All that money going all that distance around the globe, and we end up with shadowy no-show jobs.  Image via Esquire Magazine sans attribution

– News from elsewhere covered by Quincy Quarry

Boots on the dole?
A John Moore/Getty Images image

The Afghan Military had something in common with Massachusetts politics.

While Quincy Quarry will not be offering up a formal editorial position on the recent as well as sudden unraveling of Afghanistan, much less cast blame if for no other reason than that the list would be long – too wicked long – and as it is already tired of suffering inane trolls posting baseless defenses of local grifting, it still must cover the sage observations of a columnist at the Boston Broadsheet.

A dark place. A very dark place. A file photo.

“I cut my teeth covering politics in the Massachusetts State House, which is where Captain Blood would have done business had he gone to parochial school in Dorchester …” 

(Quelle surprise, ed.)

“… Imagine the shock of the familiar that came over me when I was reading the Special Investigator For Afghanistan Reconstruction report from 2015 and saw this:”

Despite 13 years and several billions of dollars in salary assistance to the Afghan government for the ANP, there is still no assurance that personnel and payroll data are accurate.  Since 2006, U.S. government audit agencies have consistently found problems with the tracking and reporting of Afghan National Police (ANP) personnel and payroll data.

“A year later, another SIGAR report …”

In January 2015 SIGAR reported that more than $300 million in annual, U.S.-funded salary payments to the Afghan National Police were based on only partially verified or reconciled data, and that there was no assurances that personnel and payroll data were accurate.  SIGAR found similar deficiencies during the course of the April 2015 audit of Afghan National Army personnel and payroll data.  There are continuing reports of significant gaps between the assigned force strength of the ANDSF and the actual number of personnel serving.

“…(A)nd from The Financial Times:”

“Meanwhile, the armed forces have been plagued by corruption, such as the issue of “ghost soldiers” who exist on paper but are not real — allowing others to collect their salaries.  Although there are officially 300,000 Afghan troops, Threlkeld said that “it’s fair to say that in reality there are far fewer”.

Up in smoke
A cheatsheet.com image

“…All that money going all that distance around the globe, and we end up with a no-show job scam.  All that high-falutin’ rhetoric about freedom and democracy, and we find out that our war is being run as though it were a Middlesex County road crew.  I admire the departed Afghan government’s dedication to the classics, however.”

About all that Quincy Quarry can add is that it is painfully clear that essentially none of the senior American suits involved in this Whiskey Tango Foxtrot read “The Ugly American” or at least did not take its messages to heart if they did read it and instead believed their own bovine byproduct as well as swallowed what was fed to them.

Source: Afghanistan Military Plagued By Corruption, ‘Ghost Soldiers’: Report

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