Fear of the disappeared
Some 150 Afghan soldiers have gone AWOL while being trained by the US — creating concerns of a real security risk
WASHING TON is a factory for dumb ideas, but taking the cake maybeaUSbased military training program for Afghan soldiers that not only can’t keep track of enrollees — 152 of whomhave gone AWOL — but can’t even get the Afghan army to use those who actually graduate and return home.
The Pentagon says training Afghans in America is necessary to stand up an army in Afghanistan to fend off insurgents. Yet US-trained graduates aren’t even being re-absorbed by the Afghan military.
According to a new Defense Department report, “Afghan government policy does not require [National Defense and Security Forces] units to either return trainees to their previous position or provide them a position that may utilize the training received in the United States.”
In fact, the Afghan government takes trainees, who are in training in this country more than a year, off its active military duty and payroll. Many US-based trainings run longer than one year. Several graduates who returned to Afghanistan left the army after their billets had been given away. In other words, there is no real benefit to bringing these Afghan soldiers to America. But there is a real security risk. More than half of the missing trainees have never been caught and could pose a terror threat to America, warns the Defense Department’s Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction in a 25page report.
Of the 152 AWOLAfghan trainees, 70 have either fled the US, mostly to Canada, and 13 remain unaccounted for. ICE has deemed Afghan trainees whohavegone AWOL“to be high-risk because they involve militarily trained individuals of a fighting age whohave demonstrated a ‘flight risk.’ ”
Do any have terrorist ties or sympathies? We really have no idea. That’s because vetting of enrollees is “limited” and the “processes for selecting personnel for training appear flawed,” the report found.
The Afghan trainees, who are given diplomatic visas, undergo no in-person interview or fingerprinting before they are brought into the US. And Kabul “is not enforcing” a program to pre-screen candidates for security risks.
Trainees do, however, get US driver’s licenses and base IDs, allowing them to get through security checkpoints. AWOL Afghans have been stationed at nearly two dozen military installations in the US, including several in the Washington, DC, area, where they have received training in weapons and explosives. Some have been trained to operate and maintain planes.
There is a strong likelihood jihadists could have slipped into the program. The Pentagon inspector general says the Taliban has thoroughly infiltrated the Afghan security forces supplying these special immigrants. And they could turn on their hosts. In June, seven American soldiers were wounded by a US-trained Afghan commando in one of hundreds of insider attacks recorded in Afghanistan.
The Taliban is just one of 20 terrorist groups, including ISIS, now operating in Afghanistan — “the highest concentration of terrorist groups anywhere in the world,” the inspector general reveals.
US-based trainees participating in the Pentagon program have also gone AWOL from other terror hot spots, including 27 from Yemen, 22 from Iraq and nine from Saudi Arabia. But Afghan recruits are by far the worst absconders.
And their numbers keep growing. The rate of US-trained Afghans going AWOL doubled last year and is expected to continue rising this year. A footnote in the report reveals that Pentagon brass told the IG: “There has been a significant uptick in absconders for the Air Force programs” in 2017.
Yet the Pentagon plans to enroll more Afghans next year in “flight training,” as well as Special Forces instruction — without tightening the security process for screening recruits. IG recommendations for strengthening measures were turned down by the Pentagon’s partner in the program, the State Department.
The Pentagon is playing with fire. It’s plain its program has failed in its objectives and is not worth the security risk. It ought to cancel it before it inadvertently supplies the personnel and training for the next terrorist attack on US soil.