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| John F. Sopko (Image: Flickr User - Special IG for Afghanistan Reconstruction) |
The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, John F. Sopko, at an event in Duke University in the United States made shocking remarks on ‘corruption’ among Afghan forces as he said the combination of corruption and poor leadership in the security forces in Afghanistan is the root cause for their ‘ineffectiveness’.
“Without question, the top two challenges in Afghanistan are corruption and the lack of capacity of the Afghan security forces. And in many cases, the two go hand in hand,” he said.
"Commanders in the Afghan military steal the food that you pay for and force their soldiers to buy it back. We hear story after story of commanders who steal the fuel, sell it to the Taliban, who take the weapons we-you-pay for and sell it to the Taliban," Sopko said. "The irony of it is, the terrorists are at the end of our supply chain."
He mentioned about ‘ghost soldiers’ among Afghan security forces and said their salaries are taken by higher ranking commanders.
“Ghost soldiers exist because names are either added - or never removed - from the Afghan payroll, and their salaries are pocketed by higher ranking commanders. When their commanders act in this way, how can we be surprised when 75 percent of all personnel losses to the Afghan security forces are due to soldiers simply walking away?” Sopko said.
“The current Resolute Support commander, General John Nicholson, is actively trying to tackle this problem, but the number of ghost personnel may go into the tens of thousands,” he added.
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