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Originally posted by sirjunlegun
I am just curious.
I ask again, "where do they, the bullets, for the Afghanis come from?"
The finding has raised concern that arms given to the Afghan government by the West are finding their way into insurgents' arsenals.
Of 30 rifle magazines taken from dead fighters in eastern Afghanistan, at least 17 contained cartridges identical to those given to Afghan government forces by the US military.
There have been repeated concerns weapons and ammunition could be sold to insurgents by rogue officers in Afghanistan's poorly paid and notoriously corrupt police.
Earlier this year, the US congressional watchdog warned the 242,000 weapons shipped to Afghanistan in recent years "are at serious risk of theft or loss" because of inadequate records. The US Defence Department has full details of only a third of the weapons, the Government Accountability Office reported.
Earlier this year, the US congressional watchdog warned the 242,000 weapons shipped to Afghanistan in recent years "are at serious risk of theft or loss" because of inadequate records.
Supplier Under Scrutiny on Arms for Afghans
Since 2006, when the insurgency in Afghanistan sharply intensified, the Afghan government has been dependent on American logistics and military support in the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
But to arm the Afghan forces that it hopes will lead this fight, the American military has relied since early last year on a fledgling company led by a 22-year-old man whose vice president was a licensed masseur.
With the award last January of a federal contract worth as much as nearly $300 million, the company, AEY Inc., which operates out of an unmarked office in Miami Beach, became the main supplier of munitions to Afghanistan’s army and police forces.
Since then, the company has provided ammunition that is more than 40 years old and in decomposing packaging, according to an examination of the munitions by The New York Times and interviews with American and Afghan officials. Much of the ammunition comes from the aging stockpiles of the old Communist bloc, including stockpiles that the State Department and NATO have determined to be unreliable and obsolete, and have spent millions of dollars to have destroyed.
In purchasing munitions, the contractor has also worked with middlemen and a shell company on a federal list of entities suspected of illegal arms trafficking.
The comments by the commander, who would not be named but operates in the south east of the country where there has been a surge in Taliban attacks, were a rare admission of co-operation between elements within the Iranian regime and forces fighting British and American troops in Afghanistan.
Iran has denied these allegations, but Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, the British Ambassador in Kabul, said the British Army, which is deployed in south-western Afghanistan, had intercepted consignments of weapons which they believe were "donated by a group within the Iranian state".
The only other possible source, the arms expert said, would be Pakistan's Tribal Areas where a relatively sophisticated arms industry has grown up. "Until now," he said, "no-one in the Tribal Areas has been able to copy these mines. Both the metal and the explosives are different, very high quality and very effective, obviously not Chinese or Pakistani."