Taliban now the best armed terrorist group in the world

Thomas Catenacci:

When the Taliban assumed control of Afghanistan last month, the group took possession of a U.S.-funded weapons stockpile worth tens of billions of dollars.

The U.S. invested nearly $83 billion in bolstering the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces, more than $24 billion of which went to funding weapons, vehicles, and other equipment, according to a Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction report published in July. The amount of funding for weapons, vehicles, and equipment is based on a 2017 Government Accountability Office estimate that roughly 70% of the investment went toward other budget items, such as training.

In the aftermath of the shocking collapse of the Western-backed Afghan government last month, U.S. defense officials estimated that Taliban militants took dozens of aircraft, including Black Hawk helicopters, and thousands of vehicles, communications equipment, and weapons.

Republican lawmakers demanded the Biden administration provide them with a full accounting of the equipment that was in the Taliban’s possession, while GOP members of the House Armed Services Committee introduced a bill requiring the White House to share the information with Congress.

“No one has any accounting of exactly what survived the last weeks of the collapse and fell into Taliban hands, and even before the collapse, [the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction] had publicly reported no accounting was possible in many districts,” Anthony Cordesman, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told The Washington Post.

“In rough terms, however, if the [Afghanistan National Defense and Security Forces] could not sustain it without foreign contractors, the Taliban will have very serious problems in operating it,” he continued. “That covers most aircraft and many electronics and heavier weapons.”

While Cordesman predicted the Taliban would have trouble operating the advanced equipment, included in the U.S. cache left behind, Republicans worried the Taliban would provide that complex hardware to U.S. foes China, Russia, and Iran.

Overall, the U.S. gave more than 599,690 arms, including rifles, pistols, machine guns, and rocket-propelled weapons; more than 16,191 pieces of surveillance equipment, including night-vision goggles and radio monitoring systems; and more than 208 aircraft, including helicopters, cargo airplanes, fighter jets, and surveillance drones to the Afghanistan National Defense and Security Forces since 2004, according to the GAO.

The July special inspector general’s report estimated that 80% of the aircraft given to the Afghanistan National Defense and Security Forces was usable.
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There is more.

It is hard to comprehend the totality of the Biden bug-out debacle.  We have already seen reports that some of the equipment was sold to Iran and those reports showed big rigs taking it into Iran.  I am sure the Chicoms will be interested in the technology.