U.S. taxpayers have been shelling out more than $300 million a year for the salaries of Afghan soldiers and police who may or may not actually be serving, the Pentagon’s top watchdog on Afghanistan reconstruction said Friday.
John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, sent a letter to Defense Secretary Ash Carter in August that was publicly released on Friday asking questions about the problem of “ghost” soldiers, or Afghans who are officially signed up for the military or police, but are not actually serving.
“Persistent reports indicating discrepancies between the assigned force strength of the ANDSF and the actual number of personnel serving raise questions regarding whether the U.S. government is taking adequate steps to prevent taxpayer funds from being spent on so-called ‘ghost’ soldiers,” the letter said. “My office has raised concerns in the past that the U.S. government has been relying on inaccurate data when determining how much it will spend on ANDSF salaries.”
Several examples prove a discrepancy between data in the Afghan books and the number of Afghans prepared to fight. U.S. Forces Afghanistan said that, in the quarter ending in June, the force strength for police and military was almost 320,000. Afghan officials, however, said the actual force is about 120,000 fighters, the SIGAR letter said.
In Helmand province, the police chief said that of the 26,000 Afghan personnel in the area, about half “did not exist physically when we asked for help during operations,” SIGAR said. Instead, the salaries for these non-existent “ghost” soldiers had gone into “personal accounts,” the chief said.
Despite problems with the data on how many Afghans are actually serving in the military and police force, the U.S. government has relied on the inaccurate numbers to determine how much to spend on salaries for the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces.
Since 2002, Congress has approved more than $68 billion to help build up the defense and security force in Afghanistan. In 2015, SIGAR reported that the $300 million the government spent on salaries for Afghans was based on “only partially verified or reconciled” data.
In its Oct. 3 response, the Defense Department noted several steps it was taking to fix the discrepancies, such as fixing errors in the human resources databases, person-by-person verification and biometric enrollment, which is scheduled to be done by July.
But Sopko wrote that the changes will work only if better data follows.
“These systems will only be effective if accurate data is captured and maintained on ANDSF attendance and attrition. Given the persistent reports of absentee or non-existent personnel, my office is concerned about whether adequate steps have been taken to address this issue,” he said.
