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US destroys unwanted gear and sells it as scrap

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(Last Updated On: May 11, 2021)

Angry scrapyard owners in Afghanistan have spoken out about the US military destroying equipment as they pack up ahead of the final withdrawal.

Inside one scrapyard, owned by Baba Mir, close to Bagram Air Base, lies the twisted remains of several all-terrain vehicles, The Associated Press (AP) reported.

Alongside these lie smashed shards that were once generators, tank tracks and mountains of tents that have been reduced to sliced up fabric.

Anything they are not shipping home or giving to the Afghans, the Americans are destroying.

Officials have said in the past that they are destroying the equipment so it does not fall into militant hands.

But, according to AP, Mir and other scrap sellers around Bagram have said it is an infuriating waste.

“What they are doing is a betrayal of Afghans. They should leave,” said Mir. “Like they have destroyed this vehicle, they have destroyed us.”

AP reports that as the last few thousand US and NATO troops withdraw, they leave behind many Afghans who are frustrated and angry.

They feel abandoned to a legacy they blame at least in part on the Americans — a deeply corrupt US-backed government and growing instability that could burst into a brutal new phase of civil war.

AP reported that the scrapyard owners are angry in part because they could have profited more from selling intact equipment.

According to AP, US officials are being secretive about what stays and what goes. Most of what is being shipped home is sensitive equipment never intended to stay behind, say US Defense and Western officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Other equipment including helicopters, military vehicles, weapons and ammunition will be handed over to Afghanistan’s National Defense and Security Forces and some bases will be given to them as well.

One of those most recently handed over was the New Antonik base in Helmand province, where Taliban are said to control roughly 80% of the rural area.

AP reports that destined for the scrap heap are equipment and vehicles that can neither be repaired nor transferred to Afghanistan’s security forces because of poor condition.

This is not however the first time this has happened. The same was done in 2014, when thousands of troops withdrew as the US and NATO handed Afghanistan’s security over to Afghans.

More than 176 million kilograms of scrap from destroyed equipment and vehicles was sold to Afghans for $46.5 million, a spokeswoman for the military’s Defense Logistics Agency in Virginia said at the time.

The Associated Press reported that last month, around the time President Joe Biden announced that America was ending it’s “forever war,” Mir paid nearly $40,000 for a container packed with 70 tons of trashed equipment.

He’ll make money, he told AP, but it will be a fraction of what he could have made selling the vehicles if they’d been left intact, even if they weren’t in running condition.

The parts would have been sold to the legions of auto repair shops across Afghanistan, he said. That can’t happen now. They’ve been reduced to mangled pieces of metal that Mir sells for a few thousand Afghanis.

Sadat, another scrap dealer in Bagram, says similar scrap yards around the country are crammed with ruined US equipment.

“They left us nothing,” he said. “They don’t trust us. They have destroyed our country. They are giving us only destruction.”

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ISIS-K leader reportedly living in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province

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(Last Updated On: March 28, 2024)

Sanaullah Ghaffari, also known as Shahab al-Muhajar, is reportedly the ISIS-Khorasan (Daesh) branch leader and is holed up in Pakistan, Reuters reports.

The 29-year-old took over as leader in 2020 and under his leadership the group has carried out extreme attacks as a means of recruiting, Reuters reported.

Reuters noted that little was known about Ghafari before the deadly 2021 ISIS attack on Kabul Airport, which killed 170 Afghan civilians and 13 American soldiers.

But after Friday’s deadly attack in a concert hall in Moscow, which left 139 people dead, Ghaffari’s group has come under intense scrutiny.

Reuters reports that Ghaffari is said to have been involved in several attacks in Afghanistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Pakistan.

Pakistani officials said months ago that Ghaffari had been killed in Kunar province in Afghanistan in June last year, but Reuters has reported that he did not die and instead fled to Pakistan and lives in the border province of Baluchistan.

Abdul Matin Qani, the spokesman of the Ministry of Interior of Afghanistan, says that Daesh has been suppressed in Afghanistan for more than two years and has lost its operational capacity.

The last attack carried out by Daesh in Afghanistan was the attack on the Kabul Bank office in Kandahar last week which left three dead and 12 wounded.

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IPL: Sunrisers thump MI in record breaking match

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(Last Updated On: March 28, 2024)

It was raining records at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in Hyderabad on Wednesday with the hosts Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) clinching a 31-run victory over Mumbai Indians (MI) in Match 8 of the Tata Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024.

Sunrisers’ batting rewrote the record books on a batting belter after the posted 277 for three.

SRH now have the highest team score in the history of the IPL – beating Royal Challengers Bangalore’s (RCB) 263 for five from the 2013 season.

In reply, MI made a spirited effort, and at one stage, were contenders to do the near impossible. In the slog overs, the enormity of the target proved a bit too much, and SRH clinched victory, but not without numerous nervous moments.

To put into perspective the carnage we witnessed – Heinrich Klaasen’s 23-ball half-century was the slowest fifty of the SRH innings.

Travis Head, playing his first match for SRH, raced to the milestone in 18 balls. Abhishek Sharma got there even faster – in 16 balls – to record the quickest fifty by an SRH batter in IPL history.

While Sunrisers notched up the highest total in the 16-year history of the IPL, just as incredibly, Mumbai Indians almost paid them back with the same coin, their batters coming out with a nothing-to-lose attitude.

The sixes kept rolling off the Mumbai bats too, helping them keep up with the asking rate for most of the chase, eventually however, they ran out of steam and finished on 246 for 5, the highest IPL total in a losing cause.

As ESPNcricinfo reported, never were more runs scored in a men’s T20 match (523). Never were most sixes hit in a men’s T20 (38). At the end of the close to four-hour six-fest, only two bowlers returned with an economy rate of under ten an over.

Thursday, March 28 : Match 9

Thursday’s match at the Sawai Mansingh Stadium in Jaipur sees Rajasthan Royals go up against Delhi Capitals.

Fans in Afghanistan can tune in to Ariana Television to watch the match live from 6.30pm. Alternatively the match can be screened live on arianatelevision.com

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Magnitude 5.2 quake jolts Afghanistan

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(Last Updated On: March 28, 2024)

An earthquake measuring a magnitude of 5.2 on the Richter Scale jolted Afghanistan on Thursday afternoon, the National Center for Seismology reported.

The quake was at a depth of 70km and epicentered in the mountainous north-eastern area of Ashkāsham.

The jolt was felt across the region including in Kabul, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan

There were no immediate reports of any casualties.

In October last year, over 2,000 people were killed when four 6.3-magnitude earthquakes struck in Herat province.

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