No clue to equipment provided to Afghans: SIGAR

KABUL (Pajhwok): The Pentagon has no clue to military equipment supplied to the Afghan security forces, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) says.

In its latest quarterly report released on Thursday, the federal watchdog slammed the Department of Defense for having no effective mechanism for getting back the sensitive military equipment.

“SIGAR found that CSTC-A (Combined Security Transition Command – Afghanistan) inventoried only 40 percent of applicable articles during the 365-day period from May 2019 through April 2020,” the report said.

Sputnik reported SIGAR also found that CSTC-A had not inventoried at least 678 of the 12,681 active items subject to enhanced end-use monitoring requirements since the beginning of 2017.

The command has never met its 100-percent inventory requirement and is may ever do so because the security situation in Afghanistan prevents some inventories from taking place.

According to the Stars and Stripes, the Pentagon could not keep track of surveillance systems, controls for laser-guided bombs, night-vision devices and other equipment provided to the Afghan forces.

Two years back, the Afghan forces informed American monitors that 19 of 48 US-supplied night-vision devices had ended in enemy hands and 29 were listed as destroyed, damaged or lost.

SIGAR recommended that Pentagon amend its monitoring procedures to make them more suitable for Afghanistan.

Thomas Croci, deputy assistant secretary of defense for Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia, said in a comment included in the report that the Pentagon planned to address the failings identified by SIGAR.