Tolo News has recently reported on a small arms theft from within the Interior Ministry’s headquarters compound in the northern part of Kabul by the international airport. This comes after another major small arms theft that occurred in March of this year. From the news report-
The office has received documents against 14 officials of the ministry over the loss of 105 AK-47 guns, 18 missiles, 80 mortars and 5,000 machine gun bullets.
Two of those accused employees have fled, two of them are in detention and 10 others have been released on bail, Attorney General’s Office spokesman Jamshid Rasuli told TOLOnews.
The nomenclature appears to have gone through some translation confusion when it comes to “missiles” and “mortars”. Kabuli Police certainly don’t use mortars so it would appear that missiles might mean RPG-7 launchers and mortars might be the PG-7 rockets for them. Machine gun bullets might also be a bit of a confusion because why would a thief make out with 105 AKM rifles but no 7.62x39mm ammunition to go with? If indeed these are 7.62x54mmR “Machine Gun Bullets”? Either way, on the current black market those AKMs sell for over a thousand dollars a rifle.
Two significant thefts of small arms within the Ministry of Interior are certainly not good news. It would appear that both of these might purely be financially black market driven rather than the work of an insurgent organization such as the Taliban or ISIS-K. Either way, both involved internal cooperation and were not by a forced or armed nature of attack.