CNN Exposes The Smoking Gun: How Afghanistan Is Arming Anti-Pakistan Terrorists With American Gear – OpEd

It took a CNN camera crew trekking to the ragged edge of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border to finally validate what Islamabad has been shouting into the diplomatic void for three years. The investigation by Ivan Watson has ripped the cover off a dangerous reality: the legacy of the botched American withdrawal from Kabul is now killing Pakistani citizens and soldiers. The guns are American, the geography is Afghan, and the targets are Pakistanis. The evidence is no longer anecdotal; it is forensic, and it proves that the Interim Afghan Government is presiding over a massive proliferation of military-grade hardware to the terror group Fitna al-Khawarij.

The CNN report connects the dots that the international community has tried to ignore. The report paints a chilling picture of blowback, most visible in the forensic evidence recovered from a cadet college in Pakistan. After a truck bomb ripped through the facility, authorities made a discovery that connects the terrorism directly to Washington. The attackers, who were Afghan citizens, were armed with standard-issue American M16s. These weren't holdovers from the wars of the 1980s; they were modern rifles. The US military's own records confirmed that this lethal hardware came directly from the stockpiles left behind during the chaotic withdrawal of 2021.

This confirms a terrifying supply chain. As John Sopko, the former US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, admitted in the report, the Taliban regime inherited a staggering arsenal: nearly 300,000 small arms, grenade launchers, and advanced communications gear. Rather than securing these weapons, the administration in Kabul appears to be turning a blind eye—or worse—as they flow across the border into the hands of Fitna al-Khawarij, the BLA, and other outfits determined to bleed the Pakistani state. They are even selling these weapons to those outfits.

The investigation exposes how this influx of high-tech gear has fundamentally altered the physics of the battlefield. Pakistani surgeons in Peshawar, who have spent years treating trauma victims, noted a distinct "changing pattern of wounds." They are seeing long-range sniper hits and precise gunshot wounds inflicted after sunset. This is the result of American thermal optics and night vision devices. The Fitna al-Khawarij fighters no longer hide in the dark; they own the night, using equipment paid for by US taxpayers to hunt down security forces.

This security nightmare is colliding with Washington's own strategic interests. The CNN report notes the Trump administration's ambition to tap into Pakistan's vast, unmined reserves of rare earth minerals and copper—a $1.25 billion bet to break China's monopoly on the metals of the future. But you cannot run a copper mine in a war zone. The very region holding these riches is now destabilized by the weapons the US left behind. It is a cruel irony: the US is trying to invest in Pakistan's economic future while its abandoned arsenal is being used to destroy Pakistan's security infrastructure.

Pakistan's Defense Minister was blunt in the report, accusing the Afghan government of effectively arming the insurgency. Islamabad is right. Pakistan has warned for years that the weaponry in the custody of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan was being sold to whoever had the cash, be it Fitna al-Khawarij or the ethno-terrorists of the BLA.

The time for observation is over. The US government now has visual confirmation that its own assets are fueling regional terrorism. Washington cannot remain a bystander while the IEA allows Afghanistan to become a arms bazaar for anti-Pakistan forces. The US must come forward with a kinetic, no-mercy policy against the elements within the Afghan setup facilitating this trade. The rogue elements selling M16s and night vision goggles must be held accountable. If these supply lines are not severed through direct intervention and immense pressure on Kabul, the chaos will not stay contained in the borderlands—it will unravel the stability of the entire region and will spread in other countries too.