Terrorists Use Weapons Left by U.S. in Afghanistan to Attack Civilians, Police in Pakistan

Sophisticated weapons and other military equipment left behind by U.S. troops during the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal are being used by Islamic terrorists in Pakistan’s largest province of Balochistan, which has seen a spike violent attacks against civilians, police, levies, and military personnel. The head of the region’s police department, Inspector General Moazzam Jah Ansari, revealed during a press conference with local media this week that his officers are essentially outgunned by radical factions armed with modern American weapons, thermal sensors and night vision equipment abandoned by the United States in the Taliban-run country it shares a 1,640 mile border with. Ansari confirmed his police force lacks access to that type of equipment.

Balochistan, which spans about 44% of Pakistan, has been gripped by an increase in terrorist attacks in the last few years mostly carried out by the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), a militant organization based in Afghanistan. Just weeks ago, the group killed at least 50 people in various onslaughts that targeted police stations, railway systems and civilian vehicles. In 2019 the U.S. State Department classified BLA as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT), noting that it is an armed separatist group that targets security forces and civilians in ethnic Baloch areas of Pakistan. “BLA has carried out several terrorist attacks in the past year, including a suicide attack in August 2018 that targeted Chinese engineers in Balochistan, a November 2018 attack committed ore consulate in Karachi, and a May 2019 attack against a luxury hotel in Gwadar, Balochistan,” the State Department writes in its announcement aimed at notifying the U.S public and international community that BLA has committed, or poses a significant risk of committing acts of terrorism.

It may seem ironic that the same extremists are using American weapons abandoned by the United States government to commit its massacres. This is not the first report involving terrorists using equipment left in Afghanistan during the Biden administration’s abrupt withdraw, though the government has long denied any wrongdoing. The Biden administration has spun the matter with a high-level Pentagon official even dismissing allegations of leaving weapons behind as a “farce.” Less than a year ago, when Pakistan asked the United Nations to investigate how militants in Afghanistan are acquiring sophisticated weapons, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin’s assistant for public affairs, John F. Kirby, told a White House news conference: “This is a fallacy, this is a farce. What we did, over the course of our 20 years in Afghanistan, of course, with congressional approval and consultations, was arm and help equip the Afghan national security forces.” Kirby stressed that the United States did not just walk away and abandon a bunch of weapons in Afghanistan. “That’s simply not historically accurate,” he said. The story appeared in several media outlets, including the government-funded Voice of America.

Last month the Taliban celebrated the third anniversary of the U.S. withdraw in Afghanistan—and its return to power—by parading American and NATO military equipment that was in fact left behind. “The group used Bagram Airfield, once the center of America’s war on terror, to promote what it called their achievements to provide ‘peace and security,’ as they continue to sell seized weapons to some of America’s enemies,” according to one news report. The story says the Pentagon estimates that around $7 billion in U.S. military equipment was left in Afghanistan, including over 78 aircraft, 12,000 Humvees, 42,000 trucks and 350,000 rifles. It quotes a retired Lieutenant Colonel saying, “we should not at all be surprised the Chinese sent teams into Afghanistan as soon as the C-17 said, ‘wheels up,’ leaving Kabul behind and all that technology behind.”