Afghanistan’s “ghost soldiers” who brought the country to the hands of the Taliban

“Nobody imagined that the collapse would happen so quickly “.

Khalid Payenda, who was the last Minister of Finance of Afghanistan before the fall of the country into the hands of the taliban, speaks for the first time of those days.

SIGHT: WHO: Afghanistan faces deadly measles outbreak

In an interview with the BBC, the official recounted his vision of what happened last August and expressed his point of view on what he considers the main causes of the failure of the previous government, supported by EE.UU.

Two mistakes, he said, were trying to build a military in the image of the United States – based on a solid air force – and the inability to counter a successful strategy used by the Taliban to offer guarantees to those who would not fight them.

But also, he said, there is the fact that the supposed 300,000 members of the Afghan army, in reality, they did not exist.

They were, in his opinion, “ghost soldiers”.

“We never had an army of that size. The way in which the accounting was done was to ask the chiefs of the regions how many soldiers they had and, based on that, calculate expenses and salaries, and that data was always inflated.”, He counted.

According to Payenda, generals added names of people who did not exist to official lists in order to pocket their salaries.

• Austria proposes lockdown for those not vaccinated against coronavirus
• The Afghan girl who was sold by her parents for $ 2,000 “because we didn’t have enough to eat”
• Johnson & Johnson Laboratory announces plan to split in two

He estimated that the Afghan forces would actually have between 40,000 and 50,000 members and the rest were “inflated numbers”.

“And there were also desertions [y] soldiers killed in combat who were never counted as casualties because some of the commanders kept their bank cards“, said.

SIGHT: 6 Afghan children die from the detonation of an explosive found by one of them

inaccurate figures

The Taliban quickly seized control of Afghanistan in August, when US forces withdrew after 20 years in the country.

Although initially the number of the Taliban (about 60,000 to 70,000) was believed to be lower than that of the military, it is now believed that the actual number of the armed forces was actually much lower.

A 2016 report by the US Special Inspector General for the Reconstruction of Afghanistan (Sigar) stated that neither Washington nor its Afghan allies knew “how many Afghan soldiers and police actually exist, how many are actually available for service or, for extent, the true nature of its operational capabilities. “

In a more recent report, Sigar stated “serious concerns about the corrosive effects of corruption… and the questionable accuracy of the data on the army’s actual strength”.

Major General Chris Donahue was the last US soldier to leave Afghanistan. (REUTERS)

SIGHT: US Says Its Attack That Killed 10 Civilians In Afghanistan “Conforms To The Laws Of War”

Widespread corruption

Payenda, who resigned and left Afghanistan as the Islamist group advanced, said that the Afghan troops, in addition to being inferior in number, were also demoralized.

Many soldiers, he said, were not paid on time and local governments sometimes kept their wages.

Soldiers marching. (AFP)

He also noted that there were government-backed militia leaders who did “double dip”: They collected their salary from the government and then also accepted payments from the Taliban to surrender without a fight.

“The whole feeling was: ‘we can’t change this (corruption). This is how parliament works, this is how governors work. ‘ Everyone would say that the pyramid is rotten from the top, which means that the top is involved in this“, said.

He said that corruption was so widespread that on several occasions he had to deal with both government officials and candidates for public office demanding bribes for themselves and their followers.

“I had a congressman who came to me and said, ‘We just had elections. I have to pay US $ 1 million to other congressmen and to my group to be able to regain the leadership of this commission in Parliament. ‘”, he remembered.

However, he indicated that he did not believe that former President Ashraf Ghani was “financially corrupt”.

In response to accusations of corruption within the Ministry of Finance, which he himself directed, Payenda said that things were done wrong there, “but on these issues, absolutely not.”

The former minister considered that The West was responsible “in part” for some of the failures in Afghanistan, although he described the involvement of the United States and NATO in the country as “a great missed opportunity”.

• Journalist who reported on the start of the coronavirus in Wuhan is on the verge of death in jail, according to his family
• Mortuary clerk admits he committed dozens of sexual assaults on corpses
• Austria offers jobs with salaries of up to US $ 4,000 to foreigners, including Peruvians: what profession are they looking for and how to apply?
• Salt Bae Feeds Vietnam’s Communist Minister With More Than $ 1,100 Gold-Plated Steak | VIDEO
• Life sentence for woman who murdered five of her children in revenge because her husband left her
• Bill Gates talks about an upcoming threat that would put the world ‘in check’

.