{"id":273000,"date":"2016-10-14T21:26:16","date_gmt":"2016-10-14T21:26:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/congressman-walter-jones-on-us-financing-of-ghost-soldiers-in-afghanistan\/"},"modified":"2016-10-14T21:26:16","modified_gmt":"2016-10-14T21:26:16","slug":"congressman-walter-jones-on-us-financing-of-ghost-soldiers-in-afghanistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/congressman-walter-jones-on-us-financing-of-ghost-soldiers-in-afghanistan\/","title":{"rendered":"Congressman Walter Jones on US Financing of \u2018Ghost Soldiers\u2019 in Afghanistan"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Letter to Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter:<\/em><\/p>\n

October 14, 2016 The Honorable Ashton B. Carter
Secretary of Defense
The Pentagon
Washington, DC 20301-1000<\/p>\n

Dear Secretary Carter: <\/p>\n

I am responding to Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (Acting) Jedidiah Royal\u2019s October 3, 2016, response to the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR)\u2019s letter to you (dated August 5, 2016) regarding \u201cghost soldiers\u201d in Afghanistan. <\/p>\n

I am appalled that the U.S. taxpayer has, and continues to pay, for \u201cghost soldiers\u201d in Afghanistan. Moreover, I am also concerned about the risks that inadequacy of data concerning personnel levels of the Afghan National Security and Defense Forces (ANDSF) may pose to American forces in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

In Deputy Assistant Secretary Royal\u2019s response to SIGAR, he indicates the systems that US Forces-Afghanistan are putting in place to try to verify Afghan personnel data will not be ready until at least July 2017. Given the estimate that there may be up to 200,000 \u201cghost soldiers,\u201d I would respectfully request an estimate of how much funding provided to the ANDSF for salaries in fiscal years 2016 and 2017 is expected to be wasted on \u201cghost soldiers.\u201d <\/p>\n

Additionally, Deputy Assistant Secretary Royal indicates that a limited amount of funds has been withheld from the ANDSF for not adhering to the agreed-upon timeline for implementation of personnel verification systems. How much money was withheld, and what percentage does that number represent of the amount originally designated to be allocated?<\/p>\n

Given that many Afghan military and police outposts have limited, if any, access to electricity and telecommunications systems, I would also ask whether there is a contingency plan to back-up the biometric database and personnel system given that units may not always have regular access to the technology needed to operate them? Further, under the current deployment arrangement ordered by President Obama, US forces do not have the capability to witness firsthand, at the lowest levels of the ANDSF, whether there is fraudulent use of the biometric cards. With that in mind, does DOD expect there will be salary overpayments even after July 2017? <\/p>\n

I am also concerned about the effect the \u201cghost soldier\u201d problem is having on US forces in Afghanistan. While the Afghan Minister of Defense was recently quoted as saying there is not a single \u201cghost soldier\u201d in Afghanistan, the Deputy Assistant Secretary\u2019s letter makes clear that is not the case. We know the collapse of the 215th Corps in Helmand in 2015 was at least in part due to an overestimation of ANDSF personnel in Helmand based on inflated numbers reported to the Ministry of Defense. USFOR-A subsequently deployed additional personnel closer to the front lines in Helmand to assist with improving that corps. The \u201cghost soldier\u201d issue clearly is affecting decision-making within the Defense Department that affects US personnel. I…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Letter to Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter: October 14, 2016 The Honorable Ashton B. CarterSecretary of DefenseThe PentagonWashington, DC 20301-1000 Dear Secretary Carter: I am responding to Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (Acting) Jedidiah Royal\u2019s October 3, 2016, response to the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR)\u2019s letter to you (dated […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-273000","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273000\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}