Thanks to corruption, equipment is filtering out of friendly hands into the wrong ones.

Afghanistan’s Taliban insurgents are starting to field high-tech gear that gives them an advantage over many government troops—and puts U.S. soldiers in danger. Stolen equipment including night vision goggles, aiming lasers, and communications headsets are making the Taliban more deadly, particularly at night.

According to The New York Times, Afghan government forces have repeatedly claimed that they lost valuable night vision devices loaned to them by Coalition forces. In 2016, Afghanistan’s 215th Corps failed to return 49 sets of night vision goggles to U.S. forces, claiming they were lost in the heat of battle, but with little explanation of exactly how it happened. The Afghan corps commander was later arrested on corruption charges.

Meanwhile, the Taliban doubled its number of nighttime attacks between 2014 and 2017. In November 2017, the Taliban, some carrying U.S. made M-4 carbines, launched five attacks in 36 hours, killing “scores” of Afghan security personnel. These attacks were attributed to so-called Taliban “Red Units”, the guerrilla group’s equivalent of special forces. Red Units are equipped with night vision goggles, laser pointers, American-made weapons, and sometime Afghan Police pickup trucks and armored Humvees.

The photo above shows all three (allegedly pilfered) devices on a single Afghan special forces soldier. The soldier is wearing a pair of AN/PVS-7 third generation night vision goggles, an Insight PEQ-2 Target Pointer/Illuminator/Aiming Laser, and a Peltor Comtac headset that screens out battle noise and plugs into tactical radios. Some of the equipment, such as the goggles, is old by U.S. standards but still useful on the battlefield.

This development is a serious worry for American forces. Almost all U.S. combat troops have infrared laser pointers on their carbines. With their beams visible through night vision goggles, laser aiming devices allow American soldiers to better navigate at night—designating a meeting point, for example, or highlighting the position of enemy soldiers. This confers U.S. troops a huge advantage during night operations.

Putting night vision goggles in the hands of the Taliban erases much of that advantage. Taliban forces can now see American laser beams, pinpointing their point of origin. They can also see U.S. forces on the ground and helicopters operating in blacked-out conditions in the air. U.S. forces on patrol have already been warned against using their lasers and pilots warned they are at risk of being spotted at night time.

The Afghan government denies that equipment is leaking out to the Taliban via corruption, instead blaming equipment looted after successful attacks on government outposts.

In 2017, U.S. and Coalition forces aggressively targeted so-called Red Units with commando raids and air strikes. The Times, however, says that such advanced equipment has spread beyond Red Units to the rest of the Taliban. This suggests that the flow of such devices is much greater than can be supplied by equipment captured and stolen from Afghan troops. In a 2017 report, Red Unit gear was described as a mixture of American M4 carbines, Russian night vision devices, and rifle optics manufactured in Pakistan or Iran.

U.S. forces advising the Afghan government are caught on the horns of a dilemma. If the Taliban are indeed getting gear from abroad, then the U.S. must provide similar gear to ordinary Afghan forces to give them a fighting chance. That, in turn, increases the chances that more American gear will go over to the Taliban. But if Afghan government forces don’t get any gear at all, they will be increasingly outmatched on the battlefield.

The situation on the ground in Afghanistan is yet another arms race, with the Taliban and the Afghan government on opposing sides. But it’s also a cautionary tale in how ignoring the problem of corruption can eventually become a self-defeating proposition, undermine military effectiveness in the long run.

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