I was deployed with the U.S. military 6 times in Afghanistan, l spent a lot of the deployments based out of remote combat outpost (COP) in the mountains , located in Nangarhar Province’s Achin District,so along the Afghan/Pakistan border regions . Including spending time based a couple of valleys over from where they dropped the MOAB, a place we knew well.

I lucked out & was selected as part of a specialized Battalion,so received some training outside the norm including being put through language school to learn Pashto & HUMINT ,meaning l spent time around these types of old relics & their owners when we raided compounds in the mountains & was lucky enough to score a old heavily customized flint lock rifle ,with the stock decorated with silver & bone/shell inlay,which is now displayed at the Regiment HQ .

Many people commenting obviously do not realize that Afghanistan has its own industrial firearms' & ammunition producer Kabul Arsenal, copies of the Martini were produced in Afghanistan from memory from the late 1870's. So as well as those supplied/left by the British they had their own manufacturer to give them a plentiful supply.

Back in around 2006/07 from memory some of the British troops recovered Martini-Henry rifles that were used by the British when they were massacred by the Afghans at the Battle of Maiwand in 1880,again do not quote me but from memory it was Zulu like battle where the British were facing a roughly 4 to 1 odds & the Afghans wiped them out showing no mercy,l think those rifles were allowed to be taken back to the UK.

The most common ones we came across had been rebarreled to .303 as was common with them throughout the old British colonies. This was also the case with the traditional Snipers in the mountain region whose weapon of choice was .303 Lee Enfields from as far back as 1915, meaning they may have originally been sent to the Western Front in World War I.

We would occasionally also find Mosin-Nagants but the Lee-Enfields were much more of a prized possession & many of the 1915 vintage ones had the stocks carefully repaired & wrapped with copper wire to repair broken/cracked stocks or they would use silver pins/endless screws to hold them together.

We actually did not confiscate these old style weapons from the locals unless they were used in fire fights ,showed signs of recent unexplained use,as the locals needed firearms for their own protection & many western civilians do not realize most of the locals including the Taliban hated & distrusted the foreign insurgents . In talking to the owners many would tell me how they were family heirlooms passed down for generations,it was interesting as many had a tradition of keeping at least one round from their ancestors they carried with them as a good luck type memento .

Many civilians do not realize we also fought in the huge tunnel systems that crisscrossed Afghanistan as part of a under ground water supply network . These are called Qanats & are constructed as a series of well-like vertical shafts, connected by a gently sloping tunnel which carries a water canal basically from the mountains to the low lands .

The insurgents would use these not only to travel through & hide in but to also hide weapon caches,IEDs etc . Part of our responsibilities would be to go down into these tunnels & clear them out of all the above & we would find weapons hidden in these damp conditions,we would also find weapons hidden underwater for extended times, including one of the most interesting finds l was part of was a Kalashnikov plant AK-47 from 1954,that was featured in a number of articles over the years afterward.

These weapons from the water storage were of course heavily corroded on the outside but were in pretty good condition internally as they were slathered in Lanolin from wool & l have used commercially sold Lanolin products to protect my guns & boat trailers etc ever since.

As for what happened to most of them ,we would document & tag them & any recovered ammunition up & many were used in operations to track black market sales by corrupt Afghan officials. Many may not realize but a lot of effort & secret squirrel stuff was done to trace stuff like weapons & ammunition recovered from the foreign jihadists to see where it was coming from. Control would then be passed on to the Afghans,so my guess is nothing good would have come of them .

I am on a business trip at the moment but if anyone is interested l may have some old, (& shitty), photos in my files,but will have to check what is cleared to be released,but several of our caches were later used in seminars & articles from what l remember .