ISLAMABAD – The US military and its allied western forces have shipped unprecedented amount of conventional weapons into Afghanistan since 9/11 as part of their Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF).
Well-placed diplomatic sources informed TheNation on Tuesday that the US military and its NATO allies, particularly UK and Germany, had shipped hundreds of thousands of arms stuffed containers subjecting the Afghan population to the massive death, destruction and displacement.
Sources said that the US military had used four major shipping companies including Maersk, APL, Hapag-Lloyd and Liberty Global Logistics to transport these containers to Afghanistan.
These companies, sources further said, had also been subletting part of arms consignments to their associates.
Meanwhile, details of arms shipment contracts of the NATO member countries were not immediately available.
In a related development, international human rights watchdog, the Amnesty International (AI), in its July 19 report, had expressed deep concerns over the states failing to control movement of weapons to human rights abusers.
Examples highlighted in the report include deliveries of cluster munitions and their components on ships registered in the UK, and managed by UK and German shipping companies, that were transported from South Korea to Pakistan between March 2008 and February 2010 for use by the country’s army.
These deliveries took place despite the UK and Germany having committed to comprehensively ban the transfer and use of cluster munitions.