Afghan Journal

Afghan election: Industrial-scale corruption, or real hope?

What is a worse prospect for an Afghanistan election – election fraud on an industrial scale or a quiet campaign of intimidation that keeps voters away from the polls, or forces them to vote for the most powerful candidate? That seems to be the choice facing many Afghan voters ahead of the Sept. 18 parliamentary election, particularly those in the Pashtun tribal belt in the south and east where so much of the fraud that marred last year’s presidential ballot was committed.

Afghan voters can be excused for feeling ballot fatigue. The September vote will be their fourth in six years. There have been some improvements but the key questions of poor governance, corruption and security remain unanswered despite the number of ballots they have cast. To turn out again will be a real test of their commitment to democracy, a right taken for granted by many in the West and grumbled about when they are asked to exercise it. It would hardly be surprising, given the risks, if many decided not to vote.

But the Sept. 18 poll is important nonetheless. It will be a real test of Afghanistan’s stability, of the progress being made in governance and in the fight against rampant corruption of which so many in government at all levels have been accused.

These are the things that will also be factored into U.S. President Barack Obama’s promised Afghan strategy review in December.

Ultimately it is a question of whether it is all worth the effort. Most Americans seem to say no – a poll released by NBC and The Wall Street Journal this month found seven out of 10 Americans don’t believe the war will end successfully.  The November mid-term congressional elections will be a stern test of Obama’s resolve, with even his own Democrats divided.

Corruption’s tentacles reaching across Afghanistan

By Sayed Salahuddin

Petty corruption has more than doubled in Afghanistan since 2007, a new survey shows, and nine years after the fall of the Taliban graft drains at least $1 billion a year from the $11 billion economy.

While it is contract graft involving vast sums that vexes Afghanistan’s donors – a majority of which is the fault of the international community, says President Hamid Karzai — the new report, by Integrity Watch Afghanistan, focused on the sort of petty bribery that affects ordinary Afghans every day.

One in seven Afghans now regularly paid bribes, it said, and the phenomenon was giving further strength to the Taliban fighting to expel foreign forces.

This was brought home in an interview with a former Taliban governor who defected to the government and served as a district chief for several years until recently.

Mullah Abdul Salaam told how had to find a group of bodyguards from the police ranks, but when he found a group he trusted they needed national identity cards – a requirement overlooked by paying a bribe.

Paying a bribe to police in order to join their ranks may sound like a grotesque joke, but because it is so endemic, corruption can sometime be both sad and funny.

Afghan court underscores governance challenge

International aid workers in Afghanistan — and even new U.S. commander General David Petraeus – like to talk of building governance capacity, which basically means making sure the country runs its schools, courts, health services and so on properly.

But if you want a glimpse of the civil challenges still facing Afghanistan nine years after the ousting of the Taliban, you could do worse than talk to British ex-soldier Bill Shaw.

Shaw was on Sunday acquitted on a two-year conviction for trying to pay a $25,000 bribe for the release of two vehicles impounded by the Afghan intelligence services over vague registration irregularities.

But the British-funded anti-corruption appeals court which delivered Shaw the happy news is a fine example for how chaotic and arbitrary the governance institutions can be, especially for ordinary Afghans.

Shaw’s appeal took place in the cramped sitting room of a senior judge in stifling heat and opened in chaos after prosecutors failed to show up.

Even when underway after hurried phone calls from the judge under glass-leaf chandeliers in the court lobby, proceedings were as far from most courts elsewhere as can be imagined.

Legal arguments were interrupted as chairs were found and dragged in mid-proceeding for Western watchers, including British Embassy staff and journalists, and soon fell into just argument as ordinary Afghans chimed in off the sidelines, shouting protests at the judge.

from Tales from the Trail:

U.S. officials seek to shelve Karzai tensions

Tensions, what tensions?

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Jack Lew arrived back from Afghanistan and Pakistan on Friday, touting the performance of several ministers in Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government.

His visit came at a particularly tense time in U.S.-Afghan relations after Karzai made some corrosive statements in recent weeks against his donors, blaming the West for much of the corruption in his country and drawing critical comments from the White House.

Hours after landing home, Lew went out of his way to single out several Afghan ministers, including the finance and agriculture ministers, who he said were "extraordinary leaders."

He cited a dinner two days ago in Kabul where he was seated next to former presidential candidate Ashraf Ghani and the current finance minister.

"Sitting there between these two leaders of a country -- with so much ground to catch up in so many ways -- one was left with such a strong impression at the same time that there were extraordinary leaders there, who frankly were on par or above the leaders of many countries that are considered highly developed," Lew gushed.

"That doesn't mean there is not a lot of work to do but leadership does matter and it was very heartening," he added.

from The Great Debate:

Dirty money and the war in Afghanistan

In a long report on the war in Afghanistan for the U.S. Senate's Committee on Foreign Relations last summer, one sentence stood out: "If we don't get a handle on the money, we will lose this war to corruption."

The money in this context meant the funds, from multiple illicit sources, that finance the Taliban who are fighting the United States and its allies in a war that is now in its ninth year. Dirty money is greasing corruption on a scale so monumental that Afghanistan ranks 179 (out of 180) on the latest index compiled by Transparency International, a watchdog group based in Berlin.

Part of the reason for the country's dismal standing: for much of the war the U.S. military ignored the booming drug trade (Afghanistan accounts for around 90 percent of the world's opium, the raw material for heroin) and the drug money flowing to the insurgents, estimated at up to $400 million a year. Add kickbacks contractors pay directly to the Taliban to avoid having their projects blown up or their workers kidnapped, add money diverted from development funds and soon you talk about serious money.

"There is a realization now that the best way to stop the conflict is to cut the flow of money," Gary Haff, the chief financial investigator with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) told a conference of anti-money laundering experts in Hollywood, Florida, this week. "We need to identify and disrupt the financial infrastructure that supports the Taliban and al-Qaeda."

That falls under the heading of better late than never and is easier said than done. An important new weapon in the assault on the financial infrastructure was only deployed last summer, initially with a skeleton staff. It is now growing rapidly and by the end of the year, according to Haff, the DEA alone will have 85 agents in the new unit, the Afghan Threat Finance Cell (ATFC), working alongside financial specialists from the Departments of Defense, Treasury and Justice.

That is a big step forward from the days, earlier in the war, when planes were loaded with bales of opium at the Kabul airport in full view of U.S. troops manning the perimeter. It is also a long way from the days when military commanders argued that neither going after the drug lords nor trying to deny financing to the enemy was part of their brief.

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE?

Will voters in your town believe Karzai is worth dying for?

In his inauguration speech on Thursday, Afghan president Hamid Karzai promised to combat corruption and appoint competent ministers, heading off the growing chorus of criticism from the West that his government is crooked and inept. Unsurprisingly, the Western dignitaries in the audience declared that they liked what they heard.

We predicted ahead of time that we would hear positive words about Karzai this week. After all, Western governments need to convince their own voters back home that the veteran Afghan leader’s government is worth sending their sons and daughters to die for. This autumn’s election debacle made Karzai look bad – a U.N.-backed probe found that nearly a third of votes cast for him were fake — but now that’s all over and the West needs him to look as reliable as possible.

A “very strong, substantial statement,” declared British Foreign Secretary David Miliband.

“An important new starting point” that “set forth an agenda for change and reform” gushed U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

“Let’s encourage and support the president,” said EU envoy Ettore Sequi.

Well, that’s what they said when the cameras were rolling. Behind the scenes the message was: Karzai’s speech was fine, but it’s just a speech.

“We’ve heard all of these sentiments before. If you compare his last inauguration to this inauguration, you’ll see there’s almost a 90 percent overlap,” was how one Western official in Kabul put it.

Can the West salvage Karzai’s reputation?

That sure was fast.

On Sunday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told American TV audiences that Afghan President Hamid Karzai needed to take steps to fight graft, including setting up a new anti-corruption task force, if he wants to keep U.S. support. Less than 24 hours later, there was Karzai’s interior minister at a luxury hotel in Kabul — flanked by the U.S. and British ambassadors — announcing exactly that. A new major crimes police task force, anti-corruption prosecution unit and special court will be set up, at least the third time that Afghan authorities and their foreign backers have launched special units to tackle corruption.

There are just a couple of days left before Karzai is inaugurated for a new term as president. Perhaps a few more days after that, U.S. President Barack Obama will announce whether he is sending tens of thousands of additional troops to join the 68,000 Americans and 40,000 NATO-led allies fighting there.

A fraud-tainted election has wrecked Karzai’s reputation in the Western countries whose troops defend him. Support for the eight-year-old war has plummeted over the past few months, even as the death tolls have reached their highest levels yet. For better or worse, Karzai’s Western backers know they are stuck with the veteran leader for another five years, and need to resurrect his reputation fast.

Regardless of how many extra troops Obama sends, the war in Afghanistan is the most important foreign policy issue of his presidency. If he is going to maintain support at home, he needs to show the American people that protecting the Karzai government is a cause worth sending their sons and daughters to die for. That means, after weeks of grumbling about Karzai in public, you should expect to see U.S. officials accentuating the positive in coming days. VIPs who stayed away will be heading to Kabul for the inauguration. Karzai’s new government, expected not to be much different from his old government, will nonetheless be welcomed as an improvement. Hands will be shaken and warm words spoken.

The election was the sort of travesty that can’t be easily swept under a rug. A U.N.-backed probe concluded that nearly a third of votes cast for Karzai were fake. The strong position against vote fraud taken by Peter Galbraith – a former senior U.S. diplomat sacked from his post as deputy head of the U.N. mission in Kabul – showed how deeply divided the Western contingent in Kabul was over the issue. Privately diplomats praise Galbraith for exposing the fraud, but publicly they are struggling to undo the damage to Karzai caused by the debacle.

An effective Afghan police force: still wishful thinking

U.S. President Barack Obama reiterated on Monday his belief that the Afghan police and army had to grow in order to pave the way for a United States and NATO military drawdown in Afghanistan.

Strengthening Afghanistan’s indigenous security forces has always been one of the main planks of the NATO-led ISAF military strategy. But the Afghan police have a lot of problems. The are often accused of endemic corruption, colluding with Taliban insurgents, being poorly trained and badly organised. In some areas, we have reported before, their criminal behaviour has actually turned the communities they are meant to serve toward the Taliban, unwittingly empowering the insurgency.

The United States and its allies have spent billions of dollars on the Afghan police, but as this July report, funded by the European Commission states, “sustainable returns on investment seem very limited”. The report is still one of the most forthright and frank accounts of the problems facing the Afghan police.

The report points to five major problems facing police: 1) forced to take on military responsibilities sometimes such as engaging militants in gunfights, 2) lack of trust by Afghans 3) lack of training and equipment 4) a very high level of illiteracy and 5) allegations of endemic corruption.

In the field they do sometimes look like a bit of a motley crew. It is not unusual to see police on patrol wearing casual shoes or sandals with no socks. They like to customise their uniforms with unusual jewellery and quite a few like to decorate their Kalashnikov rifles with stickers, flowers and colourful tassles.

These few anecdotes do not of course accurately reflect the entire 80,000 and more individuals who make up the force. But with a target to recruit another 80,000 Afghans, the Interior Ministry really have their work cut out, considering the rather limited human resources Afghanistan has to offer.

There is no shortage of unemployed young people in Afghanistan and as one of the world’s poorest countries it is not difficult to recruit people en masse here. Government recruitment can also be a means of deterring the poor from joining the insurgency. But finding healthy and educated young men and women who want to do one of the most dangerous jobs in the world for little more than $100 a month, is another matter entirely.