered little resistance in 2014.
Between 2002 and 2017, the United States provided the Afghan military with an estimated $ 28 billion in weapons, including weapons, missiles, night vision devices, and even small drones for intelligence gathering.
But planes like the Blackhawk helicopters were the most visible sign of US military aid and were intended to be the Afghan military’s greatest advantage over the Taliban.
Between 2003 and 2016, the US provided the Afghan armed forces with 208 aircraft, according to the US Government Accountability Office (GAO).
Over the past week, many of these planes have been very useful for Afghan pilots to escape the Taliban.
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A US official said between 40 and 50 planes were flown into Uzbekistan by Afghan pilots seeking refuge. Even before they came to power in Kabul at the weekend, the Taliban had launched a campaign to kill pilots.
Some aircraft have been in the US for maintenance and will remain. Those en route to Afghan forces will instead be used by the US military to help evacuate Kabul.
Current and former officials say they are concerned that the Taliban have access to the helicopters, but the planes require frequent maintenance and many are complicated to fly without extensive training.
“Ironically, the fact that our equipment fails so often is a lifesaver here,” said a third official.
Retired U.S. Army General Joseph Votel, who oversaw U.S. military operations in Afghanistan as head of U.S. Central Command from 2016 to 2019, said most of the high-end hardware captured by the Taliban, including aircraft, was not equipped with sensitive US technology.
“In some cases, some of these will be more like trophies,” said Votel.
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FIGHTING IN THE NIGHT
There is a more immediate concern about some of the easier-to-use weapons and equipment, such as night vision goggles.
Since 2003, the US has provided the Afghan armed forces with at least 600,000 infantry weapons, including M16 assault rifles, 162,000 communications devices, and 16,000 night vision devices.
“The ability to work at night is a real game changer,” one congressman told Reuters.
Votel and others said that small arms seized by the insurgents, such as machine guns, mortars, and artillery pieces, including howitzers, could give the Taliban an edge against any resistance held in historic anti-Taliban strongholds such as the Panjshir Valley northeast of. Kabul could appear.
US officials said the expectation was that most of the weapons would be used by the Taliban themselves, but it was far too early to say what they were up to – including the possible transfer of the equipment to rival states like China.
Andrew Small, a Chinese foreign policy expert with the United States’ German Marshall Fund, said the Taliban would likely give Beijing access to any US weapons they may now have control of.
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One of the US officials said China was unlikely to gain much as Beijing likely already had access to weapons and equipment.
The situation, experts say, shows that the United States needs a better way to monitor the equipment it gives allies. It could have done a lot more to ensure these supplies to Afghan armed forces were closely monitored and inventoried, said Justine Fleischner of Britain’s Conflict Armament Research.
“But the time will have passed before these efforts have an effect in Afghanistan,” said Fleischner.
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