According to a new report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), a Pentagon watchdog focused on the US’ war in Afghanistan that ended last year, the Pentagon has only provided “limited, inaccurate, and untimely information about the defense articles it left behind.”
“[A]lthough DOD reported $7.1 billion in equipment left in Afghanistan that was previously provided to the Afghanistan government and the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF), the department has struggled for years with accurately accounting for the equipment it provided to the ANDSF,” the SIGAR report stated. “Since at least 2009, SIGAR and the DOD Office of Inspector General (DOD IG) have published reports noting accountability shortfalls and issues with DOD’s processes for tracking equipment in Afghanistan.”
The report goes on, stating that the US Department of Defense (DOD) “did not meet its own oversight requirements for sensitive equipment transferred to the Afghan government and ANDSF, and had not inventoried 60% of defense articles with enhanced monitoring requirements - those containing sensitive technology - between May 2019 and April 2020 due to security constraints and travel limitations.”
In other words, the US government doesn’t really know which equipment, or how much of it, was left behind in Afghanistan, but it was at least $7.1 billion worth.
The DOD IG report from August noted that at the time of the fall of the government, the ANDSF had in its stocks some 316,000 small arms supplied by the US since 2005.
That report also noted longstanding and well-known problems with the Core Inventory Management System used to catalog stocks at bases in Afghanistan, including a chaotic system of Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and even handwritten inventories used to get around the problem that many of the bases either did not have internet access or didn’t have electricity of any type.
Taliban fighters stand guard in front of the Hamid Karzai International Airport, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, Aug. 16, 2021.
© AP Photo / Rahmat Gul
SIGAR did note that at least 70 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) tactical vehicles and 80 aircraft were “rendered inoperable” in what it called “ad-hoc demilitarization efforts” at Hamid Karzai International Airport in August 2021, the point of egress for US forces and their collaborators in the final weeks of the withdrawal.
That withdrawal was chaotic and disastrous, with the US-backed Afghan government failing to hold power against a Taliban assault even long enough for US forces to complete their withdrawal from the country. In the last two weeks of August, US forces forged an uneasy relationship with Taliban fighters after the latter seized Kabul without a fight, working to provide security for tens of thousands of would-be refugees rushing to the airport in an attempt to leave with the departing US troops.
SIGAR had long raised concerns about the ability of the ANDSF to operate on its own, and documented the major problems with corruption in the Afghan military and government, as well as among US forces in the country.
The withdrawal, agreed to in 2020 by then-US President Donald Trump as part of a ceasefire with the Taliban, was completed by US President Joe Biden by August 31, 2021. However, it was long opposed by Pentagon brass, who did not believe the US-backed government could survive.
After the Taliban seized power, the US and much of the world severed relations and refused to recognize their new government, causing a complete collapse of the already-fragile Afghan economy and a major humanitarian crisis.
*The Taliban is a group under United Nations sanction for terrorist activities.