• Is Turkey engineering the refugee crisis to justify 'safe havens' in Syria?
• Erdogan is using the refugee crisis to strong-arm the EU
• Turkey is arresting, mistreating, and deporting the refugees the EU paid it to accept

Another major source of systematic corruption: the filching of Pentagon money via salaries paid to "ghost soldiers" and policemen, recruits enrolled in the Afghan security forces who don't exist. Here, too, Washington's funds became the basis for embezzlement and "Afghan" corruption.

Up to 90% of Afghan troops and police are illiterate, and about a quarter of the force deserts annually. This has provided rich opportunities for commanders to pad their lists of soldiers with so-called ghosts, keep them on the books, and pocket their salaries. (It is worth recalling that this practice became similarly widespread in the South Vietnamese army during the American war in Vietnam.)

Besides filching salaries, enterprising police and army commanders have made money by reselling Pentagon war materials. For instance,according to documents leaked by the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, a police chief in the eastern town of Zurmat reported fictitious firefights with the Taliban, and upon being restocked with thousands of rounds of ammunition, sold them to a bazaar merchant. Another provincial police commissioner purloined food and uniforms, while leaving his men cold and underfed in the winter. Such acts led to the creation of a significant black market in U.S. military equipment and goods of every sort.

How the Pentagon corrupted Afghanistan

• Russian sanctions have had an immediate impact on Turkey's economy
• Records reveal ISIS & Turkey organized a 'sophisticated immigration operation'
• Turkey still sending reinforcements to ISIS in Syria 'despite all efforts by the global community' - Russian General Staff

Known Islamists with links to an Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) executioner fled the UK despite being on bail or banned from traveling, a counter-extremism group claims.

An investigation by the anti-racist group Hope Not Hate indicates up to six jihadists may have been allowed to leave the country, despite them being known to authorities and having had security conditions imposed upon them.

The individuals are believed to have had links with the same UK-based extremist group as Siddhartha Dhar, who is thought to be the 'new Jihadi John' British executioner who appeared in a recent IS video.