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US destroying its military equipment in Afghanistan

Thu Jun 20, 2013 8:43AM

U.S. military contract workers tear apart an armored vehicle at an airfield in Kandahar, Afghanistan on June 17.

The U.S. military has destroyed more than 170 million pounds of vehicles and other military equipment in Afghanistan, wasting an estimated $7 billion in an era of contracting budgets and austerity.

Military planners have determined that they will not ship back about 20 percent of what the U.S. military has in Afghanistan because they would be too costly to ship back home, according to The Washington Post.

The massive disposal of military equipment which is taking place mostly out of sight has raised sharp questions in the United States about whether the Pentagon’s approach is fiscally responsible.

Maj. Gen. Kurt J. Stein, head of the 1st Sustainment Command, who is overseeing the drawdown effort in Afghanistan said, “This is the largest retrograde mission in history.”

The most controversial part of the effort includes the disposal of Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, known as MRAPs, which cost about $1 million each.

The U.S. military has labeled about 2,000 of its roughly 11,000 MRAPs in Afghanistan as “excess” and will probably destroy them, officials say.

Analysts have estimated that the total cost of withdrawing from Afghanistan will be about $10 billion.

According to a study by Harvard scholar Linda Bilmes in March, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will cost the U.S. between $4-6 trillion in the long term.

Under the terms of an agreement with Kabul, U.S.-led NATO forces should end all combat operations in Afghanistan by December 2014, but President Barack Obama has said some U.S. forces will remain there beyond the deadline.

Army General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said he supports keeping 8,000 to 12,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan after most coalition forces leave the country.

The Afghan war has become the longest-running war in U.S. history, and there is no end in sight. The Taliban remain in control of major parts of the nation and civilian and troop casualties continue to mount.

In February, the Geneva-based UN Committee on the Rights of the Child said in a report that “attacks by U.S. military forces in Afghanistan, including air strikes, have reportedly killed hundreds of children over the last four years.”

AHT/HJ

 

 

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