New York (Web Desk/Agencies): A major American publication has echoed what Pakistani officials have consistently argued for years that insurgent factions based in Afghanistan have been launching attacks on Pakistan using high-grade weapons originally supplied by the United States (US).
These arms, left behind during the chaotic American withdrawal in 2021, are now resurfacing in conflict zones across Pakistan, raising alarm among security agencies.
“Many of these weapons ended up just across the border,” the Washington Post wrote in its recent investigation, “landing in local arms markets and falling into the hands of militants.”
The report pointed to a tragic incident last month—the bombing of the Jaffar Express in Balochistan—as one of the attacks where such US-supplied weapons were deployed.
According to the paper, an M4A1 carbine recovered from the site bore a serial number that matched those assigned to equipment issued to American forces in Afghanistan.
“After years of progress in tackling extremist violence, Pakistan now finds itself confronting a dangerous resurgence, fueled in part by sophisticated American weapons,” the report stated in coverage filed from Peshawar.
It went on to cite multiple sources—including militants, arms dealers, and officials—who confirmed that modern US military gear, from automatic rifles to advanced optics, is now in the arsenal of groups like the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
“They have gear straight from American stockpiles,” said Ahmad Hussain, a 35-year-old member of Pakistan’s special forces who was seriously wounded in a nighttime ambush.
“They could see us in the dark,” he recalled bitterly. “But we had no idea where they were.”
Earlier this year, Pakistani authorities granted The Washington Post rare access to a cache of weapons seized from insurgents. After months of verification, the Pentagon and US Army acknowledged that 63 of the weapons shown to reporters had indeed been supplied to Afghan forces.
The haul included mostly M16s and a number of newer M4 carbines, as well as several PVS-14 night-vision devices.
Following the March 11 bombing of the Jaffer Express, for which the Balochistan Liberation Army claimed responsibility, officials in Pakistan submitted serial numbers of three rifles recovered from the attackers. According to documentation obtained by the newspaper under the Freedom of Information Act, two of those rifles were verified as US-origin arms.
The Foreign Office in Islamabad had flagged the proliferation of these weapons as a matter of national security back in January, a concern the newspaper reiterated.
“The influx of such advanced American-made arms has deeply destabilized border regions and worsened the country’s security landscape,” the Post noted.
Former US President Donald Trump added fuel to the issue in February when he publicly criticized the failure to recover the equipment left behind. “We abandoned tens of billions of dollars in military hardware,” Trump said, “and now, we need to get that equipment back.”
Those remarks sparked cautious optimism in Pakistani diplomatic circles that Washington might take stronger action to stem the flow of these arms. Yet, for many, the damage is already irreversible. “It’s far too late,” one senior Pakistani official was quoted as saying off the record.
Meanwhile, the Taliban-led administration in Kabul showed no willingness to cooperate. Their chief spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, dismissed US claims, saying, “These weapons now belong to Afghanistan. No one has the right to demand them back.”
Michael Kugelman, a well-known analyst of South Asian affairs, offered a grim assessment of Pakistan’s security trajectory. “There’s a real danger that Pakistan could slip back into the dark years of 2009 to 2014, when terrorist violence was rampant.”
When the Taliban seized power in August 2021, an estimated $7 billion in American military assets remained in Afghanistan, according to a 2023 report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR).
That report also criticized the US military’s lax inventory practices and described the final exit as “abrupt and poorly managed.”
SIGAR’s numbers are staggering: over 250,000 rifles and approximately 18,000 night-vision devices were left behind. Raz Muhammad, a veteran arms dealer in Pakistan, told the paper that night-vision equipment that once sold for $2,000 could be bought for less than $300 after the Taliban took over. “These items flooded the market,” he said. “Everyone wanted them.”
According to Pakistani military sources, insurgents have since combined these tools with small drones to stage increasingly precise and lethal strikes. Major Zaheer Hassan, who was injured in one such attack, warned, “Combat has become far more lethal. They’re not just better armed—they’re more tactical.”
The report also highlighted issues with recordkeeping in US military databases. One example included three M203 grenade launchers misclassified as rifles, possibly due to clerical errors involving their serial numbers.
Along with the firearms, Pakistani officials also displayed American body armor and stacks of specialized ammunition—some capable of piercing armored vehicles and even downing aircraft.
In places like Darra Adamkhel, a town near Peshawar long known for its underground arms trade, the influx of US weapons marked a new chapter. “We saw weapons we’d never handled before,” one local vendor told the Post. “They came in by the truckload.”
A senior TTP figure, Qari Shuaib Bajauri, noted that prices for arms and gear plummeted as American-made weapons flooded the region. “It was a golden time for us,” he said. “And it started even before the Americans were fully out.”
However, recent crackdowns by Pakistani security agencies have disrupted many of these black-market operations. Arrests and raids have brought some calm, though the weapons remain in circulation.
The situation has also drawn international scrutiny. A United Nations (UN) report from last year stated that frontline Taliban fighters have directly supplied allied groups like the TTP with arms and equipment captured from US depots.