Ex-Afghan Official Said U.S. Was Paying for ‘Ghost Soldiers’

“Afghanistan’s ex-finance minister has blamed the government’s fall on corrupt officials who invented ‘ghost soldiers’ and took payments from the Taliban,” the BBC reports.

Khalid Payenda said that “most of the 300,000 troops and police on the government’s books did not exist. He said phantom personnel were added to official lists so that generals could pocket their wages.”