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Who Made Kabul Corrupt?
Pious bromides about tackling corruption in Afghanistan cannot hide the fact that the buck stops in Washington
Afghan intelligence officers beat back Afghan police officers who mobbed the only branch of Kabul Bank open in the capital on Wednesday, in a desperate attempt to draw money before it closed for Eid al-Fitr, the most important festival of the year in Islamic countries. Eid marks the end of a month of Ramadan fasting and most Afghans spend a small fortune on food and presents for the holiday.
Most of the 250,000 government employees in Afghanistan receive their salaries via electronic transfer to Kabul Bank, the country's largest private bank, which is reported to be on the verge of collapse. Blame has been cast on the biggest borrower – a man named Abdul Hasin, who was given $100m for a variety of projects which he has not repaid. Hasin happens to be the half-brother of the vice president of the country, Mohammed Qasim Fahim.
A little less than a year ago, I visited the heavily guarded headquarters of Abdul Hasin's business conglomerate – Zahid Walid – in the wealthy Kabul neighbourhood of Wazir Akbar Khan, not far from the even more heavily fortified US embassy. Neither Hasin nor Fahim were wealthy when the US invaded Afghanistan in 2001, but as the de facto leader of the Northern Alliance, Fahim was perfectly placed to profit from the new opportunities created by the collapse of the Taliban.
Ramin Seddiqui, the managing director of the Zahid Walid's diesel import business, filled me in on how the business grew: first, a series of lucrative contracts to pour concrete for a Nato base, as well as portions of the US embassy being rebuilt in Kabul and the city's airport, which was in a state of disrepair.
On a plot of land in downtown Kabul acquired for a pittance by Fahim, Abdul Hasin also financed the construction of a high-rise building dubbed "Goldpoint", which now houses dozens of jewelry shops. Soon, the company was importing Russian gas, and not long after that, Abdul Hasin set up the Gas Group, which markets bottled gas to households and small businesses.
Beginning in the winter of 2006, Zahid Walid won over $90m in contracts from the Afghan ministry of energy and water to supply fuel to the diesel power plants in Kabul. (I was involved in making a video for Channel 4 investigating the overspending on the Tarakhil diesel plant.)
The business deals of Abdul Hasin were legal, but given their apparent failure, major questions can – and should – be raised about nepotism and backroom deals cut by the Bush and the Obama administrations in their drive to combat corruption in Afghanistan. Hasin's epic default hardly makes him the only businessman whose dealings deserve closer scrutiny – his business partner is Mahmoud Karzai, brother of the president, who flipped a house Dubai's Palm Jumeirah with the Kabul Bank's former chairman, Sher Khan Farnood. Karzai was quoted this week saying: "Making a profit on a house is beautiful."
Mohammed Zia Salehi, the chief of administration for the national security council who was recently arrested – then released, at President Karzai's behest – in a corruption investigation, appears to have been on the CIA payroll for many years, according to the New York Times, as is Ahmed Wali Karzai, another brother of the president.
What is to be done about these gentlemen? In a report released this week, Anthony Cordesman, a former Pentagon official who now works at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Titled "Time to Look in the Mirror", the report correctly notes that low-level corruption is not the problem:
"Unfortunately, the worst aspects of this corruption are largely the product of our mistakes. The fact is that we are at least as much to blame for what has happened as the Afghans, and we have been grindingly slow either to admit our faults or to correct them."
There is absolutely no doubt in the mind of anyone in Kabul that corruption is endemic among Afghanistan's ruling elite. But who granted the contracts, put them on the payroll and gave them the money?
So, when are we going to see those CIA and Pentagon officials in Washington DC facing charges?
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Show AllCurious why corruption would grow so spectacularly in Afghanistan when Western humanitarians are there in their thousands to help out the little people. Here's an account of their hardship:
The cruisers ferry them from office to restaurant to guesthouse. Some of them are quite lavish. A French organization has hired a four-star chef and Kabul's 'first boutique hotel' has opened for business...There's the swimming pool at the central U.N. compound and regular parties and barbecues. Memories of a party held by the DHL courier group last November [2003], when an opium pipe was passed around by UN staff, are still fresh. If boredom strikes, aid workers might also sign up for Tai Chi and Argentinean tango lessons. Booze, pork chops, prosciutto, marinated steaks, shrimps, cigars and caviar are regularly flown into the two PXs catering for westerners. Run by westerners themselves, none of their vast profit reaches the local economy. Now the German brewer of Biltburger Pils has a representative in Kabul signing up new customers. And Starbucks is here too 'for office and home delivery.' Again none of this investment is much to us locals. True, a few Afghans are 'lucky' enough to get jobs cleaning, serving tea or gardening...
http://cursor.org/stories/emptyspace2.html
thank you for making me throw up.
tai chi is hardly a luxury and should not be on that list
Sounds like Saigon. Tony
"So, when are we going to see those CIA and Pentagon officials in Washington DC facing charges?'
Face charges for what? Is it illegal to give contracts to crooks? If so, how many Pentagon officials would be liable for all of the contracts given to defense contractors here who never quite deliver what they say they will at the cost they claim is legitimate?
Americans are famous for paying more than double the going price for carpets and souvenirs in the bazaar.
An Arabian friend of mine explained that most rugs sold in the Middle East to Americans come from estate sales in Long Island. Back in the early 20th century, the wealthy in the US bought a household package of persian rugs for an entire house. The rugs were hand made by exploited middle eastern shepards.
Rugs were purchased at estate auctions, shipped back to the Middle East and sold at a vast profit.
Americans might be the worst shoppers in the world.
The Middle East is run by a merchant class, based in bazaars in every major city. When we think of Iran, we picture the Ayatollahs of Qom. In reality, they take their marching orders from merchants in Tehran. A major mistake of the Shah was his inability to recognize the power of the Bazaar.
Kabul is no different. If anything, they are more locked in the cutthroat capitalism of the Bazaar.
If some dumbass American wants to overpay for patronage, so much the better. We think we have bought Afghanistan. They are laughing all the way to the bank.
We are paying billions of dollars for nothing. We are the laughing stock of the world. Dumbass Americans.
Aid, development, education, health, infrastructure.. If we are dumb enough to overpay for this pie in the sky, shame on us.
And, if somebody wants to pay me to be an aid expert and live on a tax-free salary in a secure compound with all the ammenities of the western world, sign me up.
Dumb ass Americans....
foreign aid was discover long time ago, it is a tax money split procedure where cash in split in half with the foeign counterpart
Americans in Afghanistan get as mach as the warlords.
edweg
ducksawce
You are right.We are overpaying.But we overpay ourselves , not you and me but those well connected, those in ferrying petrol from Kuwait to Iraq ( we again) or those advising Afghanistani how to write a grant for geeting money from US Gov ( again an insider gobbles up 25 % of the grant or loan )or those building roads but buying no local labor or materials. US does not spend a dime that goes to the upliftment of Afghanistanis.( wwell I am exaggerating ) The salary of the NGO( mostly foreigners) also comes from the US loan and grant. 60 % of the money given as aid ends up back in US as paid for overhaed and services to US/NATO personnel.It is one thing to pay more in Bazar and another thing to take US taxpayer's money and siphon it off to comapnies,militaries,and NGOs in the name of development.
what no mention of american corporations??
The important question is how do we end the corruption in the USA?
Corruption in Afghanistan goes back hundreds of years. It predates the US.
Corruption in Afghanistan goes back hundreds of years. It predates the US.