Afghan anti-corruption unit is unveiled

[maddezmom]

Source: AP


KABUL – Afghan officials announced a new anti-corruption unit and major crime fighting force Monday amid stiff international pressure to clean up the government following a fraud-tainted presidential election.

The government has been dogged by corruption for years, and this is the third formal launch of a unit promising to rein in rampant graft and bribery. But government officials said this attempt has a better chance because of a real desire to succeed and strong international backing. This one also comes amid threats from world leaders who are hedging their commitments of aid and troops on the ability of President Hamid Karzai to battle corruption.

U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry praised the plan but also called for follow-through.

"It requires action. Words are cheap. Deeds are required," he said at a news conference in Kabul. Eikenberry has questioned the wisdom of adding U.S. forces when the Afghan political situation is unstable and uncertain.


Read more: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/world/stories/DN-afghancorrupt_17int.ART.State.Edition1.4b44245.html

[JohnyCanuck]

1. And good luck to them with that.

Once we have learned how to eliminate corruption in Afghanistan perhaps we can do the same to eliminate our own corruption in the West. In the video linked below, a former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan explains some of the ins and outs of the corruption that is pervasive among Afghanistan's politicians after touching on some of the corruption that got us involved in Afghanistan and in forming an alliance with a totalitarian, Uzbek regime noted for its extensive use of hard core torture techniques and repression of any forms of political dissent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MQoG5wfx5g

[JohnyCanuck]

2. Tomgram: Pratap Chatterjee, Afghanistan as a Patronage Machine

It's now a commonplace of the Afghan War. Western leaders in London, Berlin, Amsterdam, and Washington, as well as on flying visits to Kabul or even Kandahar, excoriate Afghan President Hamid Karzai for the "corruption" of his government. In return for their ongoing support, they repeatedly demand that he take significant action to "step up efforts to root out crime and corruption," that he, in fact, "arrest and prosecute corrupt officials."

Can there be any question that there is a plethora of corrupt officials to arrest? The president's brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, reportedly on the CIA payroll, is also, as it's politely put in the press, a "suspected player in the country's booming illegal opium trade." Ahmad Rateb Popal, the president's cousin and another figure long linked to the drug trade, runs a local security company protecting American supply convoys that, according to Aram Roston of the Nation magazine, is involved in an industry-wide protection scam, using American Army money to pay off the Taliban not to attack. In addition, American arms and ammunition are clearly ending up in Taliban hands. The recent presidential election was a spectacle of fraud; the Afghan Army, despite years of training, may hardly exist (as Ann Jones reported for this site in September); the ill-paid, ill-trained Afghan police are known to operate on the principle of corruption; and a surprisingly small percentage of foreign reconstruction funds actually makes it out of the pockets of big private contractors and western specialists, as well as security firms, and into Afghan hands.

And then, of course, there's Kabul's "Obama market." (In the period when the Soviets ruled Kabul, it was the "Brezhnev market" in honor of the Russian leader, and decades later the "Bush market.") This "notorious bazaar" is "full of chow and supplies bought or stolen from the vast U.S. military bases," according to Jay Price of the McClatchy newspapers, who calls the name "a modest counterweight to (Obama's) Nobel Peace Prize." His description includes the following: "One shop offered an expensive military-issue sleeping bag, tactical goggles like those used by U.S. troops and a stack of plastic footlockers, including one stenciled 'Campbell G Co. 10th Mtn Div.' Another had a sophisticated 'red-dot' optical rifle sight of a kind often used by soldiers and contractors."

In other words, from the American, European, and Japanese reconstruction boondoggle to the presidential palace, from the U.S. and Afghan military to street-level, the country is a klepto-state. As number 179, it misses by only one place taking the rock-bottom spot in Transparency International's latest global corruption index. Of course, what else could be expected in a situation in which the nation's main source of funds is either narcotics -- the country now accounts for a staggering 92% of global opium production -- or foreign aid? To demand that President Karzai takes "steps" to "root out crime and corruption" is, under the circumstances, an absurdity, no matter how many special task forces to investigate graft he forms under Western pressure. It's like asking him -- to mix metaphors -- either to put a gun to his head or drink the sea. Consider it a measure of Afghan realities today that you can hardly read a piece about the country in the Western press without the word "corruption" lurking somewhere in it, and yet the reporting on how that system of corruption actually works has generally been thin indeed.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175140/pratap_chatterjee_afghanistan_as_a_patronage_machine

[TexasObserver]

3. Recommend. Because the excuses for our presence never end.

We need to just get the hell out and stop pretending there are good reasons to be there.

If our country wants to worry about Drug traffic and corruption, the place to look is Mexico.