On August 30, the last American troops left Afghanistan, formally concluding the longest war in U.S. history. Even before all U.S. troops had departed from Afghanistan, the Taliban seized control of the country from the Afghan government. Despite the U.S. and its NATO allies spending almost $83 billion training and outfitting Afghan forces, they collapsed in little more than a week in early August.
The prevailing explanation for the rapid collapse of the Afghan forces is corruption and cronyism within the Afghanistan government and military leadership. The fall of the U.S.-backed Afghanistan government has left questions regarding what happened to the military equipment the U.S. purchased for Afghan troops. In an attempt to gain political points and seize on the at times chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Trump sycophants in Congress are now falsely asserting that the Taliban has $85 billion worth of U.S. weaponry.
“We left behind $85 billion of military equipment to terrorists who chant ‘Death to America’,” Congresswoman Lauren Boebert (R-CO) tweeted a day after the last U.S. troops left Afghanistan.
The Congresswoman’s claim, repeated by other MAGA lawmakers such as Congressman Lee Zeldin (R-NY), Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler (R-MO) and Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) is entirely false. The Taliban has not obtained $85 billions or more in U.S. military equipment.
According to a July report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, the U.S. had spent almost $83 billion on the Afghanistan Security Forces Fund since the U.S. invasion in 2001. That $83 billion covers everything from equipment, supplies, services, training, funding for salaries and facility and infrastructure repair.
To better understand what portion of that $83 billion has been spent on equipment, we can reference a 2017 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report. The GAO found that between 2005 and 2016 around 29% of U.S. spending on Afghan security forces went towards equipment and transportation. If that 29% was consistent across the two-decades the U.S. was in Afghanistan, that would mean that the U.S. has spent about $24 billion on equipment and transportation for Afghan forces since 2001.
$24 billion can certainly buy you a ton of military equipment, but many of these weapons have been used for years and have likely become obsolete or destroyed in war. Even those pieces of equipment that remain in Afghanistan require continuous maintenance to remain operable and the Taliban reportedly lack the maintained crews needed to keep them functioning. In addition, prior to America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, the U.S. "demilitarized," or rendered useless, nearly 170 pieces of military equipment and moved many weapons out of Afghanistan.
While no one knows the exact value of the U.S.-supplied Afghan equipment that the Taliban have secured, it is certainly not worth over $85 billions or even $24 billion. Instead of doing the hard and important work of overseeing America’s military expenditures and working to more seamlessly end America’s longest war, MAGA politicians, seeking to further their career as social media celebrities, are promoting fictitious claims about the Taliban seizing U.S. weapons.
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