President Biden’s deadly pullout from Afghanistan in 2021 left the Taliban in control of military hardware, including missiles, aircraft, biometric devices, and communications equipment worth at least $7.2 billion, according to a report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.
The assessment, which Congress demanded following the pullout that claimed the lives of 13 American soldiers, revealed that Biden’s choice to leave Afghanistan resulted in $7.2 billion worth of military hardware falling into Taliban hands. The initial findings were reported Monday by The Wall Street Journal. “The electronic database used to track the items crashed in early 2021, making it impossible to determine the final total of military equipment abandoned in Afghanistan.”
The analysis showed that over the span of the 20 years since the United States attempted to democratize the country, American taxpayers have spent $18.6 billion on weaponry for the Afghan military.
According to the report, some top Afghan officials didn’t anticipate that Biden would actually carry out the hurried evacuation. “Many Afghans had the sense that the United States was just giving Afghanistan over to a Taliban government-in-waiting.”
The Pentagon was also criticized in the report for declining to assist with the probe. The Pentagon cited “a lack of oversight” as the reason for its lack of cooperation.
The Journal claims that the Defense Department was also reticent:
“According to the assessment by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, years of subpar accountability on weapons and equipment delivered to Afghanistan and a dearth of systemic planning were significant contributors to that country’s military breakdown. The Department of Defense is also criticized in the study, which Congress mandated, for its tardiness in responding to requests for information, missed deadlines, and inadequate responses.”
The investigators made the noteworthy claim that a lesson may be learned from the mistakes the United States made in Afghanistan and avoid making the same errors in Ukraine.
The danger that some equipment ends up on the black market or in the wrong hands is likely inescapable given the protracted conflict and the extraordinary volume of weapons being delivered to Ukraine, the research stated. The impulse to prioritize getting money out the door in a time of crisis is natural, but doing so frequently leads to more issues than it resolves.
More than $110 billion in taxpayer money has been set aside by American lawmakers for border protection in Ukraine.
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