Apr 06, Kathmandu- Half a million American weapons have gone missing from Afghanistan, the BBC has reported. The weapons may have been sold or smuggled.

The United Nations believes that some of these weapons have also fallen into the hands of extremist organizations linked to Al-Qaeda.

According to a former Afghan official, when the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan in 2021, they found a cache of about one million military weapons and equipment.

Most of them were purchased with US financial assistance. It also included old weapons from Afghanistan, including US-made M4 and M6 rifles.

After the Taliban advanced in 2021, the Afghan soldiers either surrendered or fled with their weapons and vehicles. Similarly, the US Army also left some of its military equipment there.

The Taliban admitted to the UN Security Council sanctions committee in Doha last year that half of its military equipment and weapons had been lost, the BBC reported. A member of the committee said that it had confirmed with multiple sources but that about half a million weapons were still missing.

A United Nations report in February said that al-Qaeda-affiliated groups were buying these weapons on the black market.

These include the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement and Yemen’s Ansarullah Movement Taliban.

Hamidullah Fitrat, a deputy spokesman for the Taliban government, claimed that they had stored and secured the weapons very carefully. “It is wrong to talk about weapons smuggling or disappearances, all light and heavy weapons are completely safe,” he said.

A 2023 UN report said the Taliban gave 20 percent of seized US weapons to local commanders. These commanders are independent in their own areas. This is the reason why the black market of weapons is taking place. “Large amounts of arms are gifted to consolidate power among local commanders and fighters. This is a major source of these weapons,” the UN said.

Local commanders and wealthy individuals are working together to trade new and used US weapons and military equipment. Most of these weapons have been abandoned by the Afghan army.

The United Nations has said in its report that the number of weapons registered with the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) is lower than information received from all sources.

The United Nations has also admitted that accurate data could not be collected in the 2022 report.

For the past few years, various US departments and organizations have been supplying military equipment to Afghanistan.

However, the US State Department has denied this. This has become a major political issue in the US. President Donald Trump has repeatedly said that he will withdraw weapons from Afghanistan. He said that $85 billion worth of sophisticated weapons remain there.

The Taliban have frequently displayed American weapons. This includes Bagram Airfield, a key US-NATO base. They have presented it as a symbol of their victory.

After the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, the Pentagon claimed that the military equipment left behind had been deactivated.

With the help of US weapons, the Taliban have established dominance over enemy groups such as the National Resistance Front and the Islamic State group’s regional affiliate, the Islamic State Khorasan Province.