Lost in Afghanistan

To be forearmed is to be forearmed

“We don’t have a complete picture, obviously, of where every article of defense materials has gone, but certainly a fair amount of it has fallen into the hands of the Taliban. And obviously, we don’t have a sense that they are going to readily hand it over to us at the airport.”

—White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan

PICKUPS and tuk tuks are probably still a big part of the op-order when the Taliban moves from here to there. If they even bother with paperwork like op-orders. Its members may move more like a mob, following the loudest man with the most ammo. Another reason to be puzzled about their takeover of an entire nation.

But the Taliban now have more than three-wheeled auto-rickshaws to get around in. Thanks to you, the American taxpayer, and those leaders in Washington who bugged out before getting their ducks—and their Humvees—in a row.

Today is Aug. 31, the president’s deadline for getting out of Afghanistan.

As it crumbles. The debate on whether or not to leave is over, or should be. It’s a done deal.

A couple of months ago, when the president of the United States announced his intentions to walk away from that country, some of us were puzzled. Before he said that, and caused such a ruckus, when was the last time you thought about Afghanistan? But there we go, debating a done deal again.

There’s a meme going around about the number of weapons, vehicles and pieces of equipment that the United States military left to the Taliban. Or, better and more accurately put, the pieces that we’d meant for the Afghan National Defense forces before they walked away from them. Rule No. 254 of the Internet: Don’t trust memes. So we looked around for other sources.

The BBC reports that formerly ragtag Taliban fighters were seen the other day in top military paraphernalia: “Some of them were seen in complete combat gear in social media posts and couldn’t be distinguished from other special forces from across the world. There was no characteristic long beard or traditional shalwar kameez, and certainly no rusted weapons. They looked the part.”

The United States government, in a report by an inspector general specially authorized for Afghanistan, said the Afghan defense forces had four C-130 aircrafts rolling down the strip, 23 A-29 Super Tucano ground-attack airplanes, 45—count ‘em, 45—Black Hawk helicopters, and 50 smaller helicopters. On top of dozens of fixed-wing aircraft.

The good news is that reports say some Afghan pilots flew many of those aircraft to neighboring countries before the Taliban could claim them. The bad new is, well, everything else.

NPR quoted an American pilot who said that a body can’t just strap into a Black Hawk and fly it around. He said if the Taliban got ahold of a manual, a couple of them may be able to turn the motor over, and maybe get the rotors turning. But if they managed to get into the air, they’d “probably be more of a danger to themselves than to anyone else at that point.”

But it doesn’t take a master’s degree to shoot a machine gun, use night-vision equipment, or sell Black Hawk helicopters.

It’s not likely a gang like the Taliban, which hopes to take the world back to the seventh century, attracts a lot of aircraft engineers. And as far as reverse-engineering sensitive equipment, China and Russia probably have all the information on Black Hawks that they need. Surely the American generals in charge wouldn’t have sent anything of a secret nature to even our allied government in Afghanistan.

But those things are expensive.

Forbes reports that a Black Hawk goes for $21 million. Those Super Tucano airplanes cost about the same.

Forbes also reports that a common M-16 rifle can get right at $750. Putting a grenade launcher on it can up its price to the nth degree.

Machine guns can sell for up to around $10K. But a particular model of a lost surveillance balloon can get $8.9 million. ScanEagle drones: $1.4 million. Wolfhound radio systems approach $900,000.

If the new rulers of Afghanistan captured all of the night-vision goggles we sent there, then they’re sitting on as much as $80 million in that kind of equipment alone.

IN ANOTHER report, “an unnamed official” told Reuters that “current intelligence assessment” has it that the Taliban wound up with more than 2,000 armored vehicles. We imagine even the Taliban will figure out how to use some of them in country. Any surplus can be sold off at auction.

That doesn’t include pistols, shotguns, and simple things like that.

All this makes you wonder why the brass for our military—which certainly does use op-orders, every day—didn’t think to get all this equipment at least out of the country before the fall of Kabul. If not back to these shores, necessarily, then at least out of the hands of the Taliban. As things stand, we have just armed the enemy with weapons and treasure.

We don’t have to debate a done deal to understand how dangerous this could be to our country, and to our allies, in the years to come.