In Texas to train, Afghan troops go AWOL at increasing rate
SAN ANTONIO — Afghan troops sent to the United States for training have disappeared from Joint Base San Antonio in higher numbers than any other military installation in the country, a federal watchdog agency has found.
Sixty of the 152 Afghan personnel who went absent without leave in the U.S. between 2005 and March of this year fled from Lackland AFB or Fort Sam Houston, according to a recent report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.
Afghan trainees deserted at an overall rate of about one a month and accounted for almost half of the 320 foreign military personnel who slipped away from two-dozen bases across the country. Some 6 percent of all Afghans enrolled in training programs later absconded, compared with a collective .07 percent of those from Iraq, Turkey, Yemen and other countries. A deepening gloom
Nearly all of the 2,500 Afghan personnel who traveled to the U.S. for training first stopped in San Antonio for English language courses at Lackland. The SIGAR report showed that the percentage of Afghan trainees who escaped more than doubled last year amid rising troop casualties and territorial gains by the Taliban in Afghanistan.
The figures suggest the precarious state of the country’s military and a deepening gloom within its ranks about a war that began when U.S. forces invaded 16 years ago last month to oust the Taliban government.
“I don’t think it’s a stalemate anymore,” said Jonathan Schroden, director of the special operations program at the Center for Naval Analyses in Arlington, Va., and an expert on Afghanistan who has traveled throughout the country.
“That may have been true a year or two ago, but now the momentum is pretty clearly with the Taliban. And the increase in Afghans who went AWOL last year tracks pretty closely with the rapid decline we’re seeing in the security situation there.”
The Taliban have carried out a series of largescale attacks against Afghan troops this year, including an ambush on a military base in northern Afghanistan in April that killed more than 140 soldiers. Another 43 troops died when militants overran a base last month in southern Afghanistan, and a wave of attacks on police outposts and security checkpoints in recent weeks claimed at least 70 officers.
The U.S. has spent $70 billion to train and equip the Afghan military, and under President Donald Trump, the Pentagon has boosted troop levels in Afghanistan from 8,400 to 14,000 this year. ‘A bit ridiculous’
The SIGAR investigation revealed that 70 of the 152 Afghan men and women who fled training programs left the U.S.; the whereabouts of 13 others remain unknown. Among the rest, 39 gained legal status, 27 were arrested or removed from the country and three returned to their training programs.
The 56 trainees who walked away from Lackland were more than the combined total of the five military installations with the next highest number of AWOL cases. In addition to Lackland and Fort Sam, where four Afghans went AWOL, two other bases in Texas lost track of trainees. Five absconded from Fort Bliss and one from Sheppard AFB.
The special inspector general found that none of the missing Afghan personnel had committed “acts of terrorism or similarly serious acts.”
The State Department’s response to the report deemed the rate of AWOL cases “unacceptably high.” Yet agency officials dismissed SIGAR’s recommendations to strengthen the vetting of Afghan trainees by requiring them to provide more details about their background and families and to complete an in-person interview before receiving a travel visa.
The Afghan defense and interior ministries choose candidates for training programs based on standards established by U.S. officials in Kabul. Matt Dove, SIGAR’s director of special projects, called the State Department’s unwillingness to reinforce the screening process “a bit ridiculous.”
“It’s fair to say they’re doing everything that’s required but not everything they can” to evaluate trainees, he said.