Pentagon Can't Track Afghan Small Arms

By Nathan Hodge
November 05, 2008 4:25:00 PM
Categories: Agony of A-Stan, Guns
Courtesy Of Wired Blog Network

The Pentagon's Inspector General just released a report on the system for accounting for small arms supplied to the Afghan National Army -- and the findings are definitely not good. An assessment team traveled to Afghanistan in April to size up U.S.-led efforts to develop a logistics base for the country's military. What they found was troubling, to say the least:

Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan (CSTC-A) had not issued implementing instructions or procedures governing the accountability, control and physical security of arms, ammunition and explosives the U.S. is supplying to ANSF [Afghan national security forces]. ... Moreover, the CSTC-A had not accurately recorded the serial numbers that were to be issued to ANSF and did not report these serial numbers to the DoD small arms serialization program.

This is more than just an accounting issue: sloppy handling of arms shipments raises a serious risk that these weapons could fall into the wrong hands. A 2007 assessment of small arms transfers to Iraq found the same problem; the Inspector General's report notes that Turkish authorities complained in 2006 and 2007 that weapons and explosives supplied to Iraqi security forces "were finding their way into the hands of insurgents, terrorists and criminals in Turkey."

The report also finds that CSTC-A's security assistance office -- which supervises foreign military sales to Afghanistan -- was poorly staffed and suffered from high turnover:

[T]he CSTC-A SAO was not adequately staffed with sufficient numbers of personnel and those personnel that were assigned did not possess the requisite security assistance skills and experience. In addition, short personnel tours of duty and different rotation policies among the military services hindered program execution and did not support development of necessary program stability and continuity.

For DANGER ROOM readers, reports of poor supply-chain management for small arms and ammunition in Afghanistan should come as little surprise. Earlier this year, the New York Times revealed that an ammo contract for Afghanistan had been awarded to a firm "led by a 22-year-old man whose vice president was a licensed masseur." The masseuse and his cohorts reportedly supplied "nonstandard" (i.e., crap) ammunition from old Soviet-era stocks.

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