Wed 01 September 2021:
When the US military left Afghanistan, they damaged more than 150 manned planes and vehicles, according to Insider, an online news outlet.
According to US military general and chief of US Central Command Kenneth F. McKenzie, the last manned aircraft left Kabul on Tuesday, signaling the end of a nearly two-decade conflict in Afghanistan.
McKenzie told the Insider that the US military equipment that was left at the airport was carried out, and that other systems were purposefully “demilitarized,” meaning that they were intentionally broken to ensure that they could never be used again.
“We felt it more important to protect our forces than to bring those systems back,” he said, in reference to the demilitarization of equipment.
Last Monday, Republican congressman Jim Banks claimed that the Taliban had access to nearly $85 billion in military hardware, blaming it on the Biden administration’s “negligence.”
“We now know that due to the negligence of [President Joe Biden’s] administration, the Taliban now [have] access to over $85 billion worth of American military equipment,” said Banks, also a veteran who served in Afghanistan during the 20-year war.
However, some equipment such as front-end loaders and fire trucks remained operational so that the airport could restart operations quickly.
According to the Insider, the Taliban, who took control of the country in a sweeping offensive last month, have already gotten their hands on some working systems.
What did the Americans leave behind at Kabul airport as US forces departed after twenty years? pic.twitter.com/hEU67tTdSG
— علی مصطفی | Ali Mustafa (@Ali_Mustafa) August 31, 2021
When the group took over the country and beat the Afghan army, which the US government had spent billions of dollars on, it was able to capture a range of US-made equipment and weapons, ranging from military trucks to guns.
White House national security advisor Jake Sullivan said, “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.”
According to the New York Times, despite the United States spending $89 billion on training the Afghan army, it took the Taliban less than a month to trash it.
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