Washington Claims US Weapons Turn Out to Be Incomprehensible to Afghan Forces

The US government's Afghanistan reconstruction watchdog claims that the expectation that Afghan security forces would effectively use US-supplied high-end weapons and management systems was doomed from the start.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The expectation that Afghan security forces would effectively use US-supplied high-end weapons and management systems was doomed from the start because of the high illiteracy rate among them, Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) said in a report on Thursday.

"The United States provided advanced Western weapons and management systems to a largely illiterate and uneducated force without appropriate training and institutional infrastructure [and that] created long-term dependencies, required increased US fiscal support, and extended sustainability time lines," the report stated.

The SIGAR noted in the report that nearly 70 percent of the adult population in Afghanistan is illiterate, one of the highest in the world

"[I]n Afghanistan’s rural areas, the situation is even more acute: an estimated 90 percent of women and 63 percent of men cannot read, write, or compute," the report said.

The SIGAR also said the illiteracy problem has made it particularly difficult to recruit maintenance crews and pilots for Afghanistan's air force.