Large stocks of modern weapons left by the United States to the Afghan authorities when US troops withdrew in 2021 have ended up on the black market in Pakistan and are massively falling into the hands of Islamist and separatist groups. This is what the American newspaper The Washington Post concluded in its investigation.

According to the newspaper, at the time of the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, US weapons worth $7 billion remained in the country. They included 250,000 modern assault rifles, 18,000 covert night vision devices and thousands of other weapons and defence systems. A senior Pentagon official told the newspaper that the U.S. does not believe it is responsible for the weapons left behind because “once they were handed over to the Afghan government, they became its property and came under its area of responsibility.”

After the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan later that year, U.S. weapons from government warehouses flooded across the poorly guarded border with Pakistan. These are mostly American assault rifles, machine guns, and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. A Pakistani arms dealer told WP that ‘immediately after the Taliban came to power, the latest [American] night vision devices were sold at a throwaway price.’ According to him, systems costing $2,000 were being sold for as little as $300. In 2025, Pakistan's arms markets still have large quantities of advanced US-made weapons.

Presently, the newspaper said, citing sources in the Pakistani government, those weapons have ended up in the hands of jihadists, including those from the Taliban Movement of Pakistan, as well as Baloch separatist nationalists in the southwest of the country. The scandalous hijacking of a passenger train by Balochistan Liberation Army militants on 11 March also used American weapons that were seized after the separatists were eliminated.