Former Finance Minister: 300,000 Ghost Soldiers That Made Afghanistan Collapse in an Instant
KABUL - Afghanistan's former finance minister, Khalid Payenda, blamed 300,000 "ghost soldiers" for the government's immediate collapse. The US-backed government collapsed after Taliban forces seized Kabul in August 2021.
A "ghost army" is a term for troops or military personnel that don't actually exist. The fictitious troops were created by corrupt officials with the aim of pocketing their salaries.
The Taliban easily took control of major cities before marching into Kabul in August, often without much resistance from the Afghan army.
Khalid Payenda told the BBC that most of Afghanistan's 300,000 troops were absent and were actually "ghost soldiers" created by corrupt officials who exploited the system for money.
"The way accountability is done, you're going to ask the head of the province how many people you have and based on that you can calculate your salary and spending allowance and it's always going up," Payenda told the BBC's Business Daily's Ed Butler. , Thursday (11/11/2021).
Payenda also said that when soldiers were killed or abandoned, their commanders would keep their bank cards and withdraw their salaries.
There are also government-backed militia leaders who, according to Payenda, are "double-dipping data" or taking government salaries while also receiving payments from the Taliban.
According to him, combined with the fact that the actual troops were not paid on time, this contributed greatly to the rapid collapse of the Afghan government.
"The whole feeling, we can't change this. This is how parliament works, this is how governors work. Everyone will say the current is murky from the top, meaning the very top is involved in this," said Payenda, adding that she did not believe it. former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani is "financially corrupt".
The Taliban regained control of Afghanistan in August 2021 when the US completed its troop withdrawal from the country.
A month before the takeover of the Taliban, US President Joe Biden had touted the numbers and capabilities of the Afghan military, where the US government spent $83 billion on training and equipment.
Biden in a press conference July 8, 2021 said the Afghan military is as well equipped as any army in the world.
During the same press conference, Biden said, "The possibility that there will be a Taliban who controls everything and owns the whole country is very unlikely."
As the Taliban marched into Kabul, the Biden government was forced to admit it was surprised by the speed with which the militants were seizing territory. "Certainly the speed with which cities are falling is much greater than anyone anticipated," US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in mid-August.
Biden has heavily blamed the Afghan military, even though he had expressed "confidence" in it just weeks earlier.
The Afghan military has been plagued by corruption and disciplinary problems for years, and the US government has been warned about the problem.
Payenda is not the first official from Afghanistan or the US to express concern about "ghost soldiers".
"When we say we have 100 soldiers on the battlefield, the reality is only 30 or 40. And this creates a huge potential for disaster when the enemy strikes," said ousted Afghan lawmaker Ghulam Hussain Nasiri.
"An indication of massive corruption, the reason Afghanistan is one of the most corrupt countries in the world."
Another Afghan official said that no one knows the exact number of the Afghan National Defense Forces.
"Everyone knows that we are facing this fight with the 'ghost army', and that's the reason we don't have enough people," ousted Afghan government soldier Mohammad Islam told the Associated Press.
"The Taliban knew it too. When they attacked us, and we couldn't protect ourselves, the big guys then asked why."
"Neither the US nor its Afghan allies really know how many Afghan troops and police are available to serve, or, by extension, the true nature of their operational capabilities," said John Sopko, special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction (SIGAR). , to the US Congress in 2016.
The previous year, SIGAR warned that more than $300 million a year was being distributed to non-existent troops. SIGAR has repeatedly pointed to issues surrounding the "ghost army" over the years.
The US is trying to remove Afghan "ghost soldiers" from its paychecks, but problems with the Afghan military persist.