Golly Gee……ARVN & Vietnam, Republic of…Part deux!

There were a number of road construction projects taking place in the “Metro Kandahar” area from Aug ‘06-May ‘07. The road crews were having a bitch of a time keeping road signs in place because the bleepin’ locals (some of ‘em anyway) would steal the signs almost as soon as they went in, so they could reuse them as raw materail for something more practical, or sell them on the scrap market. I can’t go into details in an open forum like this…….but, I have a fair bit of personal experience with equiping elements of Afghani Security Forces. Theft, loss, and sale (black market or to the insurgents) of weapons (belt & magazine fed & RPGs), mags, & ammo was rampant during my time there. I was not unusual for local ANP Commanders to issue one magazine per AK per officer, and only 15 rounds for the single mag! Of course the flip side of that was frequently the Officers not getting paid (funds not being deleivered), or the Police Commander (or one of his henchmen) was stealing most of the officer’s wages…….motivating them to sell their equipment/weapons for cash! I could go on……..but you get the drift.