By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Billions of dollars in American-supplied weapons and military equipment abandoned during the chaotic 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan have become the core of the Taliban’s security forces, according to a final report by a United States government watchdog, with some of those arms already appearing in the hands of militants launching attacks across the border in Pakistan.
The assessment, released this week by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, shows the far-reaching consequences of America’s two-decade effort to rebuild the country, which ended in failure.
Congress provided roughly $144.7 billion between 2002 and 2021 to reconstruct Afghanistan and support a democratic transition, “yet ultimately delivered neither,” the 137-page report states. Findings from United Nations monitoring teams and a separate investigation by The Washington Post have amplified concerns about the regional fallout.
UN reports indicate that the Afghan Taliban are providing logistical and operational support to the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), while The Post has traced dozens of US-origin weapons to terrorist hands in Pakistan, where attacks on the state have intensified.
The spillover stems in part from the sudden loss of oversight after the Taliban’s takeover. “Due to the Taliban takeover, SIGAR was unable to inspect any of the equipment provided to, or facilities constructed for, the Afghan National Defence and Security Forces (ANDSF) following the Afghan government’s collapse,” the report explains.
The Defence Department has acknowledged that about $7.1 billion worth of American-provided equipment was left behind, including thousands of vehicles, hundreds of thousands of small arms, night-vision devices and more than 160 aircraft.
In Pakistan, the repercussions are increasingly evident. The Washington Post reported that serial numbers on at least 63 weapons seized inside the country match those originally supplied by Washington to Afghan forces. Pakistani officials told The Post that some of these rifles and carbines are “significantly superior” to the weaponry commonly used by TTP fighters before 2021.
UN assessments have raised similar alarms. The 36th Monitoring Report, issued in 2025, estimates that the TTP maintains a force of around 6,000 fighters spread across the Afghan provinces of Ghazni, Helmand, Kandahar, Kunar, Uruzgan and Zabul, and shares training facilities with Al Qaeda. Addressing the UN Security Council, Denmark’s deputy permanent representative, Sandra Jensen Landi, said the TTP continues to receive “logistical and substantial support from the de facto authorities” in Kabul.
Earlier UN reports have detailed the extent of that assistance, including Taliban-provided guesthouses, weapons permits, movement authorisations and immunity from arrest for TTP leaders, arrangements that have allowed the group to deepen its foothold in Afghan territory.
SIGAR’s quarterly reports for 2025 cite a series of cross-border attacks, including an assault in South Waziristan that killed 16 Pakistani security personnel. The SIGAR review also lays bare the enormity, and ultimate futility, of the American investment in Afghanistan’s security sector. Between 2002 and June 2025, Washington obligated $31.2 billion for infrastructure, transportation and equipment for the Afghan National Defence and Security Forces. That funding purchased 96,000 ground vehicles, more than 427,000 weapons, 17,400 night-vision devices and at least 162 aircraft.
As of July 2021, just before the Afghan government’s collapse, the Afghan Air Force had 131 operational US-supplied aircraft, virtually all of which are now under Taliban control, the report says.
An additional $11.5 billion went toward constructing bases, headquarters and training facilities across Afghanistan, most of which are now either controlled by the Taliban or inaccessible to US inspectors. The report attributes the broader failure to foundational flaws in the American approach. Early decisions to back “corrupt, human-rights-abusing powerbrokers,” SIGAR argues, undermined governance, fueled insurgent recruitment and gradually eroded the institutions the United States was attempting to establish.
The watchdog estimates that $26 billion to $29.2 billion was lost to waste, fraud and abuse. The toll extended far beyond finances. Tens of thousands of Afghans and more than 2,450 American service members were killed, only for the Taliban regime to be restored, and now strengthened by the very equipment the United States spent years procuring for its adversaries, the report adds.
Even after the withdrawal, the United States has remained Afghanistan’s largest donor, disbursing more than $3.83 billion in humanitarian and development assistance since August 2021, a commitment that highlights Washington’s ongoing challenge in balancing aid needs with security risks. he Afghanistan experience, it states, should serve as a cautionary tale for any future effort to rebuild fragile states on a massive scale — a failure whose ripple effects are now reshaping the security landscape of the wider region.
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