According to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), “As of June 30, 2021, the U.S. Congress had appropriated nearly $88.61 billion to help the Afghan government provide security in Afghanistan.” The near 90 billion was spent in Afghanistan since 2002 Over more than 20 years the US spent and estimated 18.6 million on weapons and equipment. This does not account for how much was damaged, destroyed, stolen, lost, in repair or otherwise unavailable. The majority of money spent over the 20 years was not for weapons,. Salaries, food, clothes, supplies. Much of the equipment and weapons under control of the American military was removed or destroyed or damaged.
COLLAPSE OF THE AFGHAN MILITARY
The already weakened Afghan military collapsed quickly after the American military left Afghanistan. When the Americans left Afghanistan there was no agreement among republicans as well as among democrats that the US military should have disarmed the Afghan military before they left. This is the absurd underlying assumption for much of the republican propaganda about Afghanistan. The DOD made a report that estimated how much equipment and weapons the Taliban may have taken over from Afghan military collapse after the Americans left. They estimated that there might have been 7 billion of equipment and weapons left in Afghanistan. But there was no way to know how much was still operational.
THE CLAIMS
After the American Military left Afghanistan and the Taliban overran the Afghan army the American social media started to have some absurd claims about the Biden administration gifting 80 + billion dollars of weapons to the Taliban (2,3). Various versions of this story has been floating around for a while. Another example is the report that Taliban got more helicopters than the Belgian army (4). This is based on the assumption that all helicopters ever sent to Afghanistan were captured by the Taliban after the American military left. The Sigar report lists 26 helicopters that were removed from Kabul by the US military. It also lists 78 aircraft that were among the equipment destroyed before leaving. The SIGAR report also states that after the Afghan president left the capital in a helicopter then many Afghan pilots of helicopters and other aircraft flew their aircraft to Tajikistan or Uzbekistan. These fake stories about 85 billion of weapons and equipment got picked up by the fake news media (5). Even Fox News , who normally likes a lot of extreme propaganda, had a more reasonable estimate of the value of equipment that the Taliban may have been able to take over from the Afghan military (6).
THE FACTS
The money spent on equipment and weapons was spent over 20 years. A substantial amount was spent during the 4 years of the Trump administration (14) . The biggest cost in Afghanistan was the salaries of US and Afghan security forces. A lot of the budget went to consumable items including food, clothes, training , fuel and ammunition (1) . Large numbers of the guns, vehicles, radios and other equipment that the U.S. provided to Afghanistan were destroyed over the course of almost 20 years of constant fighting. There is an assumption that the Taliban captured everything that was sent to Afghanistan over 20 years. This is obviously incorrect. It is assumed that the Taliban knows how to maintain the equipment that was left. Even the US military did not have staff to do all the maintenance. They paid foreign contractors to do maintenance. There is an unstated assumption that the Taliban will use the weapons they captured from the Afghan army to attack Americans. But the Taliban have never attacked anyone outside of Afghanistan. They have only attacked invaders in Afghanistan including the Russians and Americans. They are now at war with ISIS and Al Qaeda, other invaders that are common enemies of America. There have been many news organizations fact checking the absurd claims that over 80 + billions of weapons or equipment was given to the Taliban (7,8,9,10.11,12,13)
THE REPUBLICAN PROPAGANDA
When Trump negotiated the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan the military experts warned trump and congress that a complete withdrawal would probably cause the Afghan army to collapse. But neither congress nor Trump nor any republicans requested that the Afghan Army be disarmed before the withdrawal. So after the Afghan military collapsed of course the Taliban inherited some equipment and weapons. There have been a number of Republicans involved in extreme exaggeration of what the Taliban took over from the Afghan Army . This has been summarized (15) . Rand Paul a Republican congressman that was a former medical doctor has been complaining about the 85 Billion dollars of weapons. Also Jim Banks, a republican congressman that reportedly has an MBA has been making these same complaints (16). The public is left to decide whether these Republican members of Congress are really stupid enough to believe that 80 billion dollars of weapons were gifted to the Taliban or are they just deliberately lying. Of course Donald trump Jr had to promote that same lie (17). Donald Trump has repeated this lie multiple times (18). During the debate with Harris he said that the Taliban was given 85 billion dollars worth of beautiful weapons. Americans should reject this kind of blatant lying from politicians seeking govt office.
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