The most amazing thing about our dual conflicts in the Middle East isn't how our armed forces screw up basic operations and logistics issues. It's how quickly they seem to repeat the same mistakes over and over again. It seems that our government officials are accidentally supplying the Taliban with thousands of firearms.
The audit by the Government Accountability Office found that inventory controls were lacking for more than a third of the 242,000 light weapons donated to Afghan forces by the United States -- a stockpile that includes thousands of AK-47 assault rifles as well as mortars, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
There were no reliable records showing what ultimately happened to an additional 135,000 weapons donated by other NATO countries, the report said. Many of the weapons, supplied between 2004 and 2008, were left in the care of Afghan-run military depots with a history of desertion, theft and sub-par security systems that sometimes consist of a wooden door and a padlock, the report said.
So let's jump in the time machine and go back a few years... and to another country.
"This was the craziest thing in the world," said John Tisdale, a retired Air Force master sergeant who managed an adjacent warehouse. "They were taking weapons away by the truckload."
Activities at that armory and other warehouses help explain how the US military lost track of about 190,000 pistols and automatic rifles supplied by the United States to Iraq's security forces in 2004 and 2005, as auditors discovered in the past year.
These discoveries prompted criminal inquiries by the Defense and Justice departments, and stoked fears that the arms could fall into enemy hands and be used against US troops. So far, no missing weapons have been linked to any US deaths, but investigators say that in a country awash with weapons, it might be impossible to trace where some ended up.
There's no question that the illegal dealing in small arms is a major international business. And yet what our government worries about as the "gravest threat to our country" are those chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear hazards that aren't being sold in the thousands every year. We're a strange bunch...
Insurgents getting government forces equipment is an unavoidable fact of life to me.
Did you miss the CNN report about the black markets in Pakistan where they sell Western equipment stolen from the trucks?
The reporter only went to some easily accessible markets, not those where the weapons were being sold. He reported Pakistani troops buying U.S. equipment there and the video showed lots of individual equipment.
It ran on CNN international, which airs a different program than CNN in CONUS afaik.
Posted by: Sven Ortmann | 13 February 2009 at 09:23 AM
I have read, the Pentagon, Washington Post, and BBC reports, but can't find (have I missed?) the most essential ingredient:
Ammunition.
My gun was would have been useless without this- unless at very close quarters.
R.
Posted by: Ray | 14 February 2009 at 06:34 AM
You have a good point, Ray. I'm sure the market for ammo is equally lucrative. But ammunition isn't sexy. Doesn't sell newspapers.
Posted by: J. | 14 February 2009 at 10:03 AM
And I'd add that I'd be more upset if these were AK-74s, FN/FALs or H&K's. Most of them are craptacular old AK-47s and M-16s that, as Sven points out, the G's can pick up most everywhere.
Actually, what this story points up is that you cantake an Afghan out of the feudal tribal milita and pretend that he's a modern "soldier" but you can't really take the tribal warrior out of the Afghan. We're wasting tons of money trying to teach these guys to run a U.S. Army style arms room with regular inventory control of the weapons. But the mindset of a preindustrial Afghan tribesman is unlikely to be too worried about what the serial # of his bang-stick is when he's selling it in the bazaar to get some money for more smokes.
Bricks without straw.
Posted by: FDChief | 14 February 2009 at 12:18 PM