Trump pushes to recover ‘billions of dollars’ of military equipment left behind in Afghanistan withdrawal

President Donald Trump wants to recover billions of dollars’ worth of equipment U.S. troops left in Afghanistan following their 2021 withdrawal from the country.

“We left billions, tens of billions of dollars worth of equipment behind, brand new trucks,” Trump said during his first Cabinet meeting Wednesday. “You see them display it every year, or their little roadway, someplace where they have a road and they drive the, you know, waving the flag and talking about America … that’s all the top of the line stuff. I think we should get a lot of that equipment back.”

The Taliban seized most of the more than $7 billion worth of equipment U.S. troops left in Afghanistan at the time of the withdrawal in August 2021, according to a Department of Defense report released in 2022. 

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U.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks during a Cabinet meeting at the White House on February 26, 2025 in Washington, DC.  (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

Although U.S. troops removed or destroyed much of the major equipment that forces used during the drawdown, military equipment including aircraft, ground vehicles and other weapons were left in Afghanistan. The condition of these items remains unknown, but the Pentagon said in the report it would likely fail operationally without maintenance from U.S. contractors. 

More details about how the U.S. would retrieve the equipment left in Afghanistan were not immediately available, and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital. 

President Joe Biden moved to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan in 2021, building upon plans from the first Trump administration in 2020 with Taliban leaders to end the war in the region.

Thirteen U.S. service members were killed during the withdrawal process due to a suicide bombing at Abbey Gate, outside of Hamid Karzai International Airport, and the Taliban quickly seized control of Kabul. 

Trump’s comments Wednesday came in response to questions about whether he was considering firing military leaders who oversaw the withdrawal. While Trump said he wouldn’t instruct Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on what actions the Pentagon should take ousting those leaders, Trump said he would “fire every single one of them.” 

Even so, several key leaders involved in the withdrawal are no longer serving in the military. The commander of U.S. Central Command at the time of the withdrawal, Marine Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., has since retired, and in 2024 took full ownership for the loss of U.S. troops. 

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Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, former commander of U.S. Central Command, said he bore responsibility for the lost service members during the Afghanistan withdrawal.  (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

“I was the overall commander, and I and I alone bear full military responsibility for what happened at Abbey Gate,” McKenzie told the House Foreign Affairs Committee in March 2024.

Additionally, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, retired Army Gen. Mark Milley, told lawmakers at the same hearing that he believed the evacuation should have occurred sooner and that multiple factors contributed to failures in the withdrawal. Both McKenzie and Milley told lawmakers they advised Biden to keep some U.S. troops in Afghanistan after pulling most U.S. forces. 

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“The outcome in Afghanistan was the result of many decisions from many years of war,” Milley told lawmakers. “Like any complex phenomena, there was no single causal factor that determined the outcome.”

U.S. Central Command oversees military operations in the Middle East.