“U.S. and Coalition–provided weapons are at risk of theft, loss, or misuse,” the report said. “We’re very concerned,” added John Sopko, the Inspector General, “that weapons paid for by US taxpayers could wind up in the hands of insurgents and be used to kill Americans and Afghan troops and civilians.”
Training and equipping the Afghan National Police and Afghan National Army has been central to President Obama’s Afghanistan policy. But arming the police and army has been plagued by a lack of accountability, the report says.
The weapons distributed to Afghan forces include 465,000 small arms, the report says. But that number might not be accurate, an official with SIGAR said in an interview, because the data from the Department of Defense “is not very reliable.”
On top of the problems in accounting for the guns, the auditors found that Afghan forces have been sent far more rifles, machine guns and grenade launchers then they need in the first place. For example, Afghanistan received 83,000 excess AK-47 assault rifles.
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