Afghanistan Loses 42k Troops in Crackdown on 'Ghost Soldiers' | Hacker News Reader

Afghanistan Loses 42k Troops in Crackdown on 'Ghost Soldiers'

military.com

Total Afghan troops are supposedly in the 300 to 400k range. So that's a pretty significant ~10+% fudge.

Somewhat surprised it wasn't expected and prepared for. Guessing there was some financial reward for recruitment targets. People optimize whatever you reward them for.

at about $300 a month https://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-army-desertio... . Plus equipment, food supplies etc that can be sold on the black market. Some generals must be very rich.

This is a well known and common trick in corrupt countries. Usually the no-show employees keep half or whatever agreed to and hand the rest.

That's on top of any reward for meeting targets... Given the dire need, with US withdrawals, I suspect the meeting target rewards weren't trivial.

No personal knowledge but I'd be surprised if they didn't protect drug shipments as well in exchange for cash. Probably thousands of Afghani leaders have milked the war to make millions and even hundreds of millions. USA spent hundreds of billions to trillions...

It's a sort of hustler's paradise I imagine. Probably makes the "War Dogs" movie look amatuerish in retrospect. Or perhaps "American Gangster" is a more apt reference.

Is all this paid for with large loans from the USA?

[ I am not a General or Diplomat]

I think ISAF should look to the Northern Alliance for more responsibility. The South detests them but less than the Americans.

Like the Kurds they have a bit more get up and go about them. They keep their region safe, encourage foreign involvement and contribute to the ANAs recruitment.

It's in their best interests that the Taliban don't expand.

The NA was known more as weekend warriors during the Soviet occupation which was one reason the ISI wanted the jihadi groups to get most of the Cyclone money.

> Like the Kurds they have a bit more get up and go about them.

The idea that "Kurds"[0] are somehow more motivated or more trustworthy is literally just racist State-sponsored propaganda that has been used and abused by all sides, including from other Kurds, for various reasons over the last 150 years.

Rather than picking and choosing arbitrary, loosely aligned militias to control regions, the US needs to take a more holistic view towards the region and stop participating in the Saudi-Iranian proxy war if it wants to resolve the situation.

[0] I'm putting the word in quotation marks because they are a group of 40 million people with differing religions, alliances, identities, political views and geographical locations around the world

> The idea that "Kurds"[0] are somehow more motivated or more trustworthy is literally just racist State-sponsored propaganda.

Kurds aren't a race. Giving special credit to a group of people because of their different culture (even agreeing with you that in this case it seems propaganda), is not necessarily racist.

They are a distinct ethnic group, which we usually call a race. Seeing as race is a fundamentally arbitrary distinction, I don't see why using it in this way can be called wrong.

They are most definitely an ethnic group. That's not under dispute by anyone, so I'm not sure why you're racing it as a concern.

> because of their different culture

Which culture is that exactly?

If you're going to say things like feminist views, or bravery, then I'm afraid that's all racist propaganda.

I'm stressing the racism angle here because this fabricated glorification wasn't even created to prop them up, but rather to bring down the other various ethnic groups around them.

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