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Afghaniscam
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.
If you want a peek at such a system in action, though, check out, Pratap Chatterjee's recent piece from Kabul at TomDispatch, "Paying Off the Warlords." It offers a rare inside look at how a pervasive system of nepotism and corruption -- involving the country's old "warlords" from the days of the post-Soviet civil war and its new corporate "reconstruction" raiders -- actually works. Make no mistake, this is not a system amenable to "reform.
Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. His latest book, co-authored with Nick Turse, is Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050. His other most recent book is The United States of Fear (Haymarket Books). Previous books include: The End of Victory Culture: a History of the Cold War and Beyond, The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's, as well as of a novel, The Last Days of Publishing. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com here.
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Made in the USA.
Because of the pervasive influence of the US on countries they occupy, those countries become shadows of the US. Therefore we have exported our corruption. It is just more transparent there.
And just as Company Bush wants it. Its head's not called Poppy for nothing! Ameriscam!!
This corruption problem is not difficult to solve. Simply monitor what happens to the money. If it does not go where it is intended, funding is cut off. Agencies that are not corrupt not only do not get cut, they get increases. It's simple Darwinism: those that don't cheat prosper, those that do, disappear. This is not rocket science.
The afghani government ought to just legalise the opium trade and take the attitude that no nation that exports coffee or tobacco has any business criticising them for it.
What an idiot.
Without drug revenue,
How could we finance the CIA?
This is a good article on the corruption and graft in the Afghan regime which is a US puppet government with little support from the Afghan people.
AD
But, drosera, don't you see that that's not how Washington works?
Don't you remember Speaker Pelosi speaking of Washington's "culture of corruption" (before she was Speaker of course and took impeachment and single-payer off the table). Or Illinois Senior Senator Dick Durbin more recently speaking (in a disarmingly frank moment he probably regrets) on the banks and Washington: "Frankly, they own the place."
Basically, these articles about Afghan corruption (and I have read them both) are just one more diversion. From whence does the grease originate? And whose palms were greased earlier?
Meanwhile, you are right of course. If the United States really wanted to impose the kinds of controls you suggest, it probably could. That kind of discipline in nation-building after WWII goes far to explain the success of Germany and Japan today. But that was when we had a "reality-based" government and a "reality-based" military.
All of that has been subsumed by an American "culture of corruption" of which Afghanistan is but a tendril.
Always remember: we are paying for this.
Meanwhile, to your point, I really wonder how they are teaching "accounting standards" in our business schools today! Is it all wink, wink kids? That can't be sustained.
Despite the fact that Franklin courted France to win the Revolution, most of the Founding Fathers were extremely wary of foreign ventures, and for a variety of reasons that would be off-subject here, to this day they were right. Compare that early narrative to ours:
The Soviets, immediate neighbors to Afghanistan, invaded it.
The United States subverted the Soviet effort to create a central government in Afghanistan by underwriting Islamist Jihadists including Osama bin Laden, and succeeded. In the process the Pakistani ISI became deeply involved.
The United States invaded Afghanistan from half a world away, using what is essentially Chinese money.
We peasants in the U.S. get only one side of a multi-faceted global Great Game.
When I hear from the MSM that Afghanistan is corrupt (and I include The Nation here as MSM), I can actually laugh and cry at the same time. It turns my mind to movies as I think about "making love" to a corpse.
We need to transcend "legacy politics" and get the hell out. Every corruption inside Afghanistan has a mirror image in the United States, but it is not just a mirror, it is a legislative Panopticon. This occupation is corrupting US.
I'm sorry, again. Is there a single business school in the U.S that teaches a course on "corruption" (and what it signifies)? Not that the concept of "corruption" is simple... That's why we have schools of religion and ethics. Myself, I was an English major, which can actually become a "hard science"!
In 1965 I wrote a long paper on the history of why we had to unilaterally withdraw from Viet Nam. For college credit and I got it. Back when college meant something!
As for the situation in Iraq I do not know, as state-building there seems to be progressing even as Maliki seems intent on executing 126 Sunni educated women as "terrorists." The former regime must be eliminated! Strikes me as anti-secular.
In short, the Corporate corruption may be winning in Iraq, but Aghanistan is a different, tribal, story.
We need to get the hell out and put our own house in order or else we will beome our own Afghanistan. Somebody needs to write an opera: Taliban at Crawford.
We are being raped in broad daylight.
-30-
how bankrupt and out of ideas is the american psyop of afghanistan when we start asking the puppet - mr karzai, the mayor of kabul, unocal employee and heroin dealer extraordinaire - to jump up and start ad libbing the tuneless aria of the postmodern melodrama called "spreading freedom and democracy"
as mr karzai rightly points out, and to be fair, most of the money has already been stolen by american corporations before it even reaches the country and the grubby little paws of his boys
haliburton has electrocuted and killed more than 20 marines taking a shower in their barracks thanks to their shoddy and sub-standard wiring. haliburton denies any responsibility of course, they point out that the barracks comply with afghan electrical standards after all
at the end of the day, the imperial war machine just can't pick a decent puppet to sell out their respective country
abbas in palestine doesn't even want to play anymore, maliki in iraq is presenting a problem, and pakistan - well forget it
take a stooge like obummer - well thanks to good old american know how this boy can play a puppet like no one before him ever could dream
usa usa usa
Barack Obama and his "administration" are as corrupt and rotten as Karzai and the thugs and killers of his "administration" that USAans are dying for.
The seat of Afghan government is Washington,
the seat of Afghan corruption.
When Afghans, Africans, Arabs, Jews, Iranians, Indians, Orientals, Paks et al (in alphabetical order!) as well as many others from all over the world 'take over' America both as immigrant workers as well as capitalists and investors, then Americans probably consider it their own right to take over the rest of the world too!
(One receives what one deserves?)