Here’s all the US military equipment that likely ended up in Taliban hands
According to a 2017 Government Accountability Office report, the U.S. military transferred roughly 75,898 vehicles, 599,690 weapons systems, and 208 aircraft to the ANDSF between fiscal years 2003 and 2016. And according to a recent Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction analysis, the last few years have seen the Defense Department send the ANDSF more than 7,000 machine guns, more than 4,700 Humvees, and more than 20,000 grenades. This is to say nothing of the communications, explosive ordnance disposal, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) equipment transferred to the ANDSF over the course of two decades as detailed in the GAO report. According to the Intercept, the Taliban have even seized U.S. military biometrics devices “that could aid in the identification of Afghans who assisted coalition forces.”
(Government Accountability Office)
That American weapons are falling into the hands of the very militants they were intended to kill is nothing new. A 2016 Pentagon audit revealed that poor record-keeping and regulations had allowed nearly half of the 1.5 million weapons provided to Iraqi and Afghan security forces since 2002 to go missing, including nearly 978,000 M4 and M16s, while a 2014 SIGAR report found that some 43 percent of weapons provided to the ANDSF likely ended up in the hands of groups like the Taliban or ISIS. There is also plenty of ammo missing from former Afghan government stockpiles.
