ghost soldier

Ghost soldiers or ghost battalions refers to army troops whose names appear on military rolls, but who are not actually in military service, generally in order to divert part of the soldiers' salaries to an influential local entity such as army officers or others. Soldiers may equally benefit from the corruption scheme by returning to their civilian occupation and routine while gaining marginal income. The practice, however, weakens the military and makes it susceptible to military offensives and major defeats since leaders ignore the true number of available troops at their disposal on various front-lines. Severe occurrences of ghost soldiers have been cited in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries with dramatic military, humanitarian and historic consequences. Transnational In a 2008 transnational analysis, Hudson and Jones found a negative correlation between the level of corruption of a country and the cost per soldiers, which makes sense when factoring in ghost soldiers, who imply lower maintenance costs. Historic cases South Vietnam Some officers in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam during the Vietnam War retained soldiers who had been killed or deserted on their rolls as "ghost soldiers". As units were allocated a set amount of rice for each soldier monthly, this allowed the officers to sell the excess rice for their own profit. ARVN officers also sometimes stole the pay allocated to these non-existent soldiers. This corruption was sufficiently widespread that it led to a significant over-estimation of the size of the army.