Afghans Flee Military Training In U.S. With Canada Being Their Ultimate Destination of Choice

Afghan Uniform Police and soldiers from the U.S. Army 4th Brigade Combat Team provide 360-degree security outside a compound during training at Ft. Irwin, California, September 2011. Courtesy Austin Pritchard/U.S. Army

Reuters: 'Unacceptably high' number of Afghans flee military training in U.S.: report

KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan soldiers and police brought to the United States for training go “absent without leave” at far higher rates than those of any other country, potentially imperilling efforts to assist Afghan security forces, a U.S. watchdog said on Friday.

Of the 320 foreign military trainees who left while on courses in the United States from 2005 to 2017, 152 - or more than 47 percent - were Afghans, said a report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR).

The State Department called that number “unacceptably high”. SIGAR found that the rate of asylum seekers among Afghan military trainees rose in recent years as violence in the Islamist Taliban insurgency spread across Afghanistan and security forces sustained heavy casualties.

In 2016, for example, the percentage of Afghan trainees who went AWOL (absent without leave) jumped from an historical average of about 6 or 7 percent to 13 percent, the report noted.

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WNU Editor: The Daily Beast reports that many of these Afghan recruits perceive Canada as a sanctuary for absconders .... 150 Afghan Soldiers Fled After Being Sent Stateside for Training (Daily Beast). I live in Canada, and so far the news networks in this country has not covered this aspect of the story.