A scrap dealer checks equipment in a scrapyard outside Bagram Air Base, northwest of the capital Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, May 3, 2021. As US troops pack up to leave Afghanistan after nearly 20 years of war, it's trashing tons of equipment and selling it as scrap to local dealers. Among Afghans it is causing anger that the mountain of supplies and equipment was trashed before being sold to them. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul) Rahmat Gul AP
Military Times/AP: US military trashes unwanted gear in Afghanistan, sells as scrap
BAGRAM, Afghanistan (AP) — The twisted remains of several all-terrain vehicles leaned precariously inside Baba Mir’s sprawling scrapyard, alongside smashed shards that were once generators, tank tracks that have been dismantled into chunks of metal, and mountains of tents reduced to sliced up fabric.
It’s all U.S. military equipment. The Americans are dismantling their portion of nearby Bagram Air Base, their largest remaining outpost in Afghanistan, and anything that they are not taking home or giving to the Afghan military, they destroy as completely as possible.
They do so as a security measure, to ensure equipment doesn’t fall into militant hands. But to Mir and the dozens of other scrap sellers around Bagram, it’s 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.”
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WNU Editor: One man's garbage is another man's treasure. But not everything is being scrapped. Helicopters, military vehicles, weapons and ammunition will be handed over to Afghanistan’s National Defense and Security Forces. This sell-off of gear pales in comparison to the last U.S.-Afghan sell-off of US gear in 2013 .... The biggest yard sale in history: U.S. military racing to sell off or scrap $50BILLION of equipment in Afghanistan before it can fall into Taliban hands (Daily Mail).
5 comments:
normal operating procedure
Gear in the US which is not sold, but put in the dumpster is destroyed, so as to not be useable by scavengers in the US.
Maybe the Pentagon could reconsider the rules for place like Afghanistan. Sure the Afghans would get a deal on a diesel generator. They would appreciate it more than scrap heaps. It might last as long as an American made car the liberal utopia of Cuba.
So if the Afghans get a deal, outrage should follow? It is not as if we did not pay a premium for supplies and building materials while we were staying and not leaving. Concrete could go for 3 times, 10 times, or more what it would anywhere else. So outrage now. Concrete is expensive outside of a war zone. Inside of one ...
“What they are doing is a betrayal of Afghans. They should leave,” said Mir. “Like they have destroyed this vehicle, they have destroyed us.”
No, Mr. Mir, it is the Taliban who will destroy you. The US tried to save you, but your entire polluted culture is too corrupt to stand on its own. Don't blame the USA, blame yourselves.
Why take away us citizens guns
Give it too the us citizens u fools
Chinese will invasion soon
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