US-made M-16s, M-4s, M249 machine weapons are falling into the palms of militants. Upgrade to look at the full report.
South Waziristan, Pakistan
—
In the sienna-coloured curves of Pakistan’s Hindu Kush mountains, one of the vital rugged and lawless areas in the world, a cavernous, grooved crater gouged out from a hillside shines in the winter solar, simply ten miles from the border with Afghanistan.
Hundreds of thousands and thousands of {dollars}’ price of copper, 22,000 tons, was final yr dug out of this crater –– the Muhammad Khel Copper Mine –– and hauled off to China; a nation with a seemingly insatiable urge for food for metals and minerals.
In a neighboring province lies one other copper mine that Pakistan says can yield nearly ten occasions as a lot, equal to a fifth of the copper America makes use of yearly. The prospect is so interesting to a Washington administration additionally hungry for assets that it has put up greater than a billion {dollars} to get issues shifting.
Pakistan says there’s rather more wealth beneath its soil –– an estimated $8 trillion in copper, lithium, cobalt, gold, antimony and different critical minerals. And that declare has oiled an unlikely friendship with US President Donald Trump, who has put mineral acquisition on the coronary heart of US overseas coverage.
But the treasure Pakistan claims to be sitting on is located in border areas wracked by a long time-lengthy jihadist insurgencies, which have grown extra widespread and lethal for the reason that chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 left behind a cornucopia of unexpectedly deserted weaponry.
On an unique journey to a few of Pakistan’s most harmful areas, a NCS workforce was proven lots of of US-made rifles, machine weapons and sniper rifles –– all leftovers from Washington’s struggle subsequent door, and all seized from a brand new breed of jihadists and insurgents.
Around 50 miles from the Muhammad Khel Copper Mine close to the western city of Wana, outdoors a army cadet faculty constructing not too long ago hit by a Pakistani Taliban suicide assault, a colonel laid out a blood-soaked bandana and three M-16 rifles recovered from the militants. Written on the bandana, in Urdu and English, had been slogans indicating the wearer’s readiness for martyrdom. And stamped on the rifles had been the phrases: “Property of US Govt. Manufactured in Columbia, South Carolina.”
The excessive-tech arsenal left behind by America is now turbocharging insurgencies in the border area, and its complicating efforts by the US and Pakistan to use its huge mineral riches.
More than 90% of the worldwide output of refined uncommon earths, that are used to energy every part from iPhones to electrical autos, is managed by China.
That close to-monopoly on uncommon earths, and their processing, has grow to be Beijing’s most potent instruments in its commerce struggle with the US, and Trump has set about attempting to interrupt it. In his first yr in workplace the US president signed agreements with Australia, Cambodia and Thailand to future-proof US entry to the critical minerals. And he promised to safe “more than you’ll know what to do with.”
Reading the room, Pakistan’s prime minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir took an uncommon prop on their first joint go to to the White House in September –– a chest containing a trove of uncommon earths they mentioned had been dug from Pakistan’s soil.
Trump was charmed.
The following month he praised Munir in public –– naming him: “My favorite field marshal.”
Pakistan additionally piqued his curiosity by touting huge reserves of one other steel: copper –– wanted for the cables that transmit electrical energy to properties, the semiconductors behind AI growth and different tech throughout the protection business.
A “copper rush” is underway because the world digitizes and electrifies, say specialists, with world demand anticipated to extend from 30 million tons a yr, at the moment, to 50 million tons by 2050.
“Copper will fuel every part of our modern economy, and we’re at a structural shortage,” mentioned Dr. Gracelin Baskaran, the director of the Critical Minerals Security Program on the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
And that scarcity makes the US much less aggressive for the processing of uncommon earth minerals, she mentioned.
In December, the highest US diplomat in Pakistan introduced that the US Export-Import Bank (EXIM) had accredited $1.25 billion in financing to help the mining of critical minerals at Reko Diq in the southwestern Balochistan province.
That website is dwelling to the world’s largest undeveloped copper reserves, based on Canadian agency Barrick, which is main efforts to develop it.
Many in Pakistan –– a rustic with an economic system that has lurched from disaster to disaster, receiving 24 bailouts from the International Monetary Fund since 1958 –– are hoping a money bonanza may be dug up
The United States “has lot to offer for the people and stability and prosperity of Pakistan,” Pakistan’s army spokesperson, Lt General Ahmed Sharif Choudhry informed NCS.
The flurry of exercise since Trump got here to energy has been observed in Beijing, the place officers insist their longstanding allies in Islamabad have given reassurances their enterprise with America won’t hurt China’s pursuits.
Precious metals could also be on the heart of an awesome geopolitical wrestle, however attending to them in Pakistan includes a bloody native battle.
In a brightly-lit, specifically-designated hospital wing in Pakistan’s northwestern metropolis of Peshawar dozens of wounded younger males lie beneath scarlet blankets.
Medical equipment beeps, carers murmur softly. From one other ward not too distant, the piercing screams of a affected person are audible.
In the quiet sits 30-yr-outdated Allah Uddin, whose legs had been badly wounded per week earlier than NCS met him, when Pakistani Taliban militants ambushed the convoy he was guarding in the identical district because the Muhammad Khel Copper Mine.
It was his first expertise of fight. Now, he’s a double amputee with three youngsters and a household to look after.
Describing the encounter in a quiet voice, he says what struck him was how good the weapons his enemies had appeared to be.
“I don’t know where they were from but the weapons that they had… were different and better.”
The conventional militant arsenal in Pakistan was Soviet-era Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenades, however now they’re armed with American weapons.
Colonel Bilal Saeed, Pakistani Military General Surgeon on the Peshawar hospital, informed NCS that as an alternative of treating sufferers with wounds from IED [improvised explosive device] blasts, they now “receiving patients with long range gunshot wounds, (or) sniper hits.”
The wounded used to reach in the course of the day, he mentioned, however now they arrive after sundown as a result of the insurgents not solely have extra superior weapons, they’ve “night vision devices.”
The conflict that took Uddin’s legs was removed from an remoted incident. NCS spoke to round 10 different troopers on the ward who had been wounded by bullets or blasts in current weeks.
More than 1200 folks together with army and civilians had been killed in militant assaults throughout the nation in 2025, based on knowledge shared by the Pakistani army. That’s double the quantity recorded in 2021, when the US retreated from Kabul and the Afghan Taliban returned to energy. Multiple Pakistani army officers informed NCS they’re now preventing a “war” in the border areas.
Along the roads of South Waziristan, NCS noticed a number of squads of closely armed troopers patrolling in vehicles. The airfield at Wana, the most important city, was thick with safety personnel. But the highway resulting in North Waziristan –– the place the Muhammad Khel Copper Mine is located –– was off-limits. It was too harmful, Pakistani officers mentioned.
Back in Peshawar, a stone’s throw from the hospital wing, a number of the weapons wreaking new havoc alongside Pakistan’s mineral belt had been laid out for NCS to see.
More than 100 weapons –– M-16s, M-4s, M249 machine weapons and Remington-made sniper rifles sat collectively on tables. And all had imprints stating they had been manufactured in the US.
Pakistani forces began seizing US-made weapons from Taliban fighters in 2022-2023, mentioned mentioned Muhammad Mubasher, a protection analyst with shut ties to the army. Now they’re seeing them “in almost every encounter that happens,” he mentioned.
After taking down the serial numbers from three M-16s used in the Pakistani Taliban suicide assault on the cadet faculty, close to Wana, NCS made a Freedom of Information Act request to the US army regarding how the weapons acquired to Afghanistan.
US Army Material Command, at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama, supplied knowledge displaying they every made completely different journeys from US weapons producers and army installations to branches of the Afghan safety forces, years earlier than the US withdrawal in 2021.
The Pentagon declined to remark additional when contact by NCS.
US-made M-16s and M-4 Carbines have additionally ended up in the palms of one other rebel group, the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), based on Pakistani army sources.
For a long time, the BLA has waged a separatist insurgency that seeks larger political autonomy and financial growth in the strategically vital and mineral-wealthy Balochistan area, the place the Reko Diq mine and different copper and mineral reserves are located.
Asked whether or not Pakistan’s troops have weapons of the identical caliber because the US ones, Mubashar’s reply was quick.
“No.”
Last weekend BLA militants launched a collection of coordinated assaults which led to 33 folks being killed based on the Pakistani army, deepening considerations in regards to the feasibility of the United State’s mineral coverage in the province and past. Pakistani authorities declare to have killed no less than 133 militants in response.
The province’s chief minister Sarfaraz Bugti informed NCS that “preliminary information indicated that several Afghan nationals were involved with them (BLA)” and that there was “ no doubt that most of the weapons used were US made that originated from Afghanistan.”
Michael Kugelman, senior fellow for South Asia on the Atlantic Council, informed NCS that Balochistan was each “ground zero for critical mineral opportunities, but it’s also ground zero when it comes to militant threats.”
After the US displaced the Taliban from Kabul in the wake of the 9/11 assaults, it educated a brand new Afghan military – and gave it billions of {dollars} of weapons and army equipment that it hoped would assist the newly put in administration maintain the Taliban out.
“You’re not planning for a collapse. You’re planning to continue to execute operations and prevent the collapse ,” mentioned retired Air Force Colonel Scott Yeatmen, who was the highest US advisor to the Afghan Air Force up till two months earlier than the Taliban recaptured Kabul, following the spectacular collapse of Afghanistan’s US-trained forces.
As US troops and personnel scrambled to withdraw in August 2021 they abandoned a treasure trove of weapons and different army gear.
Approximately 300,000 small arms US weapons had been left behind, mentioned John Sopko, who spent twelve years because the particular inspector normal for the US’s $148-billion Afghanistan reconstruction program.
Also left behind was digital materials together with “communication stuff, rocket launchers, grenade launchers, mortars, cannons, heavy machine guns, surveillance equipment (and) night vision equipment,” Sopko informed NCS.
Afghanistan is successfully now the world’s largest arms bazaar, he mentioned. “If you want … to outfit your terrorist or insurgency organization, Afghanistan is the place to go.”
Islamabad has lengthy accused Afghanistan of offering sanctuary to militant teams, one thing Taliban leaders have denied.
In an announcement to NCS, the Afghan Taliban mentioned all weapons left behind following the US withdrawal had been beneath its “control and protection.”
Sopko says it’s “disturbing” how broadly out there these weapons are in the area.
All of Afghanistan’s neighbors, together with Pakistan, Iran and even China, “should be concerned.”
President Trump has demanded the Afghan Taliban –– who share shut hyperlinks with the Pakistan Taliban throughout the border –– return the US weapons, however to no avail. NCS has reached out to the Pentagon for remark on whether or not it was at the moment in talks with the Afghan Taliban to retrieve these weapons.
His administration is making different strikes too.
In August, it designated the BLA as a terror group. That similar month, US forces held a “Counterterrorism Dialogue” with their Pakistani counterparts to debate joint efforts to fight the BLA, the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), and Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) –– rebel teams which have all lengthy plagued Pakistani authorities.
In January, the 2 militaries accomplished joint coaching in Pakistan, which based on US Central Command, targeted on mixed infantry abilities and ways and counterterrorism operations.
Choudhry, Pakistan’s military spokesperson, was adamant Islamabad would do what it takes to safe mineral-wealthy areas and guarantee its mining infrastructure is “world class.”
“We will resolve it,” he informed NCS. “We have no other option.”
That probably means extra battles in the arid mountains in opposition to a resurgent jihadist motion that, due to its US-made weapons, is ready to outgun its opponents.
At the hospital ward in Peshawar, Uddin and the opposite wounded troopers are left helpless and indignant.
“I fired back at my enemies but could not reach them,” Uddin informed NCS of the encounter that took each his legs.
“I am very angry, have you seen my condition?… I’ve seen my wounded companions around me, and it makes me even angrier.”