Afghanistan (33 page)

Traditionally, inter-Afghan relations had been based on patronage, compromise, and deal-making. It was, after all, a nation of carpet merchants and horse traders. What is often seen by outsiders as corruption can co-opt groups and give them a stake in avoiding further conflict. It can buy off opponents and rivals, putting together operational coalitions where state institutions are weak. But the tradition of “give a little, get a little” has been hard to adapt to today’s reality when benefits come not from exchanges among equals, but from top-down donors. Then, corruption’s awesome powers to destabilize and destroy a society have been demonstrated. Outsiders have often not realized how their well-intentioned actions have helped create corruption. Many Afghanistan elites have felt entitled to take their share.

Because benefiting the life of Afghans at the grassroots level was not a priority of pre-2001 Afghanistan governments, winning over elite loyalties and servicing patronage networks were the traditional goals. When, post-2001, outside resources in terms of aid or foreign support were available, the inclination was to divert them to these objectives. While Afghanistan elites and grassroots alike may have embraced the hope created in 2001, the weakness of government institutions and the fragmenting and damage to society limited their ability to realize this hope in terms of concrete change.

Starting with putting together the coalition of Afghans that ousted the Taliban in 2001–02, especially ethnic Pushtuns, there has been a perceived need for outside donors to secure support inside Afghanistan by providing access to resources. As a result, every time an Afghan leader or ministry in Kabul—or, less often, a qawm, village, tribe, or district—benefits from outside aid, it creates envy and resentment among those who did not receive anything. These people then devote themselves to preventing further progress until they or their group benefit, which obviously may never happen. Every such unshared benefit is seen as a result of corruption. Former finance minister Ashraf Ghani said in 2007: “Corruption has become a major problem in Afghanistan. It is a cancer that has eaten through. No high-ranking official of the government has been prosecuted for corruption and sentenced and unless that happens, there will be disgust.”
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Since that statement, there have been increased efforts to prosecute officials involved in narcotics trafficking—a powerful contributor to the culture of corruption—and others have been quietly moved out of power. Yet despite these efforts, trans-border narcotics-trafficking leaders such as Haji Juma Khan
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—arrested in October 2008 and in custody in the US—and Haji Bashir Noorzai (also prosecuted in the US and sentenced to life in prison in 2008)
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have left still-viable networks and enduring and virulent rings of corruption behind them. President Karzai’s brother Ahmad Walid Karzai has been identified as having been able to benefit from the disruption in narcotics-trafficking networks caused by these arrests.
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Afghan security forces, especially the Afghan National Police (ANP), often behind in their pay, proved bribable in many areas and would often do the bidding of whoever paid them the most money, closing down rival operations and confiscating their opium to assure their patrons a higher market share. Embassies, Afghan civilians, Afghan law enforcement, international organizations, and NGOs alike all had their own lists of those in Kabul and provincial capitals they considered corrupt. But even the worst offenders remained in power, thanks to protection from family clout or other influential patronage relationships, as long as they could effectively use patronage networks. Many of those on these lists claim they have been put there because they put Afghanistan’s
(or their clients’) interests above those of the foreigners or the Afghans compiling the lists. There remains a risk that, if these men are targeted for prosecution, they will either make common cause with the insurgents or narcotics traffickers to save themselves and their position or, if they are removed, there will be no one able to replace them. This new power vacuum could then be filled by insurgents, criminals, or warlords, a likely possibility considering the difficulty of recruiting and keeping competent and clean Afghans into government, with many less frustrating and high-paid alternatives in the private sector, working for NGOs or foreign countries open to them.

The culture of corruption than afflicts Afghanistan has its roots in the culture of dependency that was created in Afghanistan during the 1978–92 jihad years and contributed to the political failures of the 1990s. Afghan groups emerging in Pakistan from the jihad, like those created inside Afghanistan to support the Soviet presence, failed to achieve independent Afghan political legitimacy. They were then used by the outside powers that funded them, starting a cycle of dependency on outsiders rather than cooperation with other Afghans. In Peshawar and Kabul alike, Afghans were dependent on their foreign patrons rather than building effective coalitions with other Afghans to achieve their goals. Traditional Afghan patterns of patrimonial authority appeared in a new context. The constraints previously imposed by Afghan society, notably the importance of reputation for dealing with other Afghans, were removed. Many of the old elites were forced into exile. The potential for abuse was increased by the availability of new outside sources of resources; the line between “clean” outside aid money and “dirty” self-enrichment was never distinct. In Pakistan, the Afghan population spent, in many cases, a decade or more in refugee camps, drawing rations rather than earning a living. To survive required corruption, bribing officials to get on camp rosters or be put on a list for medical care. Western aid donors cared more about how much they spent than how effectively this money was helping Afghans. As a result, the money flowed disproportionately to a corrupt few, not to those actually fighting inside Afghanistan who had no access to the outsiders’ resources. In Peshawar, international aid flowed freely in the late 1980s, and it was commonplace to see resistance
political leaders and field commanders (mainly ethnic Pushtuns) living in expensive rented houses and driving new four-wheel-drive vehicles while their followers in the refugee camps and in Afghanistan had nothing but the clothes they stood up in. The Afghan people saw this firsthand, and it only reinforced the notion that this kind of money was the only way to get by. More recently, the culture of corruption has been assimilated by many as being consistent with traditional Afghan patronage. In the words of a Western reporter covering the fraud in the September 2009 presidential election, “As the men relaxed and smilingly described the election day, it became clear that what would constitute large-scale fraud in western context meant little more to them than the usual haggling over chicken or vegetables in a market.”
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Corruption has become, in effect, a domestic issue on its own terms as well as a factor contributing to terrorism, insurgency, and narcotics. It has done more damage to post-2001 Afghanistan than much of the violence. The spread of corruption in Afghanistan has been in large part facilitated and encouraged by an international aid system that siphons off aid to donor-country administrators, consultants, and a pyramid of contractors and sub-contractors until only a fraction of every dollar pledged at international donor conferences actually reaches Afghans. This has led to a nationwide crisis that has undercut both the capability and legitimacy of current Afghan government to implement any effective policy as well as the well-meaning actions of foreign supporters, including the US and UN.

Conflicts in Afghanistan are about legitimacy. Legitimacy comes from providing or enabling fair dispute resolution, from providing security and enabling the population to be able to earn a living from lawful occupations or trade (not opium). Corruption undercuts Kabul’s claim to be the legitimate government of Afghanistan, weakening the already tenuous hold they had on state power and control. Although the pre-2001 Afghan Taliban proved corrupt in practice when they came to power in Kabul—Al Qaeda bought and paid for them—the current insurgents have been able to reclaim some of the sheen of Islamic rectitude that the Taliban used to enable their 1994–96 rise to national power.

If it is law that builds the land, Afghanistan remains broken. This state of lawlessness and non-functional state institutions has led to increased
corruption at all levels of society that poses a threat not just to the current government: it poses an existential challenge to its future as a nation. This growing corruption has made narcotics cultivation and trafficking easy and profitable, which has helped make the overall population, especially among Pushtuns, receptive to the insurgents that enable this livelihood. If this downward spiral is not stopped, it will create a situation where a future setback—however limited it may appear at first—can snowball and lead to collapse. Corrupt governments are not resilient governments. A battlefield setback, a natural disaster, or the withdrawal of foreign patrons can bring down the whole house of cards.

Immediately after the fall of the Taliban in 2001, the interim Afghan leadership at the national and subnational (province and district) levels secured access to the initial flow of foreign aid and started to divert it to their own personal use, building their own patronage networks or enriching themselves. Some anti-Taliban leaders that had fought with the Afghans and their foreign supporters were able to use their place in post-war Afghanistan to establish extractive relationships, securing themselves land and income from Afghans who lacked their access to power or their ability to use armed force with impunity, reflecting, first, that they could, having no alternative sources of power or authority to oppose them and, second, a sense of entitlement. Many Northern Alliance veterans in the government, seeing that they were being cast aside by the increased number of Pushtuns brought into the government under Karzai, saw they had better take their “due” now. Others, rather than direct enrichment, made their goal the construction of improved patronage networks that would cement them in power, as Marshal Fahim aimed to do with the Afghan Military Forces while he was Minister of Defense. Many of the returning exiles had a similar short-term view. They were entitled to regain what was rightfully theirs and they were not going to make a long-term commitment to Kabul or to the social and economic future of the nation as a whole. This entwined sense of resentment and entitlement by Afghan elites helped accelerate Kabul’s move toward a culture of corruption that has come to threaten the very legitimacy of the government. The large amounts of money injected into the economy by foreign aid, Kabul development, and, of course, narcotics
meant that there were immediate rewards available to those taking part in this fluid corruption culture.

The second great boost to corruption came with the increasing perception in Afghanistan and Pakistan that the US and its allies were not going to be in the conflict for the long haul. Now was the time to start extracting money that could be used to buy a viable exile for them and their families in the near future. By 2008–10, the numbers of high officials with real estate or family outside Afghanistan had become a running joke. More seriously, it led to the unspoken but important separation between those Afghans with a way out and those with no alternative but to prevail in Afghanistan. This last may require adapting the traditional Afghan survival strategy of switching sides and joining forces with a winner, if they will have you.

Afghanistan’s path in the Berlin-based Transparency International annual index of perceived corruption has been steadily downward.
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By 2007, it had reached 172—just seven away from the title of world’s most corrupt—and had beaten out all its neighbors except Uzbekistan. By 2008, Afghanistan was holding steady at 176 out of 180. Only Haiti, Iraq, Myanmar, and Somalia were rated lower. In 2009, Afghanistan was second from the bottom in Transparency International’s “Corruption Perception Index.”
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While this measures perceptions, and Afghanistan’s corruption has received a great deal of attention because of the interest of international donors and the presence of the world media in Kabul, it suggests that the trend lines in corruption, as with much else in Afghanistan, were running in the wrong direction.

By 2008–10, in much of Afghanistan, corruption undercut governance. In the judicial sector and in the police, constant demands for bribery have discredited these institutions. In Pushtun Afghanistan, the insurgents have been able to take advantage of this. In non-Pushtun Afghanistan, the problem of corruption is less intense but still has undercut Kabul’s claim to legitimacy. This crisis has only shortened the horizons of those in authority, which in turn begets more self-interested yet ultimately destructive extraction. In the final analysis, corruption is more a symptom than a cause of Afghanistan’s crisis of governance. In the words of Ashraf Ghani: “The Afghan political class has failed to offer a national vision to
the people. They have pursued their personal interests at the expense of the national interest and corruption has resulted in disappointment.”
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More than prosecuting corrupt officials, dealing with the root cause requires changes to how Afghanistan is governed that will make it more effective and legitimate and will provide renewed hope to the Afghan people for a future with security, development, and stability, because, with anything else, many Afghan elites are going to enrich themselves when they can and switch sides when they must.

Afghan election corruption at the 2004 presidential level increased to that seen in the 2005 parliamentary elections, while the 2009 presidential election was seen as tainted as early as the registration process starting in 2008, so the widespread accusations of fraud on election day were no surprise. While the 2004–05 elections were conducted with joint UN-Afghan efforts, since then they have been conducted under the authority of the Afghan Independent Election Commission (IEC), which lacks international acceptance. The main vehicle of corruption has been bloc voting, in which a local leader is able to offer the votes of his real or fictitious followers, especially women, whose voter registration cards are not required to have a photograph. Registrars, for a share of the proceeds, have often been happy to issue voter registration cards for fictitious Afghans. In the 2005 election, this was most evident in places such as remote conservative Pushtun Paktika province, where more voters were registered than in densely populated Kabul, many of them women, though local attitudes limit the acceptability of the female franchise. By the spring of 2009, there were already reports of such “ghost” voters, predominantly female, filling voter rolls. In provinces such as Nuristan and Panjshir, there were more registered voters than the estimated total populations. Allegations of voter fraud marred the 2009 campaign, with Ashraf Ghani, running for president, claiming the Karzai government “has already committed substantial fraud in voter registration,” while Karzai supporter ambassador to the United States Sayid T. Jawad countered that “he has no interest in muddying the waters because he is ahead of everyone by substantial margins.”
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After corruption appeared to have shaped the result of the August 2009 election, it undercut the government’s already weakened legitimacy by undermining one of the
few areas—voting—where they has previously received general public acceptance and approval. Making the election particularly damaging was that support had split on ethnolinguistic lines. Pushtuns supported Karzai and considered his election legitimate. Non-Pushtuns opposed him and were outraged by the widespread fraud, especially in Kandahar and other Pushtun areas. This differed greatly from the 2004 election, when many non-Pushtuns supported Karzai because that was seen as what the US and the coalition wanted; by 2009 both Karzai and the US had less appeal. Ambassador Peter Galbraith, the deputy head of UNAMA who was fired over protesting that organization’s acceptance of the election results, wrote that “The fraud has handed the Taliban its greatest victory in eight years of fighting the United States and its Afghan partners.”
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