When American troops pulled out of Kabul in a hasty moved under the Biden administration in 2021, the military left behind a trove of US weapons. Many of the weapons left in the hands of the Taliban have since been sold to terror groups across the region, including the Houthis, sources told the BBC on Thursday.
Around one million weapons and pieces of military equipment were left by the US to the Taliban, a former Afghan official, and it is currently believed that half a million weapons have been lost, sold or smuggled since.
The sources claimed that during a UN Security Council’s Sanctions Committee meeting in Doha last year, Taliban officials admitted half of the weapons left by the US were now unaccounted for.
The weapons have been transferred to Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, and Yemen’s Houthis, according to a February UN report.
The US’s lost weaponry
In addition to US weaponry, the Taliban could now have in its arsenal weapons abandoned by Afghan soldiers who fled, surrendered or were killed.
Despite what the sources claimed, the deputy spokesperson for the Taliban told the BBC “All light and heavy weapons are securely stored. We strongly reject claims of smuggling or loss.”
US President Donald Trump has been deeply critical of the way the Biden administration left Afghanistan, insisting the US would reclaim the military equiptment left abandoned.
“Afghanistan is one of the biggest sellers of military equipment in the world, you know why? They’re selling the equipment that we left,” Trump said during his first cabinet meeting of the new administration. “I want to look into this. If we need to pay them, that’s fine, but we want our military equipment back.”
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