The Taliban Did Not Seize 83 Billion Worth of U.S. Weapons
The Claim
The Taliban owns over $80 billion worth of US-funded military equipment.
News posted on
Emerging story
A claim has gone viral by multiple verified accounts that the Afghan Taliban own over $80 billion of US military weapons. Many users shared an infographic of the Taliban listing the weapons they have in possession as funded by the US. Users expressed their anger and questioned why the weapons were not destroyed.
Misbar’s Analysis
MENA: An investigation into the claim revealed that the alleged $85 billion was taken from a statement released by former President Donald Trump. The quarterly report released on July 30 by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) goes into detail about the US funding to Afghanistan.
The report states that as of June 30, 2021, the U.S. Congress had “appropriated nearly $88.61 billion to help the Afghan government provide security in Afghanistan.” However, this amount was divided between multiple agents of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF), including the Afghanistan Security Forces Fund (ASFF), Afghan National Army (ANA), Afghan Air Force (AFF), and the Afghan National Police (ANP) since 2002. While the funding did include military equipment, it also had salaries, incentive pay, housing, infrastructure, fuel, transportation services, training, operations, and equipment maintenance costs.
For example, the report included the military equipment for the ANA, as can be seen below, costing just over $212 million. This amount is nowhere near $80 billion.
This amount also does not account for wear and tear, depreciation and maintenance required for the equipment to be used today. While the US did fund some Afghan military equipment currently in use, it is misleading to state that the Taliban now have access to over $80 billion worth of US-funded military equipment as it is not valid.
