NATO’s Resolute Support Mission (RS) in Afghanistan has said the United States defense secretary has stopped salaries of more than 30,000 ghost soldiers in Afghanistan and that from now on the Pentagon will only pay salaries of soldiers that are registered biometrically.
 
RS said this action is taken in the hope of eliminating corruption in the Afghan security departments. 
 
“Step one is knowing who you have, step two is whether they show up for work or not,” said Major General Richard Kaiser, commander of combined security transition command. 
 
Ministry of Defense (MoD) however rejected the existence of ghost soldiers in the army and said RS has not said anything to MoD in this respect.
 
“We have been running biometrics but still we have not found any ghost soldiers,” said Mohammad Radmanesh, deputy spokesman of MoD.
 
According to statistics of the MoD, daily expenses of every soldier amounts to 1,000 AFs, after calculation, the money sent for 30,000 ghost soldiers in one year amounts to nearly 11 billion AFs.
 
“The officials who misused their authority in the army in these years and have put the money in their own pockets should be introduced to judicial centers,” said Nadir Baloch, member of Senate’s defense and internal security commission.
 
Seizure of weapons to the Taliban is another concern and special inspector of the U.S had reported some Afghan soldiers sell weapons and vehicles to the Taliban.
 
“When there is no soldier, who will receive the salary. The money goes to the pockets of the people who are in charge of management of related departments,” said Mohsin Mukhtar, a military analyst.
 
The numbers of Afghan security forces totals 352,000 soldiers of whom 195,000 belongs to Afghan National Army (ANA) and if 32,000 ghost soldiers drop from the list, ANA numbers wound total 143,000 soldiers.