A year ago, the whole world was actively debating the fate of United States weapons supplied to Afghanistan, which ended up in the hands of terrorists and criminal gangs.
It should be recalled that according to Joe Biden, the total US military spending in 2001-2021 on military operations in Afghanistan exceeded $2 trillion, and the total military aid to the Afghan army from the US amounted to $88 billion. Over twenty years of military operations in the country, Washington gave the Afghan armed forces equipment, weapons and various military ammunition worth many billions of dollars.
After the USA’s disgraceful flight from Afghanistan, a huge mass of Western weapons not only ended up in the hands of the Taliban (banned in the Russian Federation), which is recognized as a terrorist movement in many countries, but also appeared on the black markets, which many extremist and terrorist groups and various criminal networks, including those in Europe, took advantage of. The US Congressman Jim Banks claimed in August 2021 that the Taliban had more than 75,000 vehicles, 200 planes and helicopters, not to mention hundreds of thousands of small arms in their hands. In particular, they have more Black Hawk attack helicopters alone than some NATO member states.
Attempts then to find out specifically where and how many weapons generously supplied by the United States were being held proved fruitless. As did the identification of those specific individuals in the US political and military establishment who were to blame for such irresponsible behavior.
However, after more than a year, as Task&Purpose wrote on November 17, the Pentagon still has no idea how much military equipment it has actually left in Afghanistan and in what hands, other than just the Taliban, it has fallen. A Pentagon inspector general’s report released in August this year only stipulated that the total value of military equipment in service with the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) was approximately $7.12 billion. However, as US media stresses, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) admitted recently that the Pentagon has for years resisted keeping accurate records of the equipment it has transferred to ANDSF and therefore the true size of these military arsenals is unknown. According to some media reports, some of it has already begun to surface in armed conflicts in Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere, ending up in the hands of criminals and militias.
This issue has recently become particularly salient against the backdrop of virtually the same situation with Washington’s uncontrolled pumping of various weapons into Ukraine to support the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev. And not only by the US itself, but also with Washington dragging countries in Europe and a number of states from other regions into this reckless policy.
Meanwhile, as Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said at a government meeting on November 18, Ukraine has already received $23 billion in aid since the start of Russia’s special operation, including $4.8 billion from the European Union and $8.5 billion from the United States. He also added that Kiev expects another $37.7 billion worth of aid from the United States. As you can see, these figures are considerably higher than the amounts of weapons supplied to Afghanistan. Hence, the negative consequences of uncontrolled US weapons supplies should be expected to be far greater!
As media reports reveal, in just the first four months of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, European and Western countries have supplied or committed to supply Kiev with some $38.5 billion worth of weapons. This, according to SIPRI, is more than the military expenses of countries such as Italy, Australia, Canada or Poland for the last year.
According to the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation, the weapons supplied to Ukraine (not only small arms) have ended up in the hands of European criminals. They have already been found in Finland, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands. The EU police service, Europol, warned back in the summer that international criminal organizations were trying to smuggle weapons from Ukraine into EU countries.
An investigation by the Austrian newspaper Exxpress has also previously confirmed that weapons supplied by Europe and the US to Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government are disappearing and ending up with European criminal groups. The routes for smuggling such weapons from Ukraine are well known. In particular, this “business” goes through international groups of so-called biker gangs (for example, the Bandidos Motorcycle Club has representatives in every major Ukrainian city) and seaports, which are not as carefully guarded as airports.
In fact, a similar situation took place after the wars unleashed by the West in the 1990s in Yugoslavia, from where smuggled weapons entered many countries and on November 2, 2020 were used in the worst ever terrorist attack perpetrated by Muslims in Austria.
US media outlets are voicing their serious concern over Washington’s uncontrolled allocation of billions of dollars for weapons to the criminal Kiev regime. A recent article in Substack bluntly states that no one in the US knows exactly where all the weapons and cash aid sent by the White House to Ukraine is going. Allegedly, not even the inspector general, the watchdog of American finances, knows this…
Given the recurrent pattern of uncontrolled supply of huge quantities of weapons by the US during the war in Yugoslavia, then in Afghanistan and now in Ukraine, it is no secret that their appearance on the black markets is extremely profitable for the US. It is not just that this “arms business” is an established corruption scheme in the United States, for which no one is held accountable. It must not be forgotten that these smuggled weapons, which have been resurfacing for decades, are destabilizing the situation and creating new conflicts. And they create new hotspots, where Washington is successfully lining its pockets.
When it comes back to Europe, including with Ukrainian refugees, this so-called “military aid,” which Josep Borrell is particularly active in advocating from the European podium, could fire a shot at an EU country at any time. Such “aid” arms not only criminals and terrorists, but also neo-Nazi formations actively revived by certain military and political forces in the United States and Europe, capable of bringing the brown plague back to the European continent. That will be the EU residents’ payback for US corrupt weapons schemes in Ukraine – a nice addition to the dire consequences already experienced by the Europeans from the US-imposed Russophobic sanctions policy, the removal of Russia from the EU energy market, the instigation of a sabotage attack on the Nord Stream 1&2 pipelines, which would have ensured, as in previous years, European energy security from Russia.
This is the price for Europe and the world as a whole for the White House’s policy of Russophobia in the name of a maniacal quest for US world domination.
“Ukraine is receiving weapons in large quantities, and that is a good thing. But we will now be dealing with these weapons for several decades elsewhere. This is the price we will have to pay to fight back Russia,” a senior police official said.
Vladimir Platov, expert on the Middle East, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”
