Javier Manzano/For The Washington Post 
 
 After a tough fighting season, Afghan soldiers are finding that a significant portion of their vital equipment is broken and cannot be easily replaced. “We don’t have enough trained professionals to take care of this equipment,” Nabiullah said. “The Americans gave us the Humvees, but they didn’t give us the spare parts,” said Sgt. Not all of the equipment reaching the scrap yard was deliberately damaged: Some was already broken after a decade of use. It didn’t take long for the mechanics to realize that they couldn’t get the vehicle running again. But there’s one catch: The equipment is being destroyed before it’s offered to the Afghan people — to ensure that treadmills, air-conditioning units and other rudimentary appliances aren’t used to make roadside bombs. Instead, they have to buy shoes themselves, sometimes wearing tattered running sneakers. Another tough fighting season could wipe out what’s left of Hamidullah’s vehicles. Soldiers piled into the remaining Humvees. “I’ll send it to brigade,” said Sardar Mohammad, the mechanic. “But I already know they don’t have the capacity to fix it.”
– Searching for a good deal on a used treadmill? Look no further than Afghanistan, where the US military is selling off 2 million to 14 million pounds of its equipment every week, as it winds down operations there. There's just one catch, reports the Washington Post: most of the equipment is destroyed so parts can't be made into bombs. "Many non-military items have timing equipment or other components in them that can pose a threat. For example, timers can be attached to explosives. Treadmills, stationary bikes, many household appliances and devices, et cetera, have timers," explains a Pentagon spokesperson. All the equipment would be too expensive to bring back to the US, so now a scrap yard near Bagram is piled high with air conditioners, trucks, and TVs that don't work. And the locals aren't impressed. "The Russians didn’t break their things before they sold them to us," says one customer. Meanwhile, the Post reports in a separate article, Afghanistan's army is struggling with broken equipment it can't fix. The US had previously been taking care of repairs, but since it stopped, corruption and an undeveloped local supply chain has made finding replacement parts difficult. "The Americans gave us the Humvees, but they didn’t give us the spare parts," says a local special forces leader. And it doesn't help that gear is being pilfered—one special forces commander just defected to a Taliban-aligned insurgent group, taking up to 30 guns, night-vision goggles, and a Humvee with him, Reuters reports.