Unethical behavior in the military is criminal, financially ruinous, wastes time through endless training programs, and undermines the "integrity" part of JJDIDTIEBUCKLE. It also degrades readiness and lethality. The most glaring example of how unethical behavior and corruption undermines the operational capability of a military force was the problem of the “ghost soldiers” of the Afghan National Army.
The Afghan National Army (ANA) was created by President Hamid Karzai in December 2001, following the US invasion on 7 October 2001. The ANA was intended to provide security, combat the Taliban insurgency, and support the government's stability. Training for the ANA was split between various NATO countries, including the US, the United Kingdom, and Canada.
The US was the primary source of funding for the ANA, totaling over $88 billion dollars from 2002 to 2021. The size of the ANA in 2019 was approximately 195,000 soldiers but faced the problems of high desertion rates (around 25% in 2009) and high illiteracy rates (approximately 90%).
“Ghost soldiers” were an ongoing problem for the ANA. These were either deserters, deceased individuals, or completely fictitious troops, whose continued presence on the rosters allowed corrupt commanders and other officials to embezzle their salaries and their equipment.
Similar problems existed in the Afghan National Police (ANP) as well as in the education department. One report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) noted that there were not only ghost students but also thousands of ghost teachers and even hundreds of ghost schools. (Sopko, 2017, p. 4-5)
According to the 30 April 2016 report from SIGAR, “neither the United States nor its Afghan allies know how many Afghan soldiers and police actually exist, how many are in fact available for duty, or, by extension, the true nature of their operational capabilities.” (Sopko, 2016, p. 66)
To solve this problem, the U.S. government instituted a biometric ID system starting in 2005. In 2006, a defense contractor named Viisage was granted $10 million to manufacture a device called the Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment (HIIDE), and by 2007 the device was used in Afghanistan to eliminate ghost soldiers (Atherton, 2022).
The data collected through HIIDE and paperwork such as enlistment applications captured not only a recruit’s name and date/place of birth, but also “details on the individuals’ military specialty and career trajectory, as well as sensitive relational data such as the names of their father, uncles, and grandfathers, as well as the names of the two tribal elders per recruit who served as guarantors for their enlistment” (Guo & Noori, 2021)
All this information was stored in a database called the Afghan Personnel and Pay System (APPS). Used by both the Afghan Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Defense to pay the members of the ANA and ANP, it grew to contain information on half a million members of the army and police forces.
U.S. forces in Afghanistan not only wanted this biometric system to eliminate ghost soldiers but also to identify enemies. “Knowing who belongs in a village—who they are, what they do, to whom they are related, and where they live — all helps to separate the locals from the insurgents” (Branson, 2011, p. 23).
According to (Guo & Noori, 2021), the database came with no deletion or data retention policy, even for extreme contingencies. Such as national takeover by the Taliban.
Even before the American withdrawal in August 2021, the system’s security was compromised. For example, in a series of kidnappings in May 2016, the Taliban captured between over 200 people traveling on the Kunduz-Takhar highway. While being held in a nearby mosque, HIIDE was used on the prisoners, and 20 were killed for being members of the army or police. (TOLOnews, 2016)
When the biometric identification system was used for its intended purpose, it produced staggering results. For example, in 2019 there was a purge of 42,000 ghost soldiers due to the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANSDF) switching “to counting only troops validated as existing by biometrics, rather than relying on the numbers reported by field commanders.” (Sisk, 2019)
This purge emphasized the extent that ANSDF commanders were inflating their ranks, and it corroborated findings by SIGAR as well particular instances reported by Helmand’s provincial council. In 2016, for example, in Helmand Province, 40% of the listed troops were nonexistent, with one base of 100 soldiers having only 50 present and another of 300 having just 15 during an attack (Rasmussen, 2016). The purge of 42,000 ghost soldiers showed that the ANA was a far smaller force in reality than on paper.
The rapid takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban in August 2021 was made possible by these inflated numbers. Khalid Payenda, the former finance minister of Afghanistan, stated that “most of the 300,000 troops and police on the government's books did not exist,” and that the numbers may have been inflated more than six times. (BBC, 2021)The U.S. no longer controls Afghanistan, and there is a real possibility of reprisals by the Taliban against members of the ANSDF. APPS and HIIDE are supposedly secure, but the Afghan government was introducing its own biometrics ID system when it fell. Their system included ANSDF membership information, and there is some evidence that the Taliban have access to it. (Roy, 2021).
In conclusion, unethical behavior and corruption can lead to combat ineffectiveness even to the point of losing a war. The ongoing problems of biometrics systems under Taliban control show that timid leadership and half-hearted solutions rarely achieve solutions.
Bibliography
Atherton, K. (2022, 9 February). The enduring risks posed by biometric identification systems. Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-enduring-risks-posed-by-biometric-identification-systems/
BBC. (2021, 10 November). Afghanistan's ghost soldiers undermined fight against Taliban - ex-official. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-59230564
Branson, D. (2011, April). The Commander’s Guide to Biometrics in Afghanistan. CJIATF 435. https://info.publicintelligence.net/CALL-AfghanBiometrics.pdf
Guo, E. & Noori, H. (2021, 30 August). This is the real story of the Afghan biometric databases abandoned to the Taliban. MIT Technology Review. https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/08/30/1033941/afghanistan-biometric-databases-us-military-40-data-points/
Rasmussen, S. (2016, 17 May). Afghanistan's 'ghost soldiers': thousands enlisted to fight Taliban don't exist. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/17/afghanistan-ghost-soldiers-taliban-babaji
Roy, S. (2021, 26 November). Neo-Taliban Turns Digital: A Reconquest Strategy. The Geopolitics. https://thegeopolitics.com/neo-taliban-turns-digital-a-reconquest-strategy/
Sisk, R. (2019, 2 August). Afghanistan Loses 42,000 Troops in Crackdown on 'Ghost Soldiers'. https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/08/02/afghanistan-loses-42000-troops-crackdown-ghost-soldiers.html
Sopko, J. (2016, 30 April). Quarterly Report to the United States Congress. SIGAR-2016-04-30QR. https://www.sigar.mil/Portals/147/Files/Reports/Quarterly-Reports/2016-04-30qr.pdf
Sopko, J. (2017, 28 March). Schools in Balkh Province: Observations from Site Visits at 26 Schools. SIGAR-17-32-SP. https://www.sigar.mil/Portals/147/Files/Reports/Special-Projects/Special-Projects-Review/SIGAR-17-32-SP.pdf
TOLOnews. (5 June 2016). Taliban Used Biometric System During Kunduz Kidnapping. https://tolonews.com/afghanistan/taliban-used-biometric-system-during-kunduz-kidnapping
