KOHAT, Oct 21: US army has retrieved 26 missing Stinger missiles from various former heads of warring factions after making hefty payments through a middleman during the arms recovery drive in Kandahar, a party privy to the deals confided to this correspondent.

There are still more than 200 stingers missing in Afghanistan, which were supplied by the CIA to different warlords during the Russian war, the source confirmed.

The exercise to recover missing weapons from Afghanistan was suspended during the short rule of Taliban but resumed after the Sept 11 attacks. The recovery of weapons from the warlords is one of the tasks handed over to the US troops besides chasing and arresting Al Qaeda.

All the deals are being made at Kandahar through a Pakistani tribesman Nasir Afridi on the payment of $120,000 per Stinger to the owner. Back in early nineties the price of a Stinger was set at $65,000 including the middleman’s commission.

The laser-guided anti-aircraft stingers have lost their shelf life but they remain a potential threat to coalition forces inside Afghanistan.

Nasir Afridi, who nowadays travels frequently between Khost, Kandahar and Pakistan, told this correspondent early this month that his father and an uncle incidentally became party to the deals when they purchased some spares of a Stinger for selling them to the US authorities in Islamabad a year back.

He claims that one of the tasks before the coalition forces in Afghanistan is to retrieve maximum number of deadly weapons before launching a full-scale war against their enemy and also starting rehabilitation work in the war-torn country.