But the efforts
are complicated in a region where relations between neighboring
countries are mired in suspicion and outright hostility.
A
statement by the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan said Islamabad is interested
in buying used U.S. 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 U.S. Forces statement was definite: Pakistan would not get any U.S. equipment being sold out of Afghanistan.
Mark
Wright, Department of Defense spokesman, told The Associated Press in a
telephone interview that the U.S. 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 $500 million and hundreds of millions of dollars in
revenues, he said. The computerized MRAPs have been used by U.S. 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 U.S. military have died in
Afghanistan since the U.S.-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 U.S. 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.
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