Defence`s Feeds

SENER, the engineering and technology group, will take part in the Cruises and Ferries International Conference (CRAFERIC 2017), from 22 to 24 February in Madrid.

General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems (GA-EMS) has developed a high-energy pulsed power container (HEPPC) is designed to deliver twice the energy density currently offered by existing railgun pulsed power solutions.

Nova Scotia-based Rosborough Boats has received a new contract to deliver multi-role rescue boats for the Royal Canadian Navy's arctic and offshore patrol ships (AOPS).

Mission-critical information technology (IT) infrastructure solutions provider ViON has received a capacity as a service (CaaS) contract from the US Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR).

Americas

• Despite losing Raytheon as a US-based partner in the USAF’s T-X trainer competition, Leonardo is still forging ahead with plans to establish final assembly for the M-346 Advanced Jet Trainer derivative — the T-100 — in the US. The location of the final assembly point is expected to be announced soon; however, no shortlists of potential sites for the plant have yet been offered by the firm. Prior to exiting from the project, Raytheon had chosen Meridian, Mississippi, as a final assembly location. Despite a US partner, Leonardo is confident of the off-the-shelf model’s low cost against its competitor’s clean sheet designs, and the track record the M-346 has had in already being used to train Israeli pilots for fifth-generation aircraft.

• Lockheed Martin has announced that they have upgraded the Airborne Multi-INT Lab (AML) to speed up the mission system’s ability to turn sensor data into intelligence for customers. The modified Gulfstream III aircraft is used to test various onboard sensors for military and non-military purposes and is fitted to enable in-air experimentation for products with intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance applications. Upgrades added by Lockheed Martin include an autonomous sensor control mode that can coordinate operations between the plane and onboard sensors which will accelerate the aircraft’s ability to produce actionable intelligence from experimental data.

Middle East & North Africa

• The UAE is to buy hundreds of 8×8 infantry fighting vehicles in a deal worth $661 million. Providing the vehicles is Al Jasoor, a joint venture by local firm Tawazun and the Turkish firm Otokar’s subsidiary, Otokar Land Systems UAE. Otokar said the vehicles, developed by Al Jasoor, will be built at existing facilities of Tawazun Industrial Park in Abu Dhabi under a special arrangement. The vehicle has already completed an array of successful extensive all-terrain tests in the UAE.

Europe

• Bulgaria’s Defense Ministry has received three bids from Italy, Sweden and Portugal for the country’s MiG-29 replacement competition. Sweden is offering Sofia its Gripen package; Italy second-hand Eurofighters; while Portugal wants to sell its F-16s second-hand alongside a logistics package and weaponry from the US. $820 million has been earmarked by the government for the acquisition of eight new aircraft in order to improve compliance with NATO standards while reducing reliance on Russian-made aircraft. Formal negotiations with the preferred bidder could start as early as next month.

• Following Boeing’s accusations that Denmark unfairly chose Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter over the former’s F/A-18 Super Hornet, the Danish Office of Attorney General is expected to unveil a formal legal defense position as early as next month. A lawsuit was filed by Boeing after the company complained of the lack of access to selection process documents pertaining to Denmark’s next-generation fighter competition. So far, Denmark’s MoD has only released a small number of documents to Boeing despite regular formal requests for greater access that were lodged by the company over the last six months.

Asia Pacific

• South Korean daily JoongAng Ilbo reports that North Korea has tested technology necessary to give its Scud-ER ballistic missiles an anti-ship capability. Pyongyang threatens “merciless” attacks if an aircraft carrier strike group led by the USS Carl Vinson, which is joining South Korean forces for exercises, infringes on its sovereignty or dignity. Sources say Pyongyang probably inherited the know-how from Iran which has turned its Fateh missile into an anti-ship weapon and officials in Seoul claim that tests were carried out last September and February.

• Iran has commenced mass-producing their domestically built main battle tank. Said to be inspired by Russia’s latest T-90MS, Tehran has boasted of the platform’s capabilities that can rival those used by the West. Speaking at a ceremony to mark the start of production, Iran’s Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan said the tank, known as the Karrar, “can compete with the most advanced tanks in the world in the three main areas of power, precision and mobility, as well as maintenance and durability in the battleground.” The tank possesses advanced features like an electro-optical fire control system, a laser rangefinder, and a ballistic computer. It can also fire guided missiles.

• The Pakistan Army has inducted the Chinese LY-80 (HQ-16) medium-range surface-to-air missile (SAM) system into service. Islamabad has made two separate orders for the system having ordered three HQ-16 systems and eight IBIS-150 radars in 2013-2014 for USD $225.77 million and $40 million respectively, and was followed up in 2014-2015 with a $373.23 million order for six additional HQ-16 systems. To augment their air-defense network, there are also plans to procure a long-range SAM system with CPMIEC HQ-9’s export variant, the FD-2000, considered the likeliest option as fiscal constraints may rule out Russian platforms such as the S-400.

Today’s Video

• Time-lapse video of the USS Independence leaving Puget Sound Naval Shipyard for the scrapyard:

List of Top 10 Best Submachine Guns in the World

G-III AML
(click to view full)

Lockheed is more aggressive than most defense firms in self-funding projects that make sense to them, and the Airborne Multi-Intelligence Laboratory (AML) was their response to the rising popularity of small manned surveillance planes like the USA’s MC-12W Liberty, the MARSS program, etc. Now, their AML is moving from a privately-funded surveillance variant of the Gulfstream III business jet, to a money-making platform, courtesy of the Italian Ministry of Defence.

Under an agreement for an undisclosed sum, Lockheed Martin will provide its AML as a contracted ISR(Intelligence, Surveillance & Reconnaissance) service “in a live operational environment,” which probably means Afghanistan. The service goes beyond the jet…

Italy’s contract includes full flight crew and maintenance personnel, plus 3 intelligence-processing ground stations, for 1 year. An option could extend the contract to 2 years. The sensor package will include day/night cameras and SIGINT electronic eavesdropping gear, other undiscussed communications and sensor packages, plus any new equipment the Italians choose to add and integrate.

Lockheed Martin says that its AML team includes L-3 Communications Systems-West, Rockwell Collins, FLIR Government Systems, and Finmeccanica’s DRS.

To date, the Gulfstream III AML has been used as a test platform to develop the architecture for swappable sensors that could be packaged in different mounting assemblies, and installed on a wide variety of planes. The firm now markets this offering as its Dragon series, with “Dragon Star” marketed as the modification for Gulfstream III sized jets, and “Net Dragon” as the name for the kind of rent-a-capability service the Italians are buying.

The Italian order will help the firm refine its core architecture, broaden its sensor choices, hone both parties’ understanding of how to operate and use a service like this, and give its Dragon line some operational credentials.

Those credentials may be a useful selling point in non-military markets as well. The mineral surveys of Afghanistan that recently found huge resource deposits used military assets, including magnetic imaging sensors on board P-3 maritime patrol aircraft. Unmanned drones have also shown considerable flexibility, with hunter-killer platforms like the MQ-9 Reaper refitted to take on roles like firefighting assistance. Manned aircraft with packages like the Dragon series offer similar potential, without the issues drones have getting permission to fly in civil airspace.

Updates

March 14/17: Lockheed Martin has announced that they have upgraded the Airborne Multi-INT Lab (AML) to speed up the mission system’s ability to turn sensor data into intelligence for customers. The modified Gulfstream III aircraft is used to test various onboard sensors for military and non-military purposes and is fitted to enable in-air experimentation for products with intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance applications. Upgrades added by Lockheed Martin include an autonomous sensor control mode that can coordinate operations between the plane and onboard sensors which will accelerate the aircraft’s ability to produce actionable intelligence from experimental data.

March 23/16: Lockheed Martin is to go ahead with its Net Dragon upgrade planned for the USAF’s U-2S fleet. The system will equip the fleet with a beyond-line-of-sight communications relay capability for forward-deployed forces on the ground or in the air. At present, the aircraft uses a Dragon Fly modem that will allow a soldier on the ground to relay full-motion video to another soldier miles away. The new upgrade increases the difficulty for competitors to get ahead of Lockheed, with a planned L-3 Communications upgrade due on the plan within the next few months. An L-3 Communication satellite modem will allow the same forces on the ground to call up imagery and other information from intelligence databases, such as the distributed common ground system.

The East and South China Sea is a strategic maritime link and a major trade route with rich fishing grounds and oil and gas reserves. Mounting conflicts between neighbouring countries (in particular China, the Philippines and Vietnam) have resulted in growing security tension and militarisation of the region. The hearing will therefore address security implications of the territorial disputes for global and European security, and the role the EU could play in easing tensions in the region.
Location : Paul-Henri Spaak 5B001
Further information
Draft programme
Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

The EU Counter-Terrorism Strategy was adopted in 2005. Since then the EU has improved ties with third countries in combating terrorism, in particular with countries in the Southern Neighbourhood. The EU adopted a wide-ranging counter-terrorism approach and acts through building state capacity, strengthening the rule of law/respect for human rights, fostering regional cooperation, and preventing/combating terrorism.
Further information
Study
Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

The companies join resources and establish a joint venture company in Norway that will be the international strategic and exclusive supplier of combat systems for thyssenkrupp Marine Systems' submarines.

Raytheon Anschütz, a German-based leader in naval bridge system integration, has achieved several key milestones toward the Integrated Navigation and Bridge System (INBS) for the UK Royal Navy's new Type 26 Global Combat Ships.

Americas

• Lockheed Martin has won a $64 million contract to perform work on the integrated core processor used by the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The DoD order includes services for the USAF, US Navy, USMC and international partners and the work aims to alleviate diminishing manufacturing source constraints projected under F-35 production Lot 15 by March 2019. Developed during the early stages of the F-35’s development, the integrated core processor is referred to as the “brain” of the next-gen fighter.

• The USAF has announced that it has used a quadcopter to conduct a maintenance inspection of the exterior of a C-17 aircraft. Conducted at Edwards Air Force Base, the 412th Test Wing’s Emerging Technologies Combined Test Force (CTF) conducted three sorties with the mini-UAV and it worked so well it allowed the ground crew to sign off on their preflight external inspection of the aircraft. It’s expected that use of such drones will help cut the inspection time from 45-60 minutes to just minutes. The test comes under the CTF’s task to provide agile, innovative flight test capabilities for emerging technologies and to explore the USAF’s future warfighting capabilities.

Middle East & North Africa

• Rafael has completed a successful test firing demonstration with its Protector unmanned surface vehicle (USV). The remote controlled platform conducted a series of launches with a variety of munitions, including the company’s Spike missile, as well as performing maneuvers and demonstrating its targeting capabilities. Protectors have already been procured by various navies, including those in Singapore, Israel and the US, and offers operators a platform that can conduct operations without revealing its identity to hostile forces.

Europe

• Norway’s Kongsberg has teamed up alongside Germany’s Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems and Atlas Elektronik to form a joint venture aimed at supplying combat systems for Thyssenkrupp submarines. The announcement follows an earlier Norwegian government announcement last month that they had chosen Germany as a strategic partner for their new submarine procurement program. The Norway-based new venture will be part-owned by both the Norwegian and German partners, and the new company will be responsible for the development, production and maintenance of combat systems. Speaking on the joint venture, Kongsberg President and CEO Geir Haøy said the agreement has potential to earn Kongsberg in excess of $1.8 billion over the next ten years and will mark a significant increase in activity and employment in the Norwegian industry.

• Safran has been selected by the UK’s Military Flying Training System program to assist in servicing engines of rotary-wing aircraft flown by Britain’s Defense Helicopter Flying School. The 17-year, by-the-hour contract follows an earlier agreement signed with UK’s defense ministry in July 2016, when they were selected to supply Arrius 2B2 and Arriel 2E turbines for the country’s H135 and H145 fleets. Work will be carried out in partnership with Airbus helicopters and it is believed Safran will earn over $100 million over the course of the contract.

Asia Pacific

• Saab has opened an office in the Philippines as the Swedish defense firm looks to sell its JAS-39 Gripen fighter to the archipelago nation. The office was opened by Swedish Ambassador Harald Fries who said that his embassy will invite Swedish companies who do good work in terms of social responsibility to have an exchange with both government agencies, labor unions, and Filipino companies. Alongside air defense, Saab is also looking to offer coastal surveillance equipment and even submarines to the Philippines in order to profit from Manila’s maritime modernization efforts.

• Taiwanese media has reported that the US has sent personnel, including officials from Raytheon, to inspect Taiwan’s PAC-3 air defense systems. Two batteries have been in place in Hualian and Taitung since earlier this year, replacing the older Hawk air defense system, and the inspection is being seen as a signal that the deployments may become permanent. Meanwhile, South Korea’s deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) has started a debate in Taiwan at the possible deployment of THAAD on the island. Defense Minister Feng Shih-kuan, however, has publicly voiced his opposition against a THAAD presence in Taiwan, saying the island had no need to be drawn into other countries’ conflicts.

• Attack drones will be deployed to South Korea by the US as tensions rise on the peninsula over the deployment of THAAD. The decision to deploy the MQ-1C Grey Eagles to Korea come as part of a wider plan to deploy a company of the attack drones with every division in the US Army. Speaking on the announcement, United States Forces Korea spokesman Christopher Bush added that the Grey Eagle’s will provide a “significant intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capability to US Forces Korea and our ROK partners.” These ongoing tensions are taking place at a time when South Korean voters are scheduled to go to the polls on May 9 in order to elect a new president following the impeachment and dismissal last week of its former president, Park Geun-hye, and policy on North Korea and the THAAD system are likely to be contentious issues in the campaign.

Today’s Video

• The Protector USV:

Iranian Karrar Main Battle Tank

China’s New Maritime Silk Road policy poses geostrategic challenges and offers some opportunities for the US and its allies in Asia-Pacific. To offset China’s westward focus, the US seeks to create a global alliance strategy with the aim to maintain a balance of power in Eurasia, to avoid a strong Russia-China or China-EU partnership fostered on economic cooperation. For the EU, the ‘One Belt, One Road’ (OBOR) initiative by improving infrastructure may contribute to economic development in neighbouring countries and in Africa but present also risks in terms of unfair economic competition and increased Chinese domination. Furthermore, China’s behaviour in the South China Sea and rebuff of the ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration, in July 2016, put the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) at risk with possible consequences to freedom of the seas. Increasing relations with China could also affect EU-US relations at a time of China-US tension. To face these challenges, a stronger EU, taking more responsibility in Defence and Security, including inside NATO, is needed.
Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Further information
Programme
Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

EDA organised a one-day “jumbo” workshop on 28 February which for the first time gathered together Member States and industry representatives from the 4 EDA networks on Defence Market and Industry issues, notably the Defence Acquisition Expert Network, the Defence Industry Expert Network and SMEs Point of Contact, as well as the Defence Supply Chain Network, to discuss proposals aimed at improving the transparency of the European Defence Equipment Market (EDEM), the competitiveness of European Defence Technological and Industrial Base (EDTIB) and promoting cooperation in defence procurement.

The workshop, held at the EDA in Brussels, brought together more than 80 experts from Member States and industry; a total of 25 Member States were represented at the event. Discussions focused on three central themes: cooperative defence procurement, cross-border contracting and supply chains and administrative burdens in defence procurement in view of collecting expert’s recommendations on potential concrete future actions. To facilitate the discussions, participants were provided with related ‘food for thought’ papers ahead of the workshop.

Many of the recommendations centred around the need of information sharing and the enhancement of trust among suppliers across national borders. The proposals drawn-up from the workshop will be forwarded to the concerned EDA networks to examine their further implementation within future EDA activities and projects.  

EDA is particularly grateful to the external moderators who worked with EDA on the ‘food for thought’ papers and led the discussions in respective groups:

• Dr. Aris GEORGOPOULOS, Assist. Professor in European and Public Law – Advocate, Head of Defence and Strategic Procurement Research Unit, PPRG, School of Law, University of Nottingham,

• Dr. Vincenzo RANDAZZO, Legal Officer, Public Procurement Legislation and Enforcement, DG Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (DG GROW)/G/3, European Commission, Brussels

• Dr. Daniel FIOTT, Security and Defence Editor at EU Institute for Security Studies,
• Mr. Dusan ŠVARC, Deputy director of the Czech Republic’s Defence and Security Industry Association (DSIA), EDA SME Senior Advisor
• Professor Martin TRYBUS, Professor of European Law and Policy, Director, Institute of European Law, Birmingham Law School, University of Birmingham,
• Mr. Francisco MENE, Delegate to NATO NIAG, LoI, EDA, ASD for TEDAE (Spanish Defence Industry Association), EDA SME Senior Advisor

More information:

• Access to EU funding (EDA project page)
• Dual-use research (EDA project page)
• Successful seminar on EU funding opportunities in Spain (EDA news)
• 3 out of 3: another EDA supported dual-use R&T project is awarded ESIF funding (EDA News)
• Polish dual-use R&T project co-funded by ESIF (EDA news)

will take place on Wednesday 22 March, 9:00-12:30 and 15:15-18:30 and Thursday 23 March 2017, 9.00-12:30 in Brussels.

Organisations or interest groups who wish to apply for access to the European Parliament will find the relevant information below.

Further information
watch the meeting live
Access rights for interest group representatives
Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

In an Opinion Editorial published this weekend simultaneously in a number of selected European newspapers and online media(*), EDA Chief Executive Jorge Domecq highlights the multiple benefits of deeper European cooperation in the field of defence (especially cost-savings and increased efficiency & interoperability) and called for “making defence a matter of genuine European interest”.

 Here is the full text of Mr Domecq’s article:

 

Deeper EU defence cooperation is not just inevitable: it also pays off for governments and citizens

Long treated as a marginal aspect of the European Union’s wider Common and Security Policy, defence has emerged as a top priority on the European agenda. Successive EU and Member States initiatives in 2016 have catapulted defence to centre-stage.

More than that: as EU leaders prepare to meet in Rome on 25 March for the 60th anniversary of the Rome Treaties in the midst of one of the most challenging and turbulent periods the Union has ever faced, defence is put forward as an area in which the European project could be reinvigorated with success.

I share this ambition: the time has come to make defence a matter of genuine European interest.

Let’s be frank: we, Europeans, have no credible alternative but to join forces and think and act on security and defence in more European terms, beyond national lines. The growing threats in our immediate neighbourhood, the future of our transatlantic relationship and the technological revolution that is taking place on a global scale should convince even the most skeptical that, at this time, Europe will not get out of doing more and better for its own security.

Politically, a stronger and more cooperative European approach to defence seems inevitable. To put it bluntly: the changing global order will sooner or later oblige European nations to pull together and to act collectively if they want to remain capable of protecting their interests and citizens.

But pressure from outside should not be the only driver. In fact, there are also many practical reasons why enhanced European defence cooperation makes lot of sense.

Budgetary sense, first and foremost.

Today, Europe’s defence market remains seriously fragmented. Budgets are planned and spent nationally by 28 Defence Ministries without any proper coordination. This is costly and often leads to duplication of effort and spending as each Member State tries to cover the whole spectrum of defence capabilities. Better planning, joint procurement and the pooling and sharing of defence capabilities can therefore improve the output of military spending and save large amounts of taxpayers’ money.

Estimates(**) suggest European governments could save almost a third (!) of what they spend on military equipment if they decided to coordinate investments. We are talking here about billions and billions of euros which could be saved or freed for additional long-term investment.

But cost-effectiveness is not the only benefit. Interoperability and increased effectiveness are equally important outcomes of a more cooperative approach on defence spending.

Compared to the US, European Armed Forces operate far too many different types of military capabilities. In 2016, for example, EU Member States had 20 different types of fighter aircraft (compared to 6 in the US), 29 types of frigates (4 in the US) or 20 types armoured fighting vehicles (2 in the US). More cooperative planning, procurement and operation of assets would streamline the capabilities in use and thereby considerably improve Member States Armed Forces’ interoperability.

Pooling and sharing is therefore key to making sure that European Armed Forces become more effective/interoperable and European citizens and taxpayers get better value for money.

To facilitate such cooperation and initiate and manage cooperative projects between willing Member States is the bread and butter of the European Defence Agency (EDA). Since its creation in 2004, the Agency has become THE ‘hub’ for European defence cooperation with expertise and networks that are second to none. Experience clearly shows that if Member States have the political will to seriously engage in cooperation, the EDA is able to deliver.

Today, at a time when the EU’s institutional lines between internal and external security are becoming increasingly blurred, it is worth recalling that Member States have always, since the beginning, considered the EDA to be their main tool and vehicle for advancing defence cooperation, since it is in EDA where they, the national governments, decide what the capability priorities are and how to manage them. The support that the European Commission is willing to provide through the recently adopted European Defence Action Plan (EDAP) is most welcome in this respect.

Defence cooperation is needed urgently. We cannot afford to allow this important issue to be dragged into political or institutional debates that do not strictly focus on our common goal: making European defence stronger. To achieve that, Europe needs to make the best out of the tools it has and the EDA is certainly among them.

The European Union is at a crossroads. Visionary decisions and ambitious actions are needed to keep the European project alive and thriving.

(*) La Tribune (France), La Repubblica (Italy), Le Soir (Belgium), La Vanguardia (Spain), Der Standard (Austria), Dagens Nyheter (Sweden), De Volkskrant (Netherlands), Diario das noticias (Portugal), Rzeczypospolita (Poland), Times of Malta, Euractiv (several languages), Bruxelles2 

(**) Munich Security Report 2017

The article is available in several languages:

• French
• German
• Spanish
• Italian
• Swedish
• Polish
• Dutch
• Portuguese
  
  

For years, the Afghan government and donors have cited the growing number of children going to school in Afghanistan as an important post-Taleban success, despite closer scrutiny showing that numbers may have been inflated. The issue came to a head when the newly appointed education minister in the National Unity Government, Asadullah Hanif Balkhi, said that, instead of 11.5 million children being in school, as his predecessor had claimed, there were, in reality, only a little over six million. Education officials scrambled to clarify, defend and adjust the numbers. AAN’s Ali Yawar Adili has been investigating the figures and claims and trying to find out what the actual numbers might be. In the process, he has heard allegations not just of exaggeration, but manipulation, malpractice and mismanagement in the ministry (with input from Jelena Bjelica, Martine van Bijlert and Thomas Ruttig).

The re-discovery of ghost schools, and some inflated figures

Education Minister Asadullah Hanif Balkhi caused a public furore on 18 December 2016 when, in an interview with Tolo TV, he said that across the country only a little over six million pupils were actually in school. His count contradicted the ones provided by his predecessor under former president Hamed Karzai, Faruq Wardak, who had reported that up to 11.5 million pupils – almost double Balkhi’s number – were attending school. Such high numbers of school attendance had not only served the Afghan government as a marker of post-Taleban success, but also donor governments as proof that their engagement in Afghanistan, though difficult, was still worthwhile. (1)

It was not the first time Balkhi had said the education numbers were inflated. Only a month after his appointment, on 27 May 2015, Balkhi testified before the Wolesi Jirga, that, in certain insecure areas, although there were no schools, money was still allocated (and spent), including for teachers’ salaries. He said he believed the ministry’s previous figure of 11.5 million pupils in school was inaccurate and that the figures had been inflated to safeguard donor funding. This caused quite a stir. The media had a field day and reported that the education minister had uncovered ‘ghost schools’ in restive provinces and that he had claimed his predecessor had falsified data on open schools. On 11 June 2015, the United States Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) John F Sopko expressed his concerns and sent a letter to the US Agency for International Development (USAID), saying that according to the media, the current ministers of education and higher education had said that:

… former ministry officials who served under President Hamid Karzai provided false data to the government and to international donors, claiming that far more schools around the country were active than was actually the case, in order to obtain more funding. The Ministers reported that there are no active schools in insecure parts of the country, and that former officials doctored statistics, embezzled money, and interfered with university entrance exams. These allegations suggest that US and other donors may have paid for schools that students do not attend and for the salaries of teachers who do not teach.

Warren Ryan, a spokesperson for SIGAR, told VICE News there was no way to tell how much of the 769 million US dollars provided by USAID had contributed to legitimate programs and how much may have gone to ghost schools.(2)

Former minister of education Faruq Wardak defended his figures. In a statement sent to the media on 20 June 2015, he called the remarks by Balkhi “empty, ridiculous and insulting,” saying that, “the statistics that I have given to the international community during [my] seven years [in office] were not my own mental product” and that there was a system through which the statistics were collected directly from school principals and sent to governors and then up to the deputy minister and minister. Wardak called the accusations “politically motivated” and, at the same time, alleged that donor countries wanted to use the pretexts of corruption and lack of accurate figures to not deliver on their commitments and to undermine former government officials. (3)

In a response to Wardak’s insistence on the 11.5 million figure, Balkhi in his December 2016 interview (where he launched the new figure of a little over six million) repeated that the figure Wardak cited was not supported by the ministry’s database. “There was one figure in the database,” he said, “and another [different] figure that was reported to the media”.

Afghanistan’s education figures under Wardak

The figure of 11.5 million was first used by Minister Wardak and President Karzai when they spoke at an official event on National School Opening Day on 23 March 2014. Karzai, who for the last time as president symbolically rang the bell to start the new school year, said, “In 11 years, the number of children going to schools went up from less than one million to 11.5 million children” (see the transcript and video of his speech here and here). Wardak continued to trumpet the success in a June 2014 interview with al-Jazeera when he repeated the one to 11.5 million pupils over 11 years claim.

In 2009, when Wardak started in the education field and presented his five-year plan to the parliament, as candidate for the post as education minister, he put the total number of children going to school at seven million. He pledged to increase the number “to more than 10 million in the next five years.” (See the full text and video of his statement here and here). In 2012, three years into his tenure as minister and after Afghanistan joined the Global Partnership for Education, he reported an increase of 1.3 million newly enrolled pupils. He put the total at 8.3 million, of which 39 per cent were girls (which would mean 3.2 million girls in school). At the same time, according to Wardak, there were 4.2 million school-aged children who did not have access to education “because of insecurity, the lack of availability of schools, and the distance between their homes and their schools.” (see here) If Wardak’s figures in 2012 were correct, the figure of 11.5 million children in school in 2014 would represent an increase of 3.2 million in only two years.

Apart from the fact that such a large and rapid increase seems fairly unlikely, it also did not match other official figures provided by the Ministry of Education. Its reports for 2013 and 2014, for example, actually showed a decrease, from 9.7 million children in school in 2013 to 9.2 million in 2014. The reason for the drop is not clear (particularly since both reports cited the exact same number of teachers (203,148, including 31 per cent women) and schools (16,534). Nor is it clear why these figures deviated from those presented by Wardak. Even more confusingly, in 2015 Wardak gave a – probably more realistic – figure of “more than eight million” children going to school in his foreword to the Afghanistan National Education for All Review, (see here) thus contradicting both his previous statements and his ministry’s reports. This may merely indicate that, like many officials, Wardak does not read all documents and articles published in his name and simply signs them off, but it also illustrates the lack of consistency with regard to official Afghan statistics.

Like Wardak himself, some former and current officials in the ministry who were close to him defended the figure of 11.5 million. Kabir Haqmal, head of publications at the Ministry of Education, while seeking to reconcile the numbers that both ministers gave, told AAN on 3 January 2017 that “Faruq Wardak did not give incorrect figures when he said that 11.5 million children went to schools.” Haqmal argued that:

There were around one million [children] studying in Pakistan and Iran and they were also part of the figures. We [also] had around one million to one million two hundred thousand studying in informal classes conducted by, for example, UNICEF. Around five hundred thousand [children] were undergoing literacy courses. So he was not wrong.

He went on to try to reconcile this with the figures provided by the current minister, Hanif Balkhi, saying,

Regarding the figures given by the minister in his interview with Tolo, there was a slip of the tongue. He wanted to give an accurate figure. We calculated it for him. We said that around 9.2 million pupils were enrolled, but that 22 to 24 per cent [of them] were absent. When we deducted those who are absent, the figure was about 7.2 million, but during the interview, as a slip of the tongue, the minister said 6.2 million.

Amanullah Iman, Wardak’s former ministerial spokesman took the same line on 6 February 2017 when talking to AAN. He argued that the “more than one million pupils” who were enrolled in Afghan schools in Pakistan and Iran must be counted “because we provide textbooks and other services to these schools.” He also claimed that the 11.5 million figure had been correct, as it had been based on data from the ministry’s Education Management Information System (EMIS). Iman who is still an aide to Wardak, echoed the former minister when he called Balkhi’s remarks on the education figures “politically motivated and unrealistic.”

Moreover, current deputy minister of education Sayyed Hamidullah Amini also contradicted the claim by both officials that Wardak’s 11.5 million could be reached by adding the out-of-country students. On 26 December 2016 in the Wolesi Jirga, he stated that the total figure of 9.7 million had already “included students studying in our schools outside the country.” One of Wardak’s deputy ministers, Seddiq Patman, has also concurred with minister Balkhi in dismissing the figure of 11.5 million as incorrect. He was quoted in a media report as saying that he would “not confirm the statistics provided by the former leadership of the ministry [under Faruq Wardak]” and that he had at the time already relayed the message to the (former) president and the ministers that the statistics were “not accurate.”

How many pupils in how many schools?

The confusion over what to count in the overall figures has, however, continued under the new minster. Mujib Mehrdad, the spokesman for the Ministry of Education, told AAN there were currently 9.2 million pupils (9,234,459 to be exact) in 17,482 schools (counting both government-run and private schools) and 1,006 schools are currently closed. 9.2 million pupils is also the figure that other education officials use, including some who spoke to AAN. Deputy minister Amini also cited it in his report to the Wolesi Jirga on 26 December 2016. (see here) However, according to spokesman Mehrdad, out of the 9.2 pupils, around 2 million (2,042,294 to be exact) – or more than 20 per cent – are permanently absent. According to the Ministry of Education’s rules, an enrolled pupil cannot be removed from the database during the first three years of absence (counted consecutively). Mehrdad said that “some of these two million permanently absent have crossed the three-year limit and the ministry has started to omit them from the database.” Even so, this system of counting and the errors it may feed into the system had been flagged and questioned by Special Inspector General Sopko in his already quoted May 2015 speech:

The student numbers are also less than they might appear to be. For one thing, they are not independently verified. For another, as SIGAR reported last year, the ministry counts absent students as ‘enrolled’ for up to three years, before dropping them from the rolls. That’s right: a student who has not attended school in nearly three years is still considered as ‘enrolled.’ That’s like saying a spouse who packed up and left three years ago is still committed to you.

Mehrdad said if the ministry was to deduct the permanently absent pupils, the total number of children actually attending school would probably be around 7.2 million. (Like Haqmal, Mehrdad also said current minister, Balkhi, had made a mistake when he claimed that only a little over six million pupils would be left if the permanently absent pupils were deducted, explaining that the minister did not have the figures with him when he was talking). However, even the current, somewhat reduced figure of 9.2 million children in school cited by ministry officials could still be inflated. A member of a fact-finding commission appointed by President Ghani in July 2015 agreed that “If the permanently absent students were to be included, the number would go up to 9.2 million pupils” and explained that even this figure included duplications; all pupils who were registered both for general education and literacy courses, the member said, would be counted twice.

How security issues may have affected the education numbers

During minister Wardak’s tenure as education minister, Afghanistan’s country-wide security situation deteriorated. At least up to 2012, Afghanistan was considered “very heavily affected” by attacks on schools, students and teachers (see this 2014 report). (4) After a change in the Taleban’s policy towards education (see this 2011 AAN report on the layha), the number of Taleban attacks on education dropped, but did not go away all together. In 2016 UNAMA still documented 94 conflict-related incidents targeting or impacting education-related personnel, which was a 20 per cent decrease compared to 2015 (most of them perpetrated by insurgent groups). (5) The number of schools reported as closed by the Ministry of Education fell from 1,247 in September 2012 to 471 in March 2013 (see in this 2013 AAN report: pp 1, 16) – although, as with the other figures, it cannot be ruled out that these were manipulated or affected by unreliable data collection.

The substantial drop in education-related attacks and closed schools was linked to reported, unofficial negotiations between the Taleban and the Ministry of Education which aimed at allowing schools to function in exchange for giving the Taleban influence over aspects of the curriculum and the employment of teaching staff (see this 2011 AAN report on the changing Taleban policy towards education). In contrast to the Taleban, the government did not admit that such an agreement was reached (see for instance the ministry’s response to the 2011 AAN report).

It is difficult to assess what the combined effect has been of, on one hand, the general steady deterioration of the security situation in the country and, on the other hand, the agreement of the Taleban to allow education (under certain circumstances). A 2013 AAN update on the education deal found that the implementation of the deal had been patchy and that attacks on schools and teachers continued, albeit at a lesser rate. All in all, it seems unlikely that the greater leniency of the Taleban towards education, and their claimed cooperation, could have been to the extent that an additional several million children – including a large proportion of girls – could have been able to go to school (the increase claimed by former minister Wardak when in office). (6)

A fact-finding commission

Balkhi’s contention when he came to office in 2015 that his predecessor had got his figures badly wrong and the number of Afghan children going to school were far fewer than claimed did trigger a response from the executive. On 1 July 2015 President Ghani assigned a ten member fact-finding commission to conduct a comprehensive investigation into allegations of corruption in the Ministry of Education (the contention was that someone was pocketing money going to ghost schools and teachers). The commission was made up of five MPs, one senator, two civil society activists and representatives of the Attorney General’s office and the NDS. It started its work on 27 July 2015 and continued for four months. (7) The commission’s report has never been published, but several members spoke to AAN about their investigation and their reports were gravely concerning. They pointed to considerable confusion with regard to the numbers of schools, teachers and pupils. They also cited a large number of unfinished projects and described a variety of malpractice within the Ministry of Education.

In part, the commission’s findings showcased the genuine difficulty of establishing accurate figures in the face of different sources. For instance, AAN was told by a member of the commission that, according to their findings, up to 224 schools were closed in Kandahar province; meanwhile, the provincial education department had reported 150 schools closed, the ministry’s department of planning 158 schools and the NDS in Kandahar 149. This epitomises the difficulty faced by any fact-finding mission, but also signals that the accuracy of all figures (including the commission’s number of 224) need to be questioned.

Besides problems with data, the investigation also uncovered wastage, misuse of resources and a lack of oversight of school construction projects and textbook contracts. The commission reported that the construction of 1033 school buildings had remained incomplete, even though the final payments had been made. This was the case in both secure and insecure provinces. The commission also found seven contracts that had been signed with a private printing company, which – instead of printing the required textbooks – had printed textbooks of an old type that already existed in the stores within the Ministry of Education. As a result, hundreds of thousands of books were kept unused in storage, where they were spoiled. Similarly, in a separate case, Pashto language textbooks were printed twice and consequently rotted in storage. Another contract for 13.6 million textbooks was made with an Indian printing company which ended up producing low-quality books (many pages were left blank). The company promised to recompense the damages (it would either deduct 87,000 US dollars from the total cost or print 150,000 religious textbooks instead), but it is not clear if that compensation was ever provided. (8)

Another major finding concerned malpractice within the ministry. According to a member of the commission, it was found that 340 people who worked as heads of different departments and sections also received top-up salaries as advisors to the minister. For instance, the heads of the procurement and the audit department received additional salaries, respectively as procurement and audit advisers. These additional salaries ranged from 100,000 to 890,000 Afghanis on a monthly basis (which, at the time, was between 2,000 and 17,800 US dollars). Similarly, the delegation found that scholarships had been awarded to temporary employees to study in European countries; according to the ministry’s regulations, they were not eligible for such scholarships. Forty of these temporary employees, did not return to the country (reportedly including a girl who had been raped by an official in the ministry, and had been awarded a scholarship in return for her silence). Assets of the ministry had not been maintained properly or had gone missing. This included, in particular, 64 containers used as storage rooms, each costing 54,000 Afghanis, representing a total loss of 3,456,000 Afghanis (over 69,000 US dollars). When asked, officials said that senior staff, including a deputy minister, had taken the containers to their homes.

As an outcome of this investigation, a member told AAN, 33 dossiers documenting corruption were prepared. These dossiers named the former minister and 15 heads of provincial education departments as involved in malpractice, according to another member quoted by the press.

… but a final report kept away from the public

However, to the chagrin and frustration of the fact-finding commission, there has been no visible action taken with regard to the charges. One member complained that, “When the findings were presented to the president, he treated us coldly and said he would appoint a more technical team to look into the issues. But that never happened.” The member also told AAN that the MPs who were part of the investigation team received threats from some of their colleagues in parliament. Another member described how, when the commission presented the preliminary findings to the president, he was in a hurry and set to travel somewhere. According to him, the president said he would meet the delegation again, but never did.

The commission’s final report has not been made public and the president himself appears to be opposed to releasing the findings (see a media report on this here). USAID officials have been quoted as saying that President Ghani, while discussing the investigation’s preliminary findings on 4 January 2016, outlined specific organisational and management reforms, “such as introducing a national electronic payment system and a national public corruption council to minimize fraud and corruption.”

Previous investigations, by AAN and others

The controversy over the ministry’s figures and the report of the fact-finding commission were not the first indications that there were problems at the Ministry of Education. For example, in 2013, long before Balkhi’s testimony, AAN’s researcher Obaid Ali visited Ghor province and found empty classrooms, ghost girls’ schools and teachers’ salaries siphoned off by warlords (see here ). He visited a school in Ahangaran, 35 kilometres outside Ghor’s capital of Chaghcheran (now renamed Feroz Koh), which was supposed to be teaching 767 students (494 boys and 273 girls) in grades 1 to 12, with 13 teachers working three shifts a day, each for three hours. During Obaid Ali’s visit, he observed only five teachers and about 20 students showing up to class.

While the provincial director of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) at the time estimated that more than 50 per cent of the schools in Ghor had been closed due to insecurity, Sebghatullah Akbari, the head of the provincial education department, insisted that only a few schools in the districts were “sometimes temporarily closed due to conflicts among illegal militias” ( see here) – reflecting a tendency of education officials to either deny or underreport existing problems.

These problems appear to have persisted, also under minister Balkhi in the National Unity Government. In November 2016, SIGAR, in collaboration with an Afghan civil society organisation, inspected 25 schools that had been rehabilitated or reconstructed (most between 2004 and 2007) as part of 57 USAID-funded projects in Herat province. They visited the schools during normal operating hours. SIGAR reported that while, on average, school staff reported that 61 teachers had been assigned to each school, the site visits found on average, only 18 teachers on school grounds, roughly the equivalent of 38 per cent of those reportedly assigned. In six schools – ie in almost a quarter – less than 20 per cent of the assigned teachers were on-site during the observed shift.

The Independent Joint Anti-corruption Monitoring and Evaluation Committee (MEC), in its June 2015 Vulnerability to Corruption Assessment of Teacher Recruitment in the Ministry of Education, also raised the issue of teachers failing to show up to work or existing in name only, referring to them as ghost teachers. It said this had been “a problem in Afghanistan for years. For example, while many schools in the Shindand district of Herat remained unused, teachers were continuing to receive their salaries.” (see here)

A member of the 2015 fact-finding commission recounted similar cases. The commission had, for instance, found that in Bamyan province in 2013/14, 928 contracted teachers (or ajir; see a previous AAN’s report on teachers here) were reported to have retired and received a lump sum of 100,000 Afghanis (around 2,000 USD) each. According to EMIS, however, in 2013 there were only 279 ajir teachers and in 2014, only 310 – none of whom had retired (meaning that the 928 ‘retired teachers’ did not exist physically at all). The commission also found that as many as 2000 teachers in Herat existed only on paper. (9) According to the commission, ghost teachers were mainly found to be among the contracted teachers: “There were photos, signatures and payments for teachers who did not actually exist [as teachers].” MEC in its reporting had also found the temporary teachers particularly vulnerable to corruption. (10)

Conclusion

The right to education for “all citizens of Afghanistan” is enshrined in the constitution. (11) Since the fall of the Taleban, there has been tangible and important progress, but the tendency – both within the Afghan government and among international donors – to showcase the education sector as a major success story seems to have come at the expense of transparency and clarity, and to have resulted in exaggeration and room for corruption.

The ‘donor factor’ seems to have served as a double-edged sword. On the one hand, donor pressure can spur officials into action. But the fear that the discovery of scandals could lead to donors suspending funding can also discourage genuine probes. One of the members of the 2015 fact-finding commission was hesitant about disclosing the full extent of what they had found, saying: “There is stagnation in the education sector, and corruption everywhere. There are ghost structures. It is very obvious. It is our own internal issue that we need to resolve. But if we disclose some of these issues, donors and embassies may cut off their funding.”

The Ministry of Education has now made it clear that its previous numbers were inaccurate, but appears still to be struggling to clean up its databases. There needs to be greater clarity on which pupils are counted and which are not, and a greater effort to ensure that the new figures represent actual children going to school.

 

Edited by Martine van Bijlert and Thomas Ruttig

 

 

(1) For instance USAID, in its response to a 2013 SIGAR request for a list of its most successful programs in Afghanistan, said that “In the education sector, there are clear indicators of progress. In 2002, only an estimated 900,000 boys, and virtually no girls, were in school. Now, there are 8 million students enrolled in school, more than a third of whom are girls.” USAID has disbursed approximately $855 million for education programs in Afghanistan, as of 30 June 2016. (see here) Similarly, the World Bank in its November 2016 overview of Afghanistan said,” In 2001, no girls attended formal schools and boys’ enrolment was about 1 million. However, education is now one of Afghanistan’s success stories.”

(2) Reporting from the provinces shows there are different forms of ‘ghost schools’. Some do not exist at all, while others are simply non-functional. For instance in December 2014, Tolo News quoted tribal elders in Shahjoy district of Zabul province as saying that “only two schools are operational… but money is received for ten schools.” In other cases existing schools run below capacity, employing fewer teachers and teaching fewer students than officially claimed, as this 2013 AAN research from Ghor province found. Minister Balkhi in an interview in February 2016 defined ghost schools as “when a pupil does not go to school, [when] the tent is worn out and dilapidated, [when] the school does not have a building and the areas is insecure, this is a ghost school.”

(3) Balkhi, an ethnic Tajik in his fifties from Balkh province and a member of Jamiat-e Islami, was introduced as a candidate for his post by the chief executive’s mainly Jamiati camp (see AAN’s previous report for background here). Balkhi was also one of the seven ministers who lost votes of confidences in parliament in November 2016 after they were accused of having spent less than 70 per cent of their ministries’ development budgets (see a previous AAN’s report here). Former minister Wardak is a member of Hezb-e Islami and a close ally of former president Hamed Karzai. He supported Ashraf Ghani during the 2014 presidential elections and currently serves as a presidential adviser.

(4) A report commissioned by UNESCO and written by CARE, published in 2010 (p 173-7), saw a steady rise in attacks, from 241 in 2006 and 242 in 2007 to 670 in 2008. The already quoted 2014 report found over 1,000 attacks on schools, universities, staff and students, for the following years from 2009 to 2012.

(5) Already in the 2009 version of their layha (rule book), the Taleban had deleted all provisions declaring the education system a target. Apparently it took some time to ensure that the new approach was widely implemented. The current, although lower figures of attacks on schools and teachers show that these attacks have not completely ceased.

(6) AAN has seen a translation of the Taleban education policy, a 75-article document published in 2012, called “The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan: Purposed Law for Education and Training.” It stipulates that education should be provided for all “children,” largely avoiding the terms boys and girls and keeping the exact policy on girls’ schools vague.

(7) The members of the commission included: five MPs (Abdul Khaliq Balakarzai, Abdul Qadir Qalatwal, Humaira Ayubi and Muhammad Wali Alizai, and Nader Khan Katawazi); one senator (Muhammad Hanif Hanifi); two civil society members (Attaullah Wisa and Muhammad Daud Salim); Muhammad Aref Nuri from the Attorney General’s Office and; a representative of NDS known as Agha Saheb. In addition to the fact-finding commission, according to this SIGAR report, “By August, provincial teams from the Afghan government were assigned to collect more reliable figures for 6,000 schools across all 34 provinces, with field work conducted in September 2015.”

(8) On 7 April 2013 when then minister Wardak was summoned by the Meshrano Jirga to provide an explanation about the many errors in textbooks, he challenged the senators, saying if anyone found a single mistake in the textbooks, he would resign. On the same day, the media and social media shared many egregious spelling mistakes, which either altered the meaning or rendered the words meaningless altogether (see this report by Ariana television).

(9) Other (anecdotal) examples found by the commission included a teacher from Kandahar who had migrated to Quetta in 2005, but continued to receive his salary until his death in 2012. Another teacher in Kandahar was registered in two separate schools that were four hours distant from each other (rendering daily commuting and teaching in both schools impossible). Also, a member of the border police was found who also received salary as a teacher, as was a teacher who had been killed in an attack long before.

(10) MEC also found temporary teachers particularly vulnerable to corruption. It wrote in its report:

While applicants for fixed-term or permanent teaching positions must go through the competitive examination process, there are thousands of other teachers who are employed for nine months of the educational year and are compensated based on lecture hours. There is no transparent mechanism for hiring this latter category of teachers and they are not obliged to possess the same educational qualifications or pass the competitive exam. … Respondents stated their belief that this hiring mechanism is particularly vulnerable to producing “ghost teachers,” as it is not subjected to the same recruitment procedures or safeguards.

(11) Article 43 of the constitution proclaims:

Education is the right of all citizens of Afghanistan, which shall be offered up to the B.A. level in the state educational institutes free of charge by the state. To expand balanced education as well as to provide mandatory intermediate education throughout Afghanistan, the state shall design and implement effective programs and prepare the ground for teaching mother tongues in areas where they are spoken.

Article 44:

The state shall devise and implement effective programs to create and foster balanced education for women, improve education of nomads as well as eliminate illiteracy in the country.

 

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