MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Only a few lucky service personnel have received appropriate boots from their commanding officers while they have had to procure uniforms on their own, The Washington Post reported.
"This one, when it gets wet, they are not comfortable," Abdul Ali, 21, who is an Afghan soldier commented to the newspaper about his footwear.
Corruption and incompetence among the Afghan authorities have left them unable to clothe the country's service personnel properly, so the US-led coalition has had to assume responsibility for the shipment of uniforms to the country's armed forces even after beginning to withdraw in 2011.
"So we had to go back in… You just can’t stop the flow of stuff. He [President Ashraf Ghani] stopped buying, and that means someone has got to do it," Ken Watson, head of essential functions for NATO’s Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan, was quoted as saying by the paper.
US troops started to pull out of Afghanistan in 2011 as President Barack Obama resolved to keep his election pledge to put an end to the military operation in the country.
