WASHINGTON: The Taliban in Afghanistan regularly use captured US weapons to attack government outposts, the US media reported on Wednesday.

Recently, American warplanes destroyed about 40 US-supplied Humvees that the Taliban had captured from Afghanistan’s military over the past several years, the USA TODAY newspaper reported.

It claimed that the report about this “recurring problem” was based on official statistics collected by the US and Nato forces in Afghanistan.

According to these statistics, Taliban fighters frequently capture US-supplied equipment and then disappear into the countryside. “The Humvees struck by American aircraft may only represent a fraction of the equipment now in Taliban hands,” the paper claimed.

While accounting for the US-supplied equipment, American investigators found that the militants not only capture the weapons they use but also buy these from the Afghan military. Because of widespread corruption in Afghanistan’s defence establishment, US officials have determined that dealing with “Afghanistan’s military remains a challenge,” the report added.

A recent Pentagon inspector general report pointed out that since 2005 the United States purchased 95,000 vehicles for the Afghan security forces, but the coalition command responsible for equipping the country’s army and police couldn’t account for all of them.

Unarmoured Humvees that were often captured and sold to the Taliban cost the government about $70,000 each. “One vehicle that was reported destroyed in battle was later brought in for maintenance,” the report added.

Lt Col Martin O’Donnell, a US military spokesman, told the newspaper that when coalition forces learn about the stolen equipment, they act quickly to recapture or eliminate it, so as not to allow the enemy an advantage”.

If the equipment can’t be recaptured with a ground attack it is destroyed from the air. The 40 Humvees were destroyed in US airstrikes since January 2015, shortly after US combat forces left Afghanistan and Afghan government troops took the lead in fighting the Taliban.

The newspaper noted that the captured American equipment “not only gives militants increased firepower or protection, but is often used by the Taliban to disguise themselves as American or allied Afghan forces in an effort to slip past guards”.

Last month, militants used a captured Humvee to launch an attack on Afghanistan’s interior ministry.

An analyst at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Washington told USA TODAY that “even quick insurgent raids can capture expensive equipment”. Staging raids to steal arms and equipment is “a pretty standard guerrilla tactic,” said Seth Jones.

Since 2002, the United States has spent nearly $80 billion on building Afghanistan’s security forces, which consist of about 300,000 soldiers and police.

But John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, noted in a recent report that Afghanistan’s ability to fund its own military remained “severely limited” as its government depended heavily on the US to finance its armed forces.

The report noted that since the departure of US combat troops in 2014, Afghanistan’s military has suffered high casualties and struggled to maintain control over some remote towns and villages.

Published in Dawn, June 7th, 2018