Desertions blow hits Afghan army

[Pikache]

  BY Roland Buerk
BBC News, Kabul

Afghan soldiers
Afghan soldiers are paid relatively well
Hundreds of soldiers have deserted the Afghan National Army complaining of poor conditions and fierce resistance from the Taleban, US officials say.

It is a blow to the Afghan government which wants to increase the size of the force so the numbers of international troops in the country can be reduced.

The corps affected is the first to be deployed in the field.

Officials say another reason for men going absent is the difficulty they experience in dealing with their pay.

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Afghanistan

The 205th Corps of the Afghan National Army is based around the city of Kandahar.

The south of Afghanistan has seen some of the fiercest fighting against remnants of the Taleban and their al-Qaeda allies.

Members of the corps are in combat most days.

US troops in Afghanistan
The US has about 18,000 troops in Afghanistan

A US military spokesman told the BBC that around 300 men have deserted.

That is one in 12 of the entire force.

Soldiers are paid around $75 a month - a good wage in Afghanistan - but the absence of a banking system prevents them from sending money to their families.

The news comes as American troops take more casualties.

On Wednesday two US soldiers were killed and eight others wounded in a rocket attack near the border with Pakistan.

The Afghan government's long term plan is for the numbers of international troops in the country to be reduced and for Afghanistan's own army to shoulder more of the burden of the fighting.

To do that numbers will need to be nearly tripled to around 70,000 by 2007.

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I'll bet the bigger reason for desertion is pay than combat.

I think one of the first things I've heard from a sgt about the army is that troops loose morale the fastest when their pay and food is being fucked with.

 

[Armymedic]

Absolutely,
The three big issues right now are:

Pay- while $75 per month is adequate for the average Pte to $450 to Maj, it is almost always screwed up, and never happens often enough. Unlike us who get regular pay days, the ANA get theirs whenever their commanders feel like giving it to them, usually right before a leave period, which are not often.

Food - Since 1 Apr, the US has not paid for feeding services for the ANA. This has cause numerous incidents including one shooting in Pol e Charki. Food service and quality is a daily issue and one of the larger headaches for the ANA and ETTs working with them. Something we take for granted in our army, food and water support is their first priority, as their logistical chain is nonexistent

Leave - not much, nor often or long enough. Add in the top two to this and most just don't come back from leave, hence the reason they don't get it as much...

Not that this is a new problem, the focus has just switched from 201 Corps in Kabul to the regional commands and in particular 205 Corps as they are seeing the majority of the "work" and their command structure is still being developed.

If I had a US $ for every complaint I heard about these three topics from ANA soldiers, I would be able to field my own private Kandak.

 

[Dare]

Absolutely,
The three big issues right now are:

Pay- while $75 per month is adequate for the average Pte to $450 to Maj, it is almost always screwed up, and never happens often enough. Unlike us who get regular pay days, the ANA get theirs whenever their commanders feel like giving it to them, usually right before a leave period, which are not often.

Food - Since 1 Apr, the US has not paid for feeding services for the ANA. This has cause numerous incidents including one shooting in Pol e Charki. Food service and quality is a daily issue and one of the larger headaches for the ANA and ETTs working with them. Something we take for granted in our army, food and water support is their first priority, as their logistical chain is nonexistent

Leave - not much, nor often or long enough. Add in the top two to this and most just don't come back from leave, hence the reason they don't get it as much...

Not that this is a new problem, the focus has just switched from 201 Corps in Kabul to the regional commands and in particular 205 Corps as they are seeing the majority of the "work" and their command structure is still being developed.

If I had a US $ for every complaint I heard about these three topics from ANA soldiers, I would be able to field my own private Kandak.

Is the pay problem being addressed? I would hope it would be a top priority? Is there talk of setting up an automated payment system? It would seem to me that our current strategy depends a lot on this.

 

[Gunner]

Is there talk of setting up an automated payment system?

Did you mean this in terms of direct deposit?   

 

[Dare]

Did you mean this in terms of direct deposit?   

I suppose so. Something more dependable than at the whim of their commander.

 

[Gunner]

You run into a problem of using western technological solutions for third world problems.   The easy answer to your question:

a.   limited availability of ABMs (not even sure if they have them in Kabul, let alone remote areas).

b.   limited availabilty of electricity.

c.   Not always knowing who is actually a soldier and who isn't.

d.   we complain about bureaucracy but have you ever thought of what it is like without one?  

e.   If the country is bankrupt, how do you electronic transfer funds that don't exist?   How does the bank remain solvent?  

Anyway, my point is not to use western solutions for third world problems!   Armymedic may be able to provide you with more informatioin on the pitfalls of trying to pay thousands or personnel by direct deposit!

From my own experience, they tried to do this in Sierra Leone for the police because they were having trouble paying them on time and they wanted to reduce the level of corruption (police use to augment their income when the government didn't pay them). Some of the problems we encountered:

a.   The only bank capable of dealing with direct deposit was well over 3 days walking (one way) from where we were stationed.   Often we were cut off by road as it was the rainy season and the road system disappeared in a sea of mud (it wasn't much better when it was dry).

b.   The amount of money the bank charged police officers to have accounts capable of direct deposit equated to about 10% of their monthly wage (~$4 US).  

c.   Many of the police officers didn't trust the banks and the idea of "electronic" money.   Money was something you had in your hand, until you did, you hadn't been paid by the government.   This probably had something to do with the level of inflation the leone suffered from (~265,000 Leone to $100 USD - I have a great picture of myself with a "Million dollars".  

Cheers,

 

[Armymedic]

Dare,
Thank you for highlighting the typical western ignorance (no offence meant towards you) about the ways to deal with problems in the ANA and third world armies.

The ANA has roughly a 30% literacy rate if that... Concepts such as this which seem so simple to us are monumental problems for the ANA.

Pay system is by paper and pencil and mounds of it. Pay is drawn by unit S1 based on numbers of personnel days at each rank level for their unit. Every day attendance it taken by either the command group or the mentors (western trainers, ETT etc) and recorded. Monthly (or so) the S1 passes attendance record to MoD (Ministry of Defence) for pay tabulations, and pay for the unit can be drawn.

So if you have 10 Ptes earning $75 US a month, your S1 draws $750 for them, and so on...thats a huge amount of money when you are talking $1 US worth about 43 Afghani, and 650 pers all ranks.  And when one persons pay is not right, that screws up the whole units pay with no real way to track where the error is. Thats the simplest of problems, the real ones are much more complex.

It is the simplest of systems, and here in Canada would be easily handled by the average soldier. CF reserve pay by sign in sheets was a similar system, and that was screwed up occasionally....

You have to remember areas of Afghanistan are still not in the 19th century yet, let alone the 21st.

 

[Dare]

Dare,
Thank you for highlighting the typical western ignorance (no offence meant towards you) about the ways to deal with problems in the ANA and third world armies.

No offense taken, I am ignorant on this issue, that's why I'm askin questions. It was not something I had considered would be a significant problem by this date, but the more I think of it, the more problems it seems to pose to our eventual exit strategy.

The ANA has roughly a 30% literacy rate if that... Concepts such as this which seem so simple to us are monumental problems for the ANA.

Pay system is by paper and pencil and mounds of it. Pay is drawn by unit S1 based on numbers of personnel days at each rank level for their unit. Every day attendance it taken by either the command group or the mentors (western trainers, ETT etc) and recorded. Monthly (or so) the S1 passes attendance record to MoD (Ministry of Defence) for pay tabulations, and pay for the unit can be drawn.

So if you have 10 Ptes earning $75 US a month, your S1 draws $750 for them, and so on...thats a huge amount of money when you are talking $1 US worth about 43 Afghani, and 650 pers all ranks.  And when one persons pay is not right, that screws up the whole units pay with no real way to track where the error is. Thats the simplest of problems, the real ones are much more complex.

It is the simplest of systems, and here in Canada would be easily handled by the average soldier. CF reserve pay by sign in sheets was a similar system, and that was screwed up occasionally....

You have to remember areas of Afghanistan are still not in the 19th century yet, let alone the 21st.

I am aware of the literacy rates and eletrical problems in Afghanistan. Surely we could afford some generators/solar cells to power up some used computers? Ship over some used ABMs? Gunner made some great points that geared more towards what I was aiming for. Clearly we should be able to pose a technical solution, but a cultural, authentication and logistical solution seems to be the challange. While it seems far fetched and fantastical, maybe, I would want to be spending more resources on this. The last thing we would want is to be left in the lurch upon a mass desertion or defection due to lack of prompt payment. I suppose that trust has broken down so much that only their commanders can be trusted? Is that a fair statement? Is there a direct western influence in commerce logistics in Afghanistan now? Am I totally out to lunch here?

EDIT: I was thinking more along the lines of something more centralized and dependable. Not specifically ABM's or exactly what we would define as a proper bank in the west.

 

[Gunner]

Surely we could afford some generators/solar cells to power up some used computers?

The CF did provide computers to the defence ministry on Roto 0 as they basically had very little inwhich to run the Afghan Army.  They still had them as of Roto 2 ...

 

[Dare]

The CF did provide computers to the defence ministry on Roto 0 as they basically had very little inwhich to run the Afghan Army.  They still had them as of Roto 2 ...

I don't know if it's possible to get an answer to this question, but I would suppose they would not be using them to transfer money, aside from accounting purposes? Ultimately, I think I'm wondering, where is the bottleneck?

 

[Teddy Ruxpin]

The process itself is only part of the problem.  As Armymedic points out, there is a system in place for payment, overseen by various Western armies.

The problem comes in the soldier's inability to transfer the cash to his family.  There is no banking system (Gunner - there are no bank machines anywhere in Kabul.  I had heard rumours of one on Blue Rte (at the Trade Centre), but I seriously doubt it) that allows financial transactions throughout the country.  The result?  A soldier may have to await leave before getting money home - leave that is hard to get and as screwed up as the pay system.

I'll admit that I am not the expert on the ANA, but did see many of their problems up close working with them in Kabul.  Armymedic is the expert here and I will defer to him to provide further comment.

As for the economy and the logistics system in place, Afghanistan is still a fairly primitive economy.  Much of what comes from outside is trucked in from Pakistan and is distributed by a huge variety of independent transportation agencies.  Many villages are extremely remote (even those close to Kabul as we found during the Presidential election).  Aside from a few Pakistani banks, there is no banking system and many currency transactons are conducted on the black/grey market.  There are some commercial establishments (in the traditional Western sense), but the economy is still very rudimentary.  In such a setting, transferring quantities of cash becomes a huge issue, made even worse when dealing with an army that still has as many problems as the ANA does.

 

[Gunner]

I had heard rumours of an ABM as well but I never saw one.  There is a banking system (you may remember the name of the bank in downtown Kabul that you pass on white (Canada has an account there to pay contractors, etc), but it remains a very archaic by our standards.

 

[Teddy Ruxpin]

Right, I remember a couple of Pakistan banks, Standard Chartered and an Indian ING branch (between CFC-A and ISAF)...that's about it.  None of those would do an Afghan soldier much good.

I think the bank machine story was just rumour...I can't imagine using one there!

 

[Armymedic]

So, as we can see that any effort to improve the ANA soldiers ability to send money home needs some serious infastructure improvements....I am even unsure the Afghans have a postal system as we know it that can deliver a letter home.

Also, it may be an institutional problem. The ANA is looking for 70,000 good men...whether they are loyal to the Afghan constitution or not, those men will earn a pretty good wage while in the ANA. Hence their reasons for being in the army may not be the purest of reasons, so when the poop starts to fly, they just don't want to do it. Throw that in to poor living conditions in the field and bad food...why would you want to come back?

Also because of the archaic paperwork system I mentioned above, there is some cases (I have heard, but have not first hand experience) of soldiers deserting from thier units down range to return as a recruit at KMTC in Kabul with a different name, and recomplete basic and AIT training in the realitive safety of Kabul, still collecting $75 US a month.

 

[Britney Spears]

Given some of the insights into this thread, I've been thinking: Is the development of wetern style professional armies even possible without the concurrent development of western social infrastructure and technology?  It seems to me that the level of technological and social development in a given society would govern the type of armed forces a given nation can sustain. For example, Western armies progressed from small, elite forces of armoured knights, in the day when the mounted kngiht ruled the field. Later, these progressed to small armies of mercenary infantry mixed with calvary once infantry weapons developed enough for the infantry to survive, but logistics and the feudal organization of European nations could not supply a large, popular army of the masses. Later still, we get large armies of musket armed infantry, once industry has developed enough to enable nations to supply and organize armies of such size, and the circle goes around and around, until today where smaller, professional armies are once again the norm. Could you possibly inpose a 21st century army organization on to an essentially medieval society? I cannot recall too many examples of this being succesful in recent times.

Perhaps it might be a better idea to adapt to the situation instead of fight it?  If organizing and paying a large number of men in a centralized locationin the western style  is impossible given the infrastructure, perhaps it would be a better idea to organize the ANA along the lines of local militias, led by Western advisors in the villiages closely linked via Sat Coms and with a reaction force in the provincial capitals ready to chopper into any trouble spot?

I realize the above solution probably sounds ludicrous and would be a return to the old anarchy, but in the 10 min to took me to write this it was the best one I could come up with (I'm not ready to be CDS just yet...), and  I'm honestly concerned that we(the west) are trying to impose on the Afghans a system that simply doesn't fit the local circumstances.

 

[KevinB]

You DO NOT want it organised along the lines of the local militias.

Most of them are drug runners - already connected to tight to the Mayor of the different police districts.

Forget electicity and computers -- try plumbing.

Kabul is MUCH more modern that the provinces - its a hole compared to Western living.

I observed the payment of one local militia (albiet AMF not ANA) - they pay the leaders and he decides on what others get...

Unfortunately unless you go to a efficiantly organised pay system with paybooks etc.  (kinda like what we had for our pay we drew in Cyprus - the Pay officer came out and paid you  - you signed for it and noted it in you book)  When you left the Pl house to go into BBC you could see what the pay system though you had  (versus your unofficial tally) - worked for me - and I even had $ left over after that tour.

 

[Britney Spears]

You DO NOT want it organised along the lines of the local militias.

Yeah, I thought of that, but I can't see any other way.

Unfortunately unless you go to a efficiantly organised pay system with paybooks etc.  (kinda like what we had for our pay we drew in Cyprus - the Pay officer came out and paid you  - you signed for it and noted it in you book)  When you left the Pl house to go into BBC you could see what the pay system though you had  (versus your unofficial tally) - worked for me - and I even had $ left over after that tour.

But the problem with that is the troops can't get money back to their families, who presumably need it more than they do, since the troops are already fed and clothed. Which brings me back to my original question. If the people are by very nature tied to their land and their families, as they are in most poor countries, how do you uproot them, billet them in an unfamiliar city far from home, with no way of keeping in touch with their villiage, and NOT expect them to desert or otherwise have problems? Like I say, it's a western solution to a third world problem. Could you set up pay offices in the villiages to pay the families diectly, say 75% of their pay? that pay office will then need to be secured, the personel vetted, etc.

Communist armies have managed to do this with some success with sheer ideological conviction on the part of the recruits, but I doubt you can do the same in Afghan.

 

[KevinB]

Ah I see what your saying.


- Beats me have no idea how to fix that said of it - I'm glad I'm just a Cpl  ;D

 

[Britney Spears]

Yeah, my point was that the Afghans organize themselves into local militias for a reason, in that enviroment the organization works. Getting them to adopt such an alien organization such as a Western army would be like getting us to go back to mass conscript armies and bayonet charges. You need more than kalashnikovs and good troops to make it stick. Either you will have to import the ATMs and internet banking (i.e. look beyond a purely military solution) or you'll need to adapt the existing local orgs instead of trying to supplant them.

As always, I await the experts to set me straight.

 

[Infanteer]

That video is awesome.....