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  1. #1
    Super Moderator Newmexican's Avatar
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    U.S. Loses Track of $500 Million Worth of Weapons in Yemen, Including Drones, Helicop

    U.S. Loses Track of $500 Million Worth of Weapons in Yemen, Including Drones, Helicopters and 1.2 Million Rounds of Ammo

    -Noel Brinkerhoff

    Thursday, March 19, 2015


    A Houthi Shiite Yemeni sits atop armored vehicle seized from the army (photo: Hani Mohammed, AP)

    Gone with the collapse of Yemen’s government is half a billion dollars worth of American military equipment and weapons provided to the former regime.

    The Department of Defense says it can’t say for sure what happened to $500 million in aid the U.S. military gave to Yemen after Shiite Houthi rebels toppled the government. The assistance covers a wide range of weaponry, aircraft and equipment—enough to equip a small army of rebels. Unaccounted for are 1.25 million rounds of ammunition, 200 Glock pistols, 200 M-4 rifles, 160 Humvees, four Huey helicopters, four small drones, one transport and surveillance plane and other equipment.

    Defense officials have met privately with members of Congress and key staffers to inform them about the problem. “We have to assume it’s completely compromised and gone,” a legislative aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity told The Washington Post.

    The Shiite Houthi rebels, backed by Iran, “have taken over many Yemeni military bases in the northern part of the country, including some in Sana’a that were home to U.S.-trained counter-terrorism units. Other bases have been overrun by fighters from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,” the Post’s Craig Whitlock reported.

    The lost munitions only add to Yemen’s arms culture. The Middle Eastern country has “the second-highest gun ownership rate in the world, ranking behind only the United States, and its bazaars are well stocked with heavy weaponry,” according to Whitlock.
    http://www.allgov.com/news/top-stori...19?news=856000



















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    Super Moderator Newmexican's Avatar
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    Obama's DOD

    U.S.-Led Military Unit in Afghanistan Lost $230 Million in Spare Parts, Then Spent $138 Million for More


    Noel Brinkerhoff
    Sunday, October 20, 2013

    The Pentagon is notorious for wasting money when it comes to purchasing spare parts for the American war machine. But it seems the U.S. military managed to export this bad practice toAfghanistan, where hundreds of millions in tax dollars were lost on purchases for the Afghan National Army.

    In the nation where the U.S. has been fighting for a dozen years now, an American-led, multi-national military office called the Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan (CSTC-A) spent $370 million from 2004 through the middle of this year on spare parts for Afghan army vehicles. But nearly two-thirds of this money (about $230 million) essentially got flushed because no one could account for how it was spent, according to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR).

    But the financial miscues didn’t stop there.

    The office in question blew another $138 million on spare parts to cover shortages—without first determining whether the parts were really needed.

    The U.S. expected the Afghans to keep records of its inventory, but they did a shoddy job.

    “CSTC-A officials…had no historical demand and usage data from the [Afghan Army] or contractors to support their $130 million in parts orders,” SIGAR said in its report (pdf). The Afghan Army also couldn’t say for sure if it received all the parts that were ordered.

    Meanwhile, CSTC-A is still operating the same way. The situation may get even worse once the U.S. turns the office over to the Afghans to run it themselves.



    http://www.allgov.com/news/us-and-the-world/us-led-military-unit-in-afghanistan-lost-230-million-dollars-in-spare-parts-then-spent-138-million-dollars-for-more?news=851440







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    Super Moderator Newmexican's Avatar
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    Thousands of U.S. Weapons Provided to Afghan Forces Are Unaccounted For






    Wednesday, July 30, 2014
    Noel Brinkerhoff


    The United States’ now decade-plus of fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan may have been hampered by allowing hundreds, perhaps thousands, of weapons to go missing and possibly fall into enemy hands.

    This possibility was reported this week by John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), whose office said many of the 747,000 weapons given to the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) can’t be accounted for.

    “U.S. and Coalition-provided weapons are at risk of theft, loss, or misuse,” the report (pdf) said.

    “Weapons paid for by U.S. taxpayers could wind up in the hands of insurgents and be used to kill Americans and Afghan troops and civilians,” Sopko said.

    The problem is poor recordkeeping on the part of the Americans and Afghans, according to the report. The Department of Defense has relied on two inventory systems to track the weapons, leading to duplication of records and other mistakes, it said.

    Afghan officials often just don’t bother with taking inventory, making it easy for opportunists or Taliban supporters to steal weapons and sell them to insurgents. That’s particularly alarming since the U.S. gave Afghanistan’s military 83,000 more AK-47 assault rifles than necessary last year.

    The problem of accounting for military hardware delivered to Afghanistan has gone on for some time. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported five years ago that more than one third of the 242,203 small arms and light weapons shipped to the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police were not accounted for. The 87,000 missing weapons included AK-47s, pistols, machine guns, grenade launchers, shotguns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, the GAO said.

    http://www.allgov.com/news/us-and-th...30?news=853834








  4. #4
    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    Original article from The Washington Post

    Pentagon loses track of $500 million in weapons, equipment given to Yemen



    U.S. firearms supplied to the Interior Ministry in Yemen, which has received $500 million in aid from the United States since 2007 under an array of Defense Department and State Department programs. (Government Accountability Office)

    By Craig Whitlock
    March 17

    The Pentagon is unable to account for more than $500 million in U.S. military aid given to Yemen, amid fears that the weaponry, aircraft and equipment is at risk of being seized by Iranian-backed rebels or al-Qaeda, according to U.S. officials.


    With Yemen in turmoil and its government splintering, the Defense Department has lost its ability to monitor the whereabouts of small arms, ammunition, night-vision goggles, patrol boats, vehicles and other supplies donated by the United States. The situation has grown worse since the United States closed its embassy in Sanaa, the capital, last month and withdrew many of its military advisers.


    In recent weeks, members of Congress have held closed-door meetings with U.S. military officials to press for an accounting of the arms and equipment. Pentagon officials have said that they have little information to go on and that there is little they can do at this point to prevent the weapons and gear from falling into the wrong hands.


    “We have to assume it’s completely compromised and gone,” said a legislative aide on Capitol Hill who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.


    U.S. military officials declined to comment for the record. A defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the Pentagon, said there was no hard evidence that U.S. arms or equipment had been looted or confiscated.

    But the official acknowledged that the Pentagon had lost track of the items.


    Yemen Arms VIEW GRAPHIC

    “Even in the best-case scenario in an unstable country, we never have 100 percent accountability,” the defense official said.

    Yemen’s government was toppled in January by Shiite Houthi rebels who receive support from Iran and have strongly criticized U.S. drone strikes in Yemen. The Houthis have taken over many Yemeni military bases in the northern part of the country, including some in Sanaa that were home to U.S.-trained counterterrorism units. Other bases have been overrun by fighters from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.


    As a result, the Defense Department has halted shipments to Yemen of about $125 million in military hardware that were scheduled for delivery this year, including unarmed ScanEagle drones, other types of aircraft and Jeeps. That equipment will be donated instead to other countries in the Middle East and Africa, the defense official said.


    Although the loss of weapons and equipment already delivered to Yemen would be embarrassing, U.S. officials said it would be unlikely to alter the military balance of power there. Yemen is estimated to have the second-highest gun ownership rate in the world, ranking behind only the United States, and its bazaars are well stocked with heavy weaponry. Moreover, the U.S. government restricted its lethal aid to small firearms and ammunition, brushing aside Yemeni requests for fighter jets and tanks.


    In Yemen and elsewhere, the Obama administration has pursued a strategy of training and equipping foreign militaries to quell insurgencies and defeat networks affiliated with al-Qaeda. That strategy has helped to avert the deployment of large numbers of U.S. forces, but it has also met with repeated challenges.


    Washington spent $25 billion to re-create and arm Iraq’s security forces after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, only to see the Iraqi army easily defeated last year by a ragtag collection of Islamic State fighters who took control of large parts of the country. Just last year, President Obama touted Yemen as a successful example of his approach to combating terrorism.

    “The administration really wanted to stick with this narrative that Yemen was different from Iraq, that we were going to do it with fewer people, that we were going to do it on the cheap,” said Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Tex.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. “They were trying to do with a minimalist approach because it needed to fit with this narrative . . .that we’re not going to have a repeat of Iraq.”

    Auditors with the Government Accountability Office found that Humvees donated to the Yemeni Interior Ministry sat idle or broken because the Defense Ministry refused to share spare parts. (Government Accountability Office)

    Washington has supplied more than $500 million in military aid to Yemen since 2007 under an array of Defense Department and State Department programs. The Pentagon and CIA have provided additional assistance through classified programs, making it difficult to know exactly how much Yemen has received in total.


    U.S. government officials say al-Qaeda’s branch in Yemen poses a more direct threat to the U.S. homeland than any other terrorist group. To counter it, the Obama administration has relied on a combination of proxy forces and drone strikes launched from bases outside the country.


    As part of that strategy, the U.S. military has concentrated on building an elite Yemeni special-operations force within the Republican Guard, training counterterrorism units in the Interior Ministry and upgrading Yemen’s rudimentary air force.


    Making progress has been difficult. In 2011, the Obama administration suspended counterterrorism aid and withdrew its military advisers after then-President Ali Abdullah Saleh cracked down against Arab Spring demonstrators. The program resumed the next year when Saleh was replaced by his vice president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, in a deal brokered by Washington.


    In a 2013 report, the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that the primary unclassified counterterrorism program in Yemen lacked oversight and that the Pentagon had been unable to assess whether it was doing any good.


    Among other problems, GAO auditors found that Humvees donated to the Yemeni Interior Ministry sat idle or broken because the Defense Ministry refused to share spare parts. The two ministries also squabbled over the use of Huey II helicopters supplied by Washington, according to the report.


    A senior U.S. military official who has served extensively in Yemen said that local forces embraced their training and were proficient at using U.S. firearms and gear but that their commanders, for political reasons, were reluctant to order raids against al-Qaeda.


    “They could fight with it and were fairly competent, but we couldn’t get them engaged” in combat, the military official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with a reporter.


    All the U.S.-trained Yemeni units were commanded or overseen by close relatives of Saleh, the former president. Most were gradually removed or reassigned after Saleh was forced out in 2012. But U.S. officials acknowledged that some of the units have maintained their allegiance to Saleh and his family.


    According to an investigative report released by a U.N. panel last month, the former president’s son, Ahmed Ali Saleh, looted an arsenal of weapons from the Republican Guard after he was dismissed as commander of the elite unit two years ago.

    The weapons were transferred to a private military base outside Sanaa that is controlled by the Saleh family, the U.N. panel found.


    It is unclear whether items donated by the U.S. government were stolen, although Yemeni documents cited by the U.N. investigators alleged that the stash included thousands of M-16 rifles, which are manufactured in the United States.


    The list of pilfered equipment also included dozens of Humvees, Ford vehicles and Glock pistols, all of which have been supplied in the past to Yemen by the U.S. government.

    Ahmed Saleh denied the looting allegations during an August 2014 meeting with the U.N. panel, according to the report.

    Many U.S. and Yemeni officials have accused the Salehs of conspiring with the Houthis to bring down the government in Sanaa. At Washington’s urging, the United Nations imposed financial and travel sanctions in November against the former president, along with two Houthi leaders, as punishment for destabilizing Yemen.

    Ali Abdullah Saleh has dismissed the accusations; last month, he told The Washington Post that he spends most of his time these days reading and recovering from wounds he suffered during a bombing attack on the presidential palace in 2011.


    There are clear signals that Saleh and his family are angling for a formal return to power. On Friday, hundreds of people staged a rally in Sanaa to call for presidential elections and for Ahmed Saleh to run.


    Although the U.S. Embassy in the capital closed last month, a handful of U.S. military advisers have remained in the southern part of the country at Yemeni bases controlled by commanders that are friendly to the United States.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...8ff_story.html

    Last edited by JohnDoe2; 03-22-2015 at 04:40 PM.
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