US weapons left in Afghanistan boost militants attacking Pakistan, report says

American military equipment left behind in Afghanistan is sharpening the capability of militant groups that mount attacks inside Pakistan, according to a report by the US publication RealClearDefense carried by Pakistani outlets including Minute Mirror and Samaa.

The report was published about five years after US forces withdrew from Afghanistan in August 2021, and examines what the abandoned arsenal has meant for militancy in the region.

It states that more than $7 billion worth of US military equipment remained in Afghanistan when the Taliban returned to power. According to the report, the material left behind included more than 300,000 weapons, over 40,000 military vehicles and 78 aircraft.

The report centres on the transfer of advanced weapons to groups operating against Pakistan. It cites a United Nations Security Council monitoring team that has pointed to allegations that Taliban commanders are supplying modern weapons to the outfit Pakistani authorities call Fitna al-Khawarij, the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan.

Among the weapons said to have been supplied were M24 sniper rifles, M4 rifles fitted with telescopic sights and M16 rifles equipped with thermal sights, the report says. It adds that equipment reaches militants through Taliban commanders and through Afghanistan's black market, and that the availability of such material has raised the operational reach of militant organisations.

The report also says serial numbers recovered from 63 weapons seized from militants in Pakistan have been traced to US arms suppliers.

The findings, as presented by the two outlets, renew questions about the security consequences of the 2021 withdrawal. Pakistan has repeatedly called on the Afghan Taliban authorities to prevent their territory from being used for attacks against the country.

Neither the RealClearDefense report nor the Pakistani accounts of it carried comment from Pakistan's Foreign Office or from the Taliban administration in Kabul, and the specific claims about weapon transfers could not be independently verified.

Both outlets presented the report as a foreign assessment of Pakistan's security environment rather than as a set of confirmed incidents, and neither gave details of particular attacks in which the weapons described were used.

Minute Mirror and Samaa carried the same core figures and the same account of the UN monitoring team's allegations, with no disagreement between them on the value of the equipment, the quantities left behind or the routes by which the weapons are said to travel.