Terrorists who attacked the Jaffar Express train in Balochistan last month used weapons left behind when United States forces withdrew from Afghanistan, an investigation by The Washington Post revealed on Monday.
The Jaffer Express was attacked on March 11 when Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) terrorists ambushed the Peshawar-bound train carrying 440 passengers, opening fire and taking hostages.
Consequently, the security forces initiated an operation that lasted two days.
Inter-Services Public Relations Director General Lt Gen Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said on March 12 that the Jaffar Express clearance operation launched a day after the train’s unprecedented hijacking was complete.
He added that all terrorists, 33 in total, at the site of the attack had been killed.
According to The Post, an M4A1 carbine rifle, built by American manufacturer Colt, was recovered from the site of the attack.
The rifle’s serial number indicated that it was part of billions of dollars worth of weaponry sent to US forces in Afghanistan, who abandoned much of their equipment when withdrawing in 2021.
“Many of the weapons wound up across the border in Pakistan, at arms bazaars and in the hands of insurgents, illustrating how the consequences of America’s failed war continue to reverberate years after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban,” The Washington Post wrote.
The publication wrote that Pakistan is now trying to contain terrorism in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, where fighters are equipped with American weapons and gear.
US rifles, machine guns, and night-vision goggles, originally meant to help stabilize Afghanistan, are now being used by the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and other groups to carry out attacks, The Post reported citing weapons traders and government officials.
Ahmad Hussain, 35, a special forces constable who was critically injured in a nighttime attack in KP last year, told The Post, “They have the latest American-made weapons.
“They could see us, but we couldn’t see them,” he added.
The Post added that in May 2024, Pakistani officials gave the paper access to dozens of weapons that they said were seized from captured or dead terrorists.
After months of inquiries, the US Army and the Pentagon confirmed to The Post that 63 of the weapons shown to reporters had been provided by the US government to Afghan national forces.
Most of the weapons were M16 rifles, alongside several more modern M4 carbines.
Pakistani officials also displayed a handful of PVS14 night-vision devices, which are widely used by the US military, but The Post could not independently verify them as former US government property.
“After the Jaffar Express attack, Pakistani officials provided serial numbers for three American rifles allegedly used by the attackers,” The Post wrote.
“At least two came from US stocks and had been provided to Afghan forces,” the paper added, citing records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
The Foreign Office said in a statement in January that “The presence of US advanced weapons … has been an issue of profound concern for the safety and security of Pakistan.”
The Post added that US President Donald Trump has threatened to permanently cut suspended aid to Afghanistan unless the Taliban returns the military equipment.
“We left billions, tens of billions of dollars’ worth of equipment behind … all the top-of-the-line stuff,” Trump said during his first cabinet meeting in February.
“I think we should get a lot of that equipment back.”
“His remarks have reignited hope in Islamabad that the United States will move more decisively to account for its missing military gear,” The Post wrote.
However, “most believe it is already too late to stem the flow of illicit arms.”
“They’re now the property of Afghanistan,” Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban government’s chief spokesman, said in response to Trump.
“No one can take them away from us.”
According to The Post, Michael Kugelman, a South Asia analyst, remarked that Pakistan risks “falling back into that terrible period between 2009 and 2014, when the country was a major magnet for terrorism.”
When the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in August 2021, more than $7 billion in US-provided military equipment was still in the country, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) estimated in a report.
“The US military had an uneven record of keeping track of weapons provided to the Afghans,” SIGAR concluded, which was exacerbated by its ‘abrupt and uncoordinated’ withdrawal,” The Post added.
The paper added that under then-president Joe Biden, US officials refused to accept responsibility.
“The Defence Department provided weapons and equipment after ‘careful end-user considerations including risks of enemy capture’,” The Post wrote quoting a statement from the Pentagon, adding that the department “had no intention of recovering them.”
“The materiel ‘could have been captured by the Taliban and then utilized or transferred elsewhere’,” The Post wrote quoting the agency.
“Once transferred to the Afghan government, they were the Afghan government’s property and its responsibility,” a senior defence official said in a statement to The Post.
The Pentagon declined to disclose the official’s name to The Washington Post or justify why they could not provide it.
The weapons seized by Pakistan “comprise a minuscule portion of the total we bought for the Afghans over more than a decade,” the official added.
SIGAR estimated that over 250,000 rifles were left behind, as well as nearly 18,000 night-vision goggles.
The Post wrote that goggles worn by insurgents undercut the technological advantages of modern militaries, which use infrared lasers and strobes to coordinate attacks and keep track of friendly troops.
Those devices are invisible to the naked eye but are illuminated by night vision.
“Just after the Taliban takeover, the latest night-vision devices were sold at a scrap rate,” Raz Muhammad, a Pakistani weapons trader, told The Post.
“Around August 2021, the devices, which retail for about $2,000, were being sold for less than $300,” he estimated.
Verification requests from The Post revealed haphazard recordkeeping in a Pentagon database that tracks small arms and light weapons, where among the recovered weapons were three M203 grenade launchers incorrectly listed as rifles in the database.
The launchers attach to the underside of rifles and someone may have confused the two serial numbers when documenting them, officials said.
Among the other items recovered by Pakistani authorities and shown to The Post were sets of US body armor and piles of ammunition.
“The Pentagon left behind millions of rounds,” SIGAR found, including ammunition for heavy weapons that can penetrate vehicles and bring down aircraft.
A few of the displayed weapons appeared to come from sources outside the US, with at least one rifle reviewed by The Post being a Chinese Norinco CQ-A, a clone of the American M4.
Along the Afghanistan border, illicit arms bazaars have long done business with militants and other criminals, The Post wrote.
One of the oldest markets is in Darra Adam Khel in KP.
Vendors say the market dates back to the first Anglo-Afghan war, in the mid-19th century, when this part of Pakistan was contested between Afghan forces and the British.
However, the US withdrawal prompted the market’s most dramatic days, at least in recent memory.
“The market was flooded with American weapons,” recalled Raz Muhammad.
The Post went on to quote a banned outfit member, who acknowledged that his fighters benefitted from plummeting prices and abundant supplies.
As Pakistani militants used the weapons to escalate their insurgency, security forces raided the markets and arrested vendors, The Post wrote.
The few M4s on sale in Darra were hidden away and prices skyrocketed.
“Recently released propaganda material showed Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militants with US-made night-vision devices, M4s with thermal optics and rifle-mounted infrared lasers,” the paper added.
A United Nations report last year concluded that Afghan Taliban “rank and file” directly supply the outlawed group with weapons and equipment.
The TTP and the Afghan Taliban have denied the claims, according to The Post.
The wave of violence along the Afghan border has led to a severe deterioration in relations between the two countries.
In late December, Pakistani airstrikes killed 46 people in eastern Afghanistan.
The Afghan Taliban has responded angrily to Islamabad’s requests to rein in the TTP, and to Trump’s threats that future aid is dependent on the return of US-provided military equipment.
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