US destroys unwanted gear and sells it as scrap

Angry scrapyard owners in Afghanistan have spoken out about the US military destroying equipment as they pack up ahead of the final withdrawal.

Inside one scrapyard, owned by Baba Mir, close to Bagram Air Base, lies the twisted remains of several all-terrain vehicles, The Associated Press (AP) reported.

Alongside these lie smashed shards that were once generators, tank tracks and mountains of tents that have been reduced to sliced up fabric.

Anything they are not shipping home or giving to the Afghans, the Americans are destroying.

Officials have said in the past that they are destroying the equipment so it does not fall into militant hands.

But, according to AP, Mir and other scrap sellers around Bagram have said it is an infuriating waste.

“What they are doing is a betrayal of Afghans. They should leave,” said Mir. “Like they have destroyed this vehicle, they have destroyed us.”

AP reports that as the last few thousand US and NATO troops withdraw, they leave behind many Afghans who are frustrated and angry.

They feel abandoned to a legacy they blame at least in part on the Americans — a deeply corrupt US-backed government and growing instability that could burst into a brutal new phase of civil war.

AP reported that the scrapyard owners are angry in part because they could have profited more from selling intact equipment.

According to AP, US officials are being secretive about what stays and what goes. Most of what is being shipped home is sensitive equipment never intended to stay behind, say US Defense and Western officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Other equipment including helicopters, military vehicles, weapons and ammunition will be handed over to Afghanistan’s National Defense and Security Forces and some bases will be given to them as well.

One of those most recently handed over was the New Antonik base in Helmand province, where Taliban are said to control roughly 80% of the rural area.

AP reports that destined for the scrap heap are equipment and vehicles that can neither be repaired nor transferred to Afghanistan’s security forces because of poor condition.

This is not however the first time this has happened. The same was done in 2014, when thousands of troops withdrew as the US and NATO handed Afghanistan’s security over to Afghans.

More than 176 million kilograms of scrap from destroyed equipment and vehicles was sold to Afghans for $46.5 million, a spokeswoman for the military’s Defense Logistics Agency in Virginia said at the time.

The Associated Press reported that last month, around the time President Joe Biden announced that America was ending it’s “forever war,” Mir paid nearly $40,000 for a container packed with 70 tons of trashed equipment.

He’ll make money, he told AP, but it will be a fraction of what he could have made selling the vehicles if they’d been left intact, even if they weren’t in running condition.

The parts would have been sold to the legions of auto repair shops across Afghanistan, he said. That can’t happen now. They’ve been reduced to mangled pieces of metal that Mir sells for a few thousand Afghanis.

Sadat, another scrap dealer in Bagram, says similar scrap yards around the country are crammed with ruined US equipment.

“They left us nothing,” he said. “They don’t trust us. They have destroyed our country. They are giving us only destruction.”