US seeking buyers for old military equipment

The United States is trying to sell or dispose of billions of dollars in military hardware, including sophisticated and highly specialised mine resistant vehicles as it packs up to leave Afghanistan after 13 years of war, officials said today.
But the efforts are complicated in a region where relations between neighbouring countries are mired in suspicion and outright hostility.
A statement by the US Embassy in Pakistan said Islamabad is interested in buying used US equipment.
The statement said Pakistan's request is being reviewed but any equipment it receives, including the coveted mine resistant vehicles, will not likely come from its often angry neighbor Afghanistan.

An earlier US Forces statement was definite: Pakistan would not get any US equipment being sold out of Afghanistan.
Mark Wright, Department of Defense spokesman, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that the US would like to sell to "nearby countries" the equipment that is too costly to ship back home.

Among the items for sale are 800 MRAPs, highly sophisticated Mine Resistant Ambush Protected armored vehicles.
Selling them off could mean a savings of as much as USD 500 million and hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues, he said.
The computerised MRAPs have been used by US service personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan, as protection against the deadly roadside bombs used relentlessly by insurgents.

According to an Associated Press count at least 2,176 members of the US military have died in Afghanistan since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001. Many were killed by roadside bombs.
Still it seems certain that Afghanistan's nearest neighbor Pakistan won't be getting any of the excess 800 MRAPs that are up for sale by the departing US military, although roadside bombs have been one of the deadliest weapons used by Pakistani insurgents against an estimated 170,000 Pakistani soldiers deployed in the tribal regions that border Afghanistan and Pakistan.