PANJWAII DISTRICT, Afghanistan - The Canadian military has put some distance between itself and its allies over the mismanagement of weapons donated to the Afghan army as concern mounts that some arms may have fallen into the hands of Taliban militants.
Afghan army soldiers issued Canadian assault rifles are put through background checks to ensure they have no connection to insurgents, Canadian mentors said.
The troops being handed C7 rifles as part of a program to re-equip the fledgling army with NATO-standard weapons are checked against a United Nations list of known terrorists or associates before they're allowed into training.
"The weapons are not given out ad-hoc," said Capt. Dario Colussi, the logistics officer for the Operational Mentoring and Liaison Team, or OMLT, which supervises the Afghan training.
"We have a very stringent set of conditions that have to be met before we issue the weapons to the government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan."
The Government Accountability Office in Washington recently issued a scathing report saying that the United States had lost track of as many as 242,000 light weapons donated to the Afghans, and some of them might be in the hands of the Taliban. The stockpile included assault rifles, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades.
In addition, there are no reliable records showing what happened to an additional 135,000 weapons donated by other NATO countries, the report said. Most of the weapons were supplied to the Afghans between 2004 and 2008.
The report, which has set off alarm bells at NATO, warned the safety and security of U.S. and coalition forces was put in jeopardy by the haphazard way the distribution has been handled.
Canada donated 2,500 surplus C7 rifles, a variant of the American M16, to the Afghans as well as seven million rounds of ammunition.
Canadian military officials in Kandahar insisted those weapons are accounted for, and a "rigorous" system of accountability is in place.
Maj. Steve Nolan, who commands the mentoring team in the volatile Panjwaii district, said he's not had an Afghan soldiers show up on the UN list and only heard anecdotally about a single case on a previous rotation -- an innocent soldier had the same name as a wanted terrorist.
The focus of the investigation, conducted by the U.S. government watchdog last summer, was on Afghan-run military depots where there had been reports of desertion and theft. At some of those installations, only wooden doors and padlocks were used to secure weapons lockers, the GAO said.
Nolan was surprised to see that criticism because he said individual Afghan units are very possessive of the gear they're given.
"The ANA are maniacal about keeping track of kit and equipment," he said in an interview Friday. "Every single thing they have is on property book and that property book is kept up to date religiously."
Nolan, a member of the 3rd Battalion Royal Canadian Regiment, based in Petawawa, Ont., said: "When a gun gets into the hands of a soldier -- any soldier -- who has to use it in battle, he treats it better than he treats one of his pets."
Most Afghan army soldiers have lost someone to the Taliban and are fiercely patriotic, and the last thing they would be doing is selling weapons to insurgents, he added.
A more likely explanation, according to Nolan, is that corrupt officials or shipping agent have made off with hundreds or perhaps thousands of weapons to sell on the black market.
In a separate report last fall, the Pentagon said that U.S. and allied forces had ignored their responsibility to ensure the accountability, control and physical security of the arms weapons given to Afghan forces.
Colussi said the criticism does not apply to Canadian mentors, who have taken care to keep the donated C7s under lock and key until they were officially turned over to the Afghan forces at Camp Hero, near Kandahar Airfield.
Aside from undergoing background checks and training, Afghan soldiers are given legal courses in the laws of war, said Colussi, who doubles as a Canadian Forces recruiting officer in Windsor, Ont.
