Value for Investment
"At checkpoints where 20 soldiers should be present, there are only eight or ten. It's because some people are getting paid a salary but not doing the job because they are related to someone important, like a local warlord."
Karim Atal, head, Helmand provincial council
"If you have a roll of one hundred people, not all of them will be there one hundred percent of the time -- there is leave, training, and we take casualties."
"And it takes time to replace them."
Afghan Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi
"When we say we have one hundred soldiers on the battlefield, in reality it is just 30 or 40. And this creates the potential for huge catastrophes when the enemy attacks."
"It is an indication of massive corruption -- the reason Afghanistan is one of the most corrupt nations in the world."
"[The government] doesn't seem to want to know about it."
Afghan lawmaker Ghulam Hussain Nasiri
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| In this Monday, Dec. 28, 2015, file photo, Afghan security forces inspect the site of a suicide car bomb attack near the Kabul airport in Kabul, Afghanistan. Afghan forces are struggling to man the front lines against a resurgent Taliban, in part because of untold numbers of “ghost” troops who are paid salaries but only exist on paper. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul, File) |
Well, it isn't that the government doesn't want to know, it certainly does know, and it knows that among its members of parliament there are those who are involved in the situation of inflated military numbers on duty, profiting from it, just as they profit from the huge Afghanistan poppy-growing market to supply the world with opioids courtesy of Afghan farmers pressed into profit by the Taliban and by Afghan cabinet warlords.
As for absent Afghan forces; if there is something that Afghan society at large can guarantee it is that corruption is historical and it is endemic at every level of society and government; and as for national commitment and patriotism expressed through a universal wish to defend the country, there is no national glue to cement that defence. Afghans in the military balk at the kind of discipline required to forge a well-honed military and many recruits think nothing of just wandering away from their commitments and returning home.
The Afghan National Army is struggling with its "ghost" soldiers; men who are supposed to be present and actively on duty and who receive their pay for that purpose but who are nowhere to be found in actual fact, among the forces. There are even among the ghosts, deserters and dead soldiers and police, their absence going unreported because senior police or army officials appreciate the opportunity to take advantage of their salaries in their absence.
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| In this Monday, Dec. 28, 2015 photo, Afghan police gather near the entrance to a police station in Lashkar Gah, capital of Helmand province, Afghanistan. Afghan police are refusing to go back on the streets of a volatile southern district under Taliban attack, claiming that promised government help has not yet arrived, an Afghan official said on Tuesday. (AP Photos/Abdul Khaliq) |
Mr. Atal of Helmand provincial council estimates that 40 percent of registered forces do not actually exist and as a result of that watered-down manpower the Taliban have been enabled to mount more effective belligerent challenges to the government. The Taliban is now threatening to take the provincial capital Lashkar Gah, of the province they now have 65 percent control of. The military is challenged to defend the province with its decimated ranks.
An estimated 700 police officers were killed, and another 500 wounded while attempting to defend Helmand from the Taliban in the past several months. Pacha Gul Bakhtiar, the former deputy police chief advised that Helmand registers 31,000 police officers "but in reality it is nowhere near that [number]". Billions in international aid to the military and other government areas have been spent but corruption remains rampant, impeding security forces in their struggle to fend off Taliban advances.
According to Mr. Sediqqi, 86 percent of the 157,000 police in Afghanistan were registered digitally, receiving salaries through bank accounts. The remainder representing 30 districts "where there are threats", are paid in cash by "trusted agents".
According to the global watchdog Transparency International, Afghanistan ranks among the worst corrupt countries in the world. And the funding to maintain that corruption in the hopes that some will trickle through usefully comes to $5-billion annually from the international community, though the U.S. picks up the majority of the costs.
Labels: Afghanistan, Corruption, Military, Political Crisis, Political Realities
posted by Pieface @ Monday, January 11, 2016
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