
Afghanistan Loses 42k Troops in Crackdown on 'Ghost Soldiers' - onetimemanytime
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/08/02/afghanistan-loses-42000-troops-crackdown-ghost-soldiers.html
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tyingq
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.

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onetimemanytime
at about $300 a month [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-army-
desertio...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-army-
desertions/desertions-deplete-afghan-forces-adding-to-security-worries-
idUSKCN0UW1K3) . 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.

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tyingq
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.

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onetimemanytime
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...

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tyingq
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.

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mothsonasloth
[ 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.

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stevenjohns
> 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

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wtdata
> 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.

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krageon
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.

