Biden administration officials directed federal agencies to wipe any detailed lists from their websites that outline quantities or cost of U.S. military equipment and training to Afghanistan security forces, according to the State Department.
Public links to reports about the tens of billions of dollars in equipment published by multiple agencies, including Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction and the Governmental Accountability Office, are now dead.
A State Department spokesperson on Wednesday acknowledged the agency’s role in the reports’ removals, which were reported on Tuesday by OpenTheBooks.com founder Adam Andrzejewski, and said the department gave the instructions to protect Afghan allies after the U.S.-backed government’s collapse and the Taliban’s takeover of most of the country.
“The safety of our Afghan contacts is of utmost importance to us,” the spokesperson told the Washington Examiner in a statement. “The State Department advised other federal agencies to review their web properties for content that highlights cooperation/participation between an Afghan citizen and the USG or a USG partner and remove from public view if it poses a security risk.”
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Taliban members have a record of killing Afghans who allied with the United States during its 20-year war in the country, which officials cited as an ethical basis for the U.S. mission to help evacuate those allies in recent weeks.
A GAO spokesperson told Andrzejewski it complied with the State Department’s request “to protect recipients of U.S. assistance that may be identified through our reports and thus subject to retribution.” However, the reports do not include the names of Afghans who received the equipment.
The decision to take down the reports follows the United States’s final withdrawal from Afghanistan on Tuesday, the countdown accompanied by significant input from Republicans criticizing the Biden administration for not taking back or destroying the U.S.-taxpayer-funded equipment.
Former President Donald Trump demanded the Biden administration to recoup the cost of the equipment — whose estimates have ranged from about $24 billion to about $85 billion — or “bomb the hell” out of it.
Gen. Frank McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command, said the military destroyed or rendered inoperable numerous articles of equipment, including mine-resistant vehicles, Humvees, and aircraft before pulling out.
“Those aircraft will never fly again when we left,” McKenzie said in announcing a conclusion to the U.S. mission in Afghanistan on Monday. “They’ll never be able to be operated by anyone.”
Still, photos and videos posted online show Taliban fighters posing with this sort of equipment. A series of clips showed a Black Hawk helicopter dangling what was reported to be a Taliban fighter hoisting a flag onto a building in Kandahar.
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The Taliban urged Kabul residents with access to any weapons or other articles to turn them in to avoid consequences.
“In Kabul, all those who have the means, weapons, ammunition, and other government goods are informed to hand over the mentioned objects to the relevant organs of the Islamic Emirate within a week,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said on Aug. 27, according to a translation into English. “So that there is no need for the offenders to be prosecuted or dealt with legally if they are discovered.”
