• All_world_news
• Visit Article Link

• BBC
• Thu Apr 17 2025

US weapons left in Afghanistan sold to militant groups, sources tell BBC

10 hours ago Share Save Yasin Rasouli & Zia Shahreyar BBC Afghan Languages Share Save

Getty Images US military equipment and vehicles, including abandoned Humvees, fell into the hands of the Taliban in 2021

Half a million weapons obtained by the Taliban in Afghanistan have been lost, sold or smuggled to militant groups, sources have told the BBC - with the UN believing that some have fallen into the hands of al-Qaeda affiliates. The Taliban took control of around one million weapons and pieces of military equipment - which had mostly been funded by the US - when it regained control of Afghanistan in 2021, according to a former Afghan official who spoke to the BBC anonymously. As the Taliban advanced through Afghanistan in 2021, many Afghan soldiers surrendered or fled, abandoning their weapons and vehicles. Some equipment was simply left behind by US forces. The cache included American-made firearms, such as M4 and M16 rifles, as well as other older weapons in Afghan possession that had been left behind from decades of conflict. Sources have told the BBC that, at the closed-door UN Security Council's Sanctions Committee in Doha late last year, the Taliban admitted that at least half of this equipment is now "unaccounted" for. A person from the committee said they had verified with other sources that the whereabouts of half a million items was unknown. In a report in February, the UN stated that al-Qaeda affiliates, including Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, and Yemen's Ansarullah movement, were accessing Taliban-captured weapons or buying them on the black market. The BBC put this to Hamdullah Fitrat, deputy spokesperson for the Taliban government, who told the BBC it took the protection and storage of weapons very seriously. "All light and heavy weapons are securely stored. We strongly reject claims of smuggling or loss," he said.

A 2023 UN report said the Taliban allowed local commanders to retain 20% of seized US weapons, and that the black market was thriving as a result. These commanders are affiliated to the Taliban but often have a degree of autonomy in their regions. The UN noted that the "gifting of weapons is widely practiced between local commanders and fighters to consolidate power. The black market remains a rich source of weaponry for the Taliban". A former journalist in the city of Kandahar told the BBC that an open arms market existed there for a year after the Taliban takeover, but has since gone underground via the messaging service WhatsApp. On it, wealthy individuals and local commanders trade new and used US weapons and equipment - mostly the weapons left by US-backed forces. The number of weapons recorded by the US body tasked with overseeing Afghan reconstruction projects, known as Sigar, is lower than those cited by our sources, but in a 2022 report it acknowledged it was unable to get accurate information. The reason given for this was that equipment has been funded and supplied by various US departments and organisations over the years. Sigar added that there had been "shortfalls and issues with DoD's [Department of Defense] processes for tracking equipment in Afghanistan" for more than a decade. It also criticised the State Department, adding: "State provided us limited, inaccurate, and untimely information about the equipment and funds it left behind." The department denied this was the case.

Getty Images The Taliban has rejected claims that weapons have been smuggled or lost