Taliban Has $7.2 Billion Worth of U.S. Military Equipment Abandoned in Afghanistan, Report Says
Aircraft, guns, vehicles left behind during Biden's bungled withdrawal
The Taliban is in possession of nearly $7.2 billion in U.S. taxpayer-funded weapons, ammunition, and aircraft as a result of the Biden administration’s bungled 2021 military withdrawal from Afghanistan, according to a government watchdog.
"Nearly $7.2 billion worth of aircraft, guns, vehicles, ammunition, and specialized equipment" was abandoned in Afghanistan when the Biden administration carried out its rushed evacuation, according to a report published in late February by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), the federal watchdog group that monitors U.S. expenditures in the country.
"At least 78 aircraft worth $923.3 million, 9,524 air-to-ground munitions valued at $6.54 million, over 40,000 vehicles, more than 300,000 weapons, and nearly all night vision, surveillance, communications, and biometric equipment provided to the [Afghan defense forces] were left behind," according to information disclosed in SIGAR’s report.
The report comes ahead of the first public hearing on the Afghanistan withdrawal in the Republican-controlled House Wednesday and is likely to fuel questions on why the administration failed to prevent the Taliban from stealing U.S. military hardware. House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Michael McCaul (R., Texas) says the Biden administration has stonewalled his committee's attempts to obtain documents that could provide a window into the administration’s mishandling of the operation.
The Pentagon told SIGAR investigators that there "currently is no realistic way to retrieve the materiel that remains in Afghanistan, given that the United States does not recognize the Taliban as a government," according to the report.
Taliban units now "patrol in pickup trucks and armored vehicles likely procured by the U.S.," according to the report. Taliban-run special operations forces also "wear helmets with night vision mounts likely provided by the United States, and carry U.S.-provided M4 rifles equipped with advanced gunsights."
The terrorist group also is using "more advanced U.S.-provided equipment," such as armored vehicles and Mi-17 helicopters.
Furthermore, the Taliban is recruiting former Afghan military personnel to join its air force and fly the abandoned U.S. planes. "The pilots working for the Taliban reportedly need jobs and say the Taliban are the most reliable employer in Afghanistan," according to the report.
A portion of the most advanced equipment and technology "remains vulnerable to exploitation by adversarial states" who want to analyze how U.S. weapons systems work. This includes "optical and communications equipment, computer software and hardware, and biometrical data."
SIGAR also found evidence the Taliban is "attempting to summon former government employees to provide access to servers belonging to the former government that included biometric data."
Another concern is that the Taliban "could sell a portion of the captured arms and equipment to augment its revenue flow."
Published under: Afghanistan , Biden Administration , SIGAR , Taliban , Weapons
Taliban Using Fingerprint and Gun Records to Hunt Down Afghans Who Worked for the U.S.
Thanks, Joe!
Some Afghans put their lives, and the lives of their families, on the line by aiding U.S. troops during our two-decade misadventure in their country, and now the very thing they risked everything to prevent has come to pass: the Taliban is back in power, and according to a new report, they are being hunted down in Afghanistan every day. The desperate situation in which these people find themselves is yet another terrible result of the fecklessness and indifference of Old Joe Biden and his handlers.
Fox News reported Tuesday that a new report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction “detailing the chaos in Afghanistan following the American troop withdrawal in 2021 says the Taliban is now using fingerprint and gun records to hunt down Afghans who worked with the U.S. government.” According to a former officer of the fallen Afghan national government’s military intelligence apparatus, this is happening “on a daily basis.” The officer added: “They search their homes and if they cannot find the individual they will go after their family members. They punish their family until the person they are looking for surrenders. They will arrest someone at their home and beat them all the way to the police station.” This is, of course, because “the Taliban fear these forces because they think these people might be against them one day or have connections to the opposition fighting the Taliban.”
The Taliban is carrying out a sophisticated operation, “using biometric devices to detect and find former ANDSF,” that is, Afghan National Defense and Security Forces. “They take fingerprints and if there is a match, they take the individual to the police station.” As a result, “a lot of National Directorate of Security, Afghan National Army, and Afghan National Police officers were arrested through the use of biometric devices. Some are still in prison right now. Their families have no food or money. If the Taliban continue with this [these families] won’t last, they will collapse.”
The former officer who has revealed all this is still in Afghanistan; he says that he has moved four times since the Taliban returned to power, and if the Taliban jihadis find him, “will be executed.”
Gen. Besmullah Taban, who was previously the director of the Afghan National Police’s criminal investigative division, confirmed all this, saying that his mother has told him “that the Taliban sent people to my family’s house asking for my gun. They are looking for everything now, because there were systems showing which pistol or whatever belongs to whom,” thus alerting the Taliban to the identities of people who worked with American troops. “They are going through and trying to get that stuff.”
Meanwhile, a U.S. Marine infantry officer observed that “you’ve got guys who certainly do deserve to come to the U.S. who aren’t able to, and they’ve got a target on their back. The Taliban knows where they are and how to find them. It’s like we gave this guy a rope and noose around his neck and then kicked the chair out from under him.” Exactly. And why did we do that, except that Biden’s handlers seem intent on choosing to do what is absolutely the worst thing to do for Americans and their allies?
It would have been impossible to get everyone who helped us out of Afghanistan, but the Biden regime didn’t just leave a few of our friends behind. It actively brought other people who didn’t help U.S. forces out of Afghanistan, rather than those who did help. Special Immigrant Visas (SIV) were issued to people who aided the U.S. military in Afghanistan. Back in September 2021, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas explained that most of the Afghans who were brought over here after the catastrophically botched withdrawal from Afghanistan weren’t SIV holders at all: “Of the over 60,000 individuals who have been brought into the United States” at that time, Mayorkas said, “and I will give you approximate figures and I will verify them, approximately 7 percent have been United States citizens. Approximately 6 percent have been lawful permanent residents. Approximately 3 percent have been individuals who are in receipt of the Special Immigrant Visas.”
Three percent? Why so low? Neither Mayorkas nor anyone else in the Biden regime has ever offered a satisfactory explanation of this. It’s clear that the U.S. military was too busy implementing Critical Race Theory programs and enforcing vaccine mandates to formulate a coherent plan for an orderly withdrawal from Afghanistan. Now those who stood by us there are paying the price. Chalk up another reason why Old Joe will be remembered as the worst president in American history.
Robert Spencer
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 26 books including many bestsellers, such as The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), The Truth About Muhammad and The History of Jihad. His latest books are The Critical Qur’an and The Sumter Gambit. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.
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Biden's Right: His Word Means Nothing
Installed (p)Resident Joe Biden loves to make promises secured by the supposed worth of his family name. "I give you my word as a Biden," he said back in March of 2020, "When I'm president, I will lead with science, listen to the experts and heed their advice, and always tell you the truth." Again giving his solemn word before the 2020 mail-in ballot presidential selection, he promised both "to turn division into unity and bring us together," as well as to "be an ally of the light, not the darkness." Just over a week ago, he declared, "My word as a Biden: I've never been more optimistic about America's future than I am today." My goodness, if only Biden's family name possessed more value than that of Benedict Arnold's, we would be blessed with a man in the White House committed to truth, unity, spiritual guidance, and American success. Yet Biden's name is synonymous with none of those things, is it?
Instead, the Biden family name has really stood for only two things: buffoonery and corruption. For fifty years, Joe Biden has managed to hold onto some slice of power in D.C. as a senator, vice president, and Oval Office stooge not because he is renowned for his erudition or virtue but rather because his doltish behavior and venal character make him ideal for others to control. Perhaps no other Washington relic has accomplished so little for the American people over such a prolonged government career or managed to harness those defects for lucrative advancement more successfully than China Joe.
He is known as a serial liar, a "public servant" who has somehow managed to accrue tremendous wealth, a race-baiting opportunist, a Catholic-in-name-only, and a bought-and-paid-for politician in bed with criminal cartels and foreign foes. In another era, Joe Biden would have been run out of his country much the same way Benedict Arnold was two and a half centuries ago; in an era when integrity, honor, fortitude, fidelity, and grit have been jettisoned for immorality, unscrupulousness, weakness, betrayal, and craven pliability, however, he is elevated to king sleazeball in a city drowning in sleaze.
Perhaps when America's Scumbucket-in-Chief gives his "word as a Biden," he is depending upon the solid reputations of notable relatives. Alas, no. His brother James has been repeatedly implicated in allegations of fraud and quid-pro-quo financial schemes leveraging Joe's political office as a means to advance the Biden family's interests and wealth. His daughter Ashley struggles with sex and drug addictions, problems she has attributed in part to her memories of taking showers with her dad at a young age (no wonder Creepy Joe excuses pedophilia and transgender madness so effortlessly). And then there is the "smartest guy" Joe claims to know — his son Hunter — whose illegal drug use; sexual debauchery with prostitutes, employees, and relatives alike; gun crimes; occupation as an undeclared foreign agent; and serially-excused role as the family's point man for turning the powers of Joe's political office into seedy profit are all well known to the American people (even if habitually ignored by the corrupt Department of [in]Justice). In any other family concerned about its reputation for probity and honor, Hunter Biden would have been cast off as some sort of uncontrollable "black sheep." In the Biden herd, though, Hunter blends right in with his unseemly, scuzzy kin. The Biden pedigree is made from rotten stuff — more like a pustule than a bloodline and filled with dreck, mediocrity, selfishness, pusillanimity, and unrepentant sin.
When you stop to consider how shockingly meaningless Joe's "word as a Biden" schtick really is, it actually becomes tempting to consider whether the old, fatuous fraud is ironically — and just this once — telling the American people the truth! Perhaps when he says, "I give you my word as a Biden," he is really saying: "I give you my word as an incestuous pervert who cannot learn to keep my hands off little girls or keep from sniffing and grabbing women against their will; as a shameless liar who distorts everything, including the circumstances of my own wife and daughter's tragic deaths, when those lies induce public sympathy or are otherwise advantageous; as a plagiarist with no original thoughts or accomplishments of my own; as a lifelong racist who has had many friendships with segregationists and race hustlers while lying about having been active in the civil rights movement; as a corrupt politician who has ties to the mob and whose family has profited generously from my public office; and as a traitor to the United States who has repeatedly sold out my country for the benefit of foreign interests in Ukraine, China, and anywhere else I can make a buck."
I guess when you see how long it would take to vomit forth that mouthful of insidious nastiness, using the shorthand, "I give you my word as a Biden," just means that whatever is said next is almost certainly untrue.
Seen from that perspective, Biden's time as installed president makes a lot more sense. When he promised to unite the country by ridding it of petty divisions, what he really meant was that he planned to exacerbate racial animosities to the best of his abilities, rub salt in old wounds to ensure intolerance festers and anguish lingers, and incite hatred among groups of Americans who would otherwise get along. When he promised to "bring us together," he meant that he would promote propaganda reframing the J6 protest for fair elections as an "insurrection" seeking to topple the government and use that laughably fraudulent pretense as an excuse to persecute and imprison his political enemies. When he promised to be "an ally of the light, not the darkness," he meant that he would threaten concerned parents with criminal prosecution should they resist the government's program of sexualizing childhood, encouraging bodily mutilation, brainwashing innocents with "transgender" delusions, and promoting abortion-on-demand.
When he promised to "lead with science," he meant that he would use the unscrutinized declarations of unelected government health bureaucrats with secret political agendas as a sword and shield for imposing a dictatorship of unconstitutional mandates, censorship, ephemeral freedoms, and unjust orders contrary to established law. When he promised to "listen to the experts and heed their advice," he meant that he would further empower an already-out-of-control Deep State to police Americans' thoughts and words for alleged "misinformation" and "hate"; expand the national security surveillance State to spy on Americans' every move; and target for criminal punishment those who nonetheless insist on engaging in "wrongthink." When he promised to "always tell you the truth," he meant that his administration would construct "politically correct" falsehoods, propagate those falsehoods through a willingly compliant and compromised State-aligned news media, vilify dissent as harmful "disinformation," and characterize contrary viewpoints as mere "conspiracy theories."
Finally, when Biden recently claimed that he has "never been more optimistic about America's future," what he meant is that he has given China permission to send spy balloons loaded with explosives across the continent; criminal cartels permission to flood America with illegal aliens; the pharmaceutical companies permission to reap windfall profits from harmful, untested, yet government-mandated products; the World Health Organization and United Nations permission to usurp U.S. sovereignty; the Federal Reserve permission to print money on our way to economic Armageddon; and the World Economic Forum permission to usher in a "great reset" of centralized control and loss of individual liberty. Surely all that carnage is worth a relatively small finder's fee of 10%.
When Commie Joe's statements are viewed in their proper context, he is just a presidential truth-teller. Really. After all, he gives us his word as a Biden!
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