US army's new Afghan nightmare – how to ship $30bn of kit

Flying home colossal MRAPs that save Nato troops from Taliban IEDs is part of $30bn logistical nightmare
A Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle in Tangi Valley, Afghanistan
When this Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle was attacked with an improvised explosive device in Tangi Valley, Afghanistan, only three US troops were injured. Photograph: Adam Ferguson/VII Network/Corbis

The US army has begun the massive task of withdrawing $30bn (£19bn) worth of military equipment from Afghanistan three years before most Nato troops leave, with logisticians warning of complications from the lack of decent roads and the nightmarish geography of a landlocked country surrounded by states that are either fickle American allies or outright enemies.

Planners say the complex and costly exercise must start now because of the quantity of equipment involved. Some of the tens of thousands of vehicles sent to the country have already started their journey back to American bases in the US and Germany.

"We have had 10 years of bringing things in, with none of it leaving," said a senior official based in Kabul with the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf), the US-led Nato operation in Afghanistan.

Nato's supplies are already being hampered by Pakistan's decision in November to ban coalition convoys from crossing into Afghanistan after US warplanes mistakenly attacked a border post, killing scores of Pakistani soldiers.

Attempting to extract all equipment by air would be prohibitively expensive, although the costs can be reduced by flying kit to friendly ports in the region. Another option is to move through the north of Afghanistan.

Russia and its allies in the central Asian republics have been happy to help the Americans get into Afghanistan in the last decade to suppress Islamic militants they regard as a common threat. But the countries have not yet agreed to help the Americans leave and US diplomats are engaged in intensive negotiations to strike a deal.

The Isaf official said some of the central Asian states needed reassuring that a wave of drugs and other illicit goods would not accompany the removal of military kit, something they recall from the drawdown of Soviet troops before February 1989 when the last Russian troops quit the country.

It is all in stark contrast to the winding down of the US war in Iraq, a country blessed with a motorway network and a port in neighbouring Kuwait that was happy to be used as a US staging post.

The US estimates it has "tens of thousands" of vehicles in Afghanistan, and at least twice as many sea containers holding anything from weapons systems to communications gear.

This includes the scores of surveillance blimps that in recent years have become a common sight, flying with state of the art cameras high above military outposts. With them will go the specialised lorries that heave giant pressurised helium canisters for each balloon.

The greatest challenge will be the fleet of towering Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles (MRAPs), that were designed and built from scratch as the number of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan by homemade insurgent bombs soared.

They are taller than many of the single-storey dwellings in rural Afghanistan and prone to rolling over. Weighing in at more than 10 tonnes the colossal vehicles can collapse bridges and crude rural tracks.

But their armour and V-shaped hulls designed to deflect bomb blasts mean soldiers are far more likely to clamber out alive if hit by a bomb than the classic four-man Humvee. Only a handful of the bulky MRAPs can squeeze aboard the military's biggest cargo jets. But planners are determined to get them back.

To get the MRAPs built, the former US defence secretary, Robert Gates, had to fight bureaucratic battles with Pentagon officials who did not want to compromise other prized programmes by buying vehicles for use in guerrilla warfare that cost about $500,000 each.

"We aren't very good at predicting future wars," the official said. "[But] I'm sure we will use them for something and even if we don't these are the next generation of vehicles that we would have to buy anyway."

If all goes to plan, vast quantities of kit, will eventually make its way home.

With the US government set to cut military spending, the top brass is anxious to keep hold of equipment – such as the MRAPs that had not even been imagined when the US went to war in Afghanistan in late 2001 – that is far better than troops have back home.

"Everything that we have over here in almost every instance is the absolute top of the line," the Isaf official said. "It is not replicated back in the States or just about anywhere."

Reversing the military build-up in Afghanistan will also involve ripping down bases across the country, many established in the last couple of years during the two troop surges ordered by Barack Obama.

The US does not want to leave an archipelago of ghost bases scattered across the country.

Those that cannot be occupied by Afghan forces are at risk of being taken over by insurgents and must therefore be "turned back into prairie land", the official said.

"We will have to knock down the fortifications and clean up any environmental problems, and we are prepared to do that."

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