Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters Monday that an unknown amount of Afghan government weaponry is in the hands of the Taliban following the terror group’s takeover of Afghanistan.
“I don’t have an exact inventory of equipment that the Afghans had at their disposal which now might be at risk,” said Kirby when asked about the billions of dollars worth of equipment the U.S sent to Afghanistan.
Reuters calculated the Taliban have seized tens of billions of dollars of military equipment and supplies since Afghanistan’s deadly collapse.
“More than $28 billion was spent equipping the Afghans between 2002 to 2017,” the Heritage Foundation wrote Saturday. “Expenditures after that are harder to come by, but since deliveries were continuing until just last month, it is safe to assume that the total amount is much more.”
As of June 30, 2021, Afghanistan “had 211 U.S.-supplied aircraft in their inventory,” the Hill reported.
The Heritage Foundation estimates that the Taliban captured “all the necessary ingredients to fully equip both an army and an air force,” which includes “600,000 rifles and machine guns; 76,000 vehicles, such as high-mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicles, armored trucks, and pickups; radios, night vision googles, and drones; and 208 helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft.”
The U.S. gear has even shown up in Taliban propaganda messaging. The Taliban produced a meme last week with the Taliban sporting U.S. military gear. In the propaganda image, Taliban fighters are shown raising their flag, mocking the iconic World War II photo of U.S. Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima.
Other images of the Taliban show the terrorists arming themselves with M4 rifles:
A former government anti-terrorism adviser, Col. Richard Kemp, told the Mirror that “Jihadi networks emerging in Afghanistan could well be better armed now than ever before.”
An unnamed congressional source told CNN the amount of gear in the Taliban’s hands is concerning. “We are also concerned that some may end up in the hands of others who support the Taliban’s cause,” they said. “My biggest fear is that the sophisticated weaponry will be sold to our adversaries and other non-state actors who intend to use it against us and our allies.”
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø
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