US reportedly lost track of A LOT of military equipment in Yemen

[Hindustani78]

The US reportedly lost track of A LOT of military equipment in Yemen - Business Insider

• Armin Rosen

• Mar. 17, 2015, 4:22 PM

The US has lost track of a half-billion dollars worth of military equipment given to the Yemeni government, according to a Washington Post investigation.

The US has delivered military aid to San'a that includes 200 M-4 rifles, 160 Humvees, a CN-235 transport aircraft, and two coastal patrol boats, the Post reports.

Pentagon sources told the paper that the that equipment isn't missing, per se — but that the US isn't quite sure of where this materiel is or what it's currently being used for.

Yemen's government collapsed in January, a few weeks after Houthi rebel militants first entered the capital and began stripping away Yemen's already weakened state institutions. The Houthis, a Shi'ite tribal group from the country's lawless periphery, harbor a number of longstanding grievances towards Yemen's Sunni-dominated central authorities.

But the movement is Iranian-backed, and its success in derailing Yemen's post-Arab Spring transitional government was yet another instance of Tehran successfully leveraging — and in the process worsening — a general breakdown in regional order.

The Post report highlights the extent of the US's strategic backsliding in the country, whose recently-ousted president was one of the most cooperative American counter-terror partners in the region. The US spent $500 million building a military in an unstable and strategically critical Middle Eastern country — and because of an Iranian-backed group, a government in which the US had invested hundreds of millions of dollars doesn't event exist anymore.

The US has encountered into similar problems in Iraq, where ISIS looted American weaponry from retreating Iraqi troops during its blitz through the country in the summer of 2014 — and where Iranian general Qassem Suleimani was recently photographed surrounded by Shi'ite militants toting American-made guns.

Yemen is yet another instance in which the US attempted to build state capacity on behalf of a government that couldn't survive the region's chaos. A half-billion dollars worth of US-made military equipment may be floating around the Middle East as a result.

 

[Beast]

Obama shall be hanged for all these failures.

 

[flamer84]

Finders keepers.....

Obama shall be hanged for all these failures.

Neah...they stopped doing that in the 60's.Odlly enough they would have hanged him for dating a white girl back then,now he gets to walk scott free after f-ing up the US's entire foreign policy.

 

[xyxmt]

US has this habit of going into other countries to help and in the end looses track of lethal weapons which are used to spread chaos once they leave.

 

[Hindustani78]

Weapons, vehicles and equipment worth more than $500 million that the United States gave to Yemen to help them fight terrorism has gone missing.

Officials fear that the military hardware - thought to include 160 Humvees, four Heuy II helicopters, four hand-launched drones, two Cessna aircraft, a specialist surveillance aircraft and four patrol boats - may have fallen into the hands of an Iranian-backed militia or al-Qaeda.


Small arms and other equipment, such as M-4 assault rifles, Glock 9mm pistols, body armour, pairs of night vision goggles and 1.25 million of rounds of ammunition, may also have vanished.

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Missing: U.S. firearms supplied to the Interior Ministry in Yemen, many of which may have gone astray

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Violent: Members of the Houthi militia walk in front of the scene of a drive-by shooting in which one Houthi official was killed

The hardware has gone missing since 2007. The Pentagon has now suspended several other packages of military aid to the country.

Requests from Yemen for heavy weapons, including fast jets, tanks and artillery, have also been rejected.

Keeping track of military aid has become more difficult since the U.S. closed its embassy in the capital Sana'a in February after the city fell into the hands of Shia rebels, according to the Washington Post.

Yemen's government was ousted by Shiite rebels who are supported by Iran.

The Houthi rebels have seized many buildings around the capital and in the northern part of the country.

President Obama tasked US military advisers to train Yemeni anti-terror forces.

The US began shipping military aid to Yemen in 2007.

It is feared that some of this weaponry may have been looted by powerful families in Yemen but much of it is feared to have made its way to Jihadis.

Meanwhile, the Houthi rebel group, which has been in control of Sana'a since September, has released members of the government from house arrest.

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Horror: A Yemeni boy stands next to bloods stains at the site where Abdul Karim al-Khiwani, a member of the Revolutionary Committee of the Huthis who control Sanaa, was shot dead

Violence continues to plague the country.

This week, one of Yemen's top journalists and activists close to the Houthi militia, Abdul Kareem al-Khaiwani, was gunned down by motorcyclists in front of his son, according to the group's official television channel al-Maseerah.


Yemen is torn by a power struggle between the Iranian-backed Houthis in the north and the U.N.-recognised President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who has set up a rival seat in the southern port city of Aden with Gulf Arab support.