their fighting season , afghan soldiers are finding that a significant portion of their vital equipment is broken and can not be easily replaced .
but just as the afghan army started doing the bulk of the fighting , the americans stopped repairing a man collects items from a scrap yard near bagram airfield , the main operations headquarters for the international forces in afghanistan .
in a nation nicknamed the “ graveyard of empires , ” foreign forces are remembered for what they leave behind .
many afghan army units are running out of key equipment , including humvees , because of their inability to do repairs or find replacements .
the u.s. military shouldered that responsibility for years .
every week , as the u.s. troop drawdown accelerates , the united states is selling 12 million to 14 million pounds of its equipment on the afghan market .
the afghan army : an inability to repair or replace vital equipment once it is broken .
the united states is leaving heaps of scrap in afghanistan .
returning that gear to the united states from a landlocked country halfway around the world would be prohibitively expensive , according to u.s. officials .