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Corruption and Warlordism in Afghanistan |
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Afghanan 
Chieftain 
Durr e Durran Joined: 12-Jun-2005 Location: United States Online Status: Offline Posts: 1098 |
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 Topic: Corruption and Warlordism in AfghanistanPosted: 28-Feb-2007 at 15:38 |
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Discuss warlordism and corruption in Afghanistan here:
Afghan officials accused on drugs
 General Aminullah Amrkhel By Bilal Sarwary BBC News, Kabul The security chief at Kabul airport has accused Afghan officials of colluding with drug smugglers and ordering the release of arrested suspects. Gen Aminullah Amrkhel told the BBC interior ministry officials released two heroin smugglers caught red-handed. The ministry said the suspects were freed because the packages they carried were not examined in enough detail. Separately, the transport minister admitted the national airline, Ariana, was being used by drug smugglers. Afghanistan is the largest producer of opium in the world, accounting for almost 90% of supplies. The international community has spent millions of dollars on drug eradication since 2001, when the Taleban was ousted. However, although area under cultivation has dropped recently, output has not reduced significantly. 'Late at night' The airport security chief, Gen Amrkhel, said: "We arrested a group of this [drugs] mafia - one of them was a member of the Ariana Afghan Airline's technical team. With him we arrested two females red-handed with 5kg of heroin which they wanted to take to India." He said "smugglers" then called him saying one of the women would be released that night. "The following day they called us again to say she had been released," Gen Amrkhel said. "Surely the smugglers had their own people within the government because they told us in advance that their people would be released." The head of the ministry of interior's counter narcotics team, Maj Gen Sayed Kamal Sadat, admitted the suspects were released. "Prosecutors of the interior ministry released two female suspects because a detailed examination of the contents of the material caught did not exist," Gen Sadat said. "It was also very late at night and the prosecutors decided to release them for one night." He said the pair were rearrested the following day and that he was "going to interrogate them personally". But Gen Amrkhel was not satisfied and said he did not understand why suspects in possession of 5kg of heroin could go free. "It is not a good enough reason to say it was late at night," he said. 'Powerful people' Gen Amrkhel said his team had been working to arrest a bigger group of suspected smugglers linked to the same group. But the woman who was released "leaked everything to the big group. As a result they all escaped to Pakistan". Gen Amrkhel played a videotape in his office - which was also aired on a private Afghan TV station - in which he was challenged by a woman who, he said, was one of those released. In the tape the woman tells him: "Do not touch me and do not touch the drugs. If I make one phone call I can fire you from your position." The general asks who she would call. "They are powerful people. They are higher than you in the government," the woman in the tape responds. Death threats Kabul airport has X-ray machines to search both incoming and outgoing luggage. But Gen Amrkhel said the airport needed more sophisticated equipment and more X-ray machines to detect drugs more effectively. He has been the security chief for the past seven months. "During this time I have arrested 13 foreigners and have seized about 30kg of heroin... I have also arrested six Afghans," Gen Amrkhel said. The two main destinations for drug smugglers are Dubai and Delhi, he says. Gen Amrkhel says he has been issued death threats in telephone calls "But I will not give in to these people," he says. 'Embarrassing' A number of high-ranking government officials have told the BBC there is a culture of impunity in drug smuggling and that the government is partly to blame.
One high ranking official, who did not want to be named, said: "It is embarrassing to know that our government has evidence against some officials but still does not arrest them". Last year, Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali resigned, saying he wanted to pursue his academic studies. But government insiders said he quit because he wanted to be tough on drug dealers, especially those within the government, but this had not proven possible. Afghanistan's transport minister, Enayatullah Qasemi, told the BBC that the drug smuggling situation was getting better, although he admitted the Ariana airline still faced difficulties. "The situation has improved from a year ago [in terms of the amount of drugs being carried on Ariana], but still we have major problems," he said. "We are obviously concerned, it affects our reputation," Mr Qasemi said. "We are taking all the measures that we can to try to ensure our planes are not carrying drugs." Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/worl...sia/4585188.stm Published: 2006/01/06 17:37:37 GMT |
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The perceptive man is he who knows about himself, for in self-knowledge and insight lays knowledge of the holiest.
~ Khushal Khan Khattak |
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Afghanan
Chieftain
Durr e Durran Joined: 12-Jun-2005 Location: United States Online Status: Offline Posts: 1098 |
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Posted: 28-Feb-2007 at 15:38 |
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Corruption eroding Afghan security Violence is spreading beyond the restive south, fueled in large part by poor governance, say analysts. By David Montero | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor KABUL, AFGHANISTAN - Nearly five years after the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan's security situation continues to be dragged down by endemic corruption, roving militias, and a growing nexus between narco-warlords and remnants of the Taliban, officials and analysts say. The melting snows of spring often bring an uptick in violence, as rebels emerge from their mountain redoubts. Yet there are indications of a deepening instability beyond the seasonal surge. More than 70 foreign troops, mostly Americans, have been killed this past year, making it the deadliest period since the conflict began. Violence, meanwhile, seems to be spreading beyond the volatile south, encroaching on areas formerly considered outside the zones of conflict. "What is often labeled as Taliban violence is not," says Joanna Nathan, a senior analyst for the International Crisis Group in Kabul. "It's a whole set of fluid alliances, cross- border attacks from Pakistan, drugs, tribal feuds, and of course the Taliban." What these security issues have in common, she and others say, is the poor governance and official corruption among provincial governors, police chiefs, and others tasked with securing the country and bringing development. The implication: Stabilizing the country increasingly means providing better government. "The state we're in now is because of the policy decision to co-opt those people who in the past committed human rights abuses. There's a culture of impunity. They continue in many cases to abuse the rights of people under them," says Ms. Nathan, adding that this not only causes violent flare-ups, but creates sympathy for the Taliban. These troubles, she says, are by no means limited to the south. "There are drug problems in the north, tribal problems, sheer criminality." In the past, violence rarely spilled beyond the south, where NATO troops are slowly replacing US forces. But recent attacks have cropped up in the north and west, too: Rockets slammed into a nongovernmental organization and a house in the northeastern province of Badakhshan on Tuesday when militants protesting poppy eradication missed a police station. No casualties were reported. Also on Tuesday, two bomb blasts along the road to Kabul's airport wounded three people. That followed a powerful rocket attack near the US Embassy and the presidential palace on April 19, wounding one Afghan security contractor. Bomb blasts were reported Saturday outside a politician's home 30 miles west of the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif. And the prosperous western province of Herat, once considered a model of stability, was rocked by a suicide bombing in early April, killing two Afghans outside a NATO compound. "We do have a problem in the south, but it is spreading north. The path for these activities in the north has already formed," says Gen. Hilaluddin Hilal, the former deputy minister of the Interior Ministry, and now a member of parliament. Many governors and chiefs of police, rather than confronting the Taliban and neutralizing drug lords, are increasingly intertwined with them, either for political or monetary gain, some analysts say. Amid the lawlessness, military intelligence has become a political game, a tool for blackmail or settling old scores, analysts allege. President Hamid Karzai has replaced or re-assigned a number of governors in an effort to tackle these problems, which have plagued Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban. Badsha Khan, for example, once the governor of Paktia Province, was removed in 2002 amid allegations of corruption and passing information to US forces that led to the bombing of his political enemies. In the northern Balkh Province, Gov. Atta Mohammad Nur sacked several officials this February for their alleged involvement in the drug trade, including the district government head, the chief of police, the chief of security, the chief of staff, and the prosecutor. But many such types remain. "There is probably no smoking gun, and it might be not be easy to present [a] case before a court," says one Western diplomat, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "But the names of quite a few of these people are well known." Government officials insist they are cracking down, but Kabul's writ is still weak in many places. Even the more sanguine government officials, when speaking off the record, say that collusion between governors and the Taliban has hampered counterterrorism. Many villagers have little incentive to cooperate, officials say, when they see their government representatives siding with the enemy. More than breeding resentment, corruption is playing into the hands of the Taliban. " People had the expectation that the government would do something for them, that their lives would improve. But it didn't happen," says Mullah Abdul Salam Rocketi, a former Taliban commander who is now a member of Parliament. "When people get disappointed, it benefits the Taliban." Edited by Afghanan - 28-Feb-2007 at 15:39 |
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The perceptive man is he who knows about himself, for in self-knowledge and insight lays knowledge of the holiest.
~ Khushal Khan Khattak |
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Afghanan
Chieftain
Durr e Durran Joined: 12-Jun-2005 Location: United States Online Status: Offline Posts: 1098 |
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Posted: 01-Mar-2007 at 12:40 |
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Afghanistan: UN Monitor Cites Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty March 1, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- The international body that monitors the implementation of UN antidrug efforts has warned that Afghanistan is failing to make progress on drug control; on the contrary, things are getting worse. The International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) concludes in its annual report that iIlicit opium-poppy cultivation in Afghanistan reached record levels in 2006. It adds that, apart from exporting narcotic substances, Afghans are themselves falling victim to drug dependency. The INCB also says a full one-third of the Afghan economy is based on the production of narcotics, and that this is contributing inexorably to the corruption gripping the country. Message For Kabul The Vienna-based board says it is "seriously concerned" at the deterioration in drugs control. It also calls on the government of President Hamid Karzai to urgently address this problem with the help of the international community, particularly donor countries. The report says that the production of opium, the raw ingredient of heroin, has grown by almost half in the past year. "Illicit opium-poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has reached record levels -- the highest level in history in 2006 -- and this is a main concern of the board," INCB spokeswoman Liqin Zhu tells RFE/RL. The opium crop is estimated at a massive 6,100 tons, making Afghanistan by far the largest producer of opium in the world. Afghanistan is more than just the source of much of the heroin flooding into North America and Europe. It is itself falling victim to drug consumption. The board says a nationwide survey of drug abuse in Afghanistan in early 2006 revealed that the country has 1 million drug users -- 60,000 of whom are children under the age of 15. Meanwhile, the use of other illicit or controlled substances in Afghanistan is growing. The INCB cites in particular the synthetic substance acetic anhydride. It says the absence of proper drug-control regulations means that, for instance, shops are selling such substances over the counter. Growing Regional Problem And not only Afghanistan is suffering. The neighbor countries of the Middle East and Central Asia are being drawn into the web of addiction. "More than half of the world's heroin abusers live in Asia, and the highest level of opiate abuse occurs along the main trafficking routes originating in Afghanistan," spokeswoman Zhu says. "Therefore the situation in Afghanistan definitely has a great impact on the neighboring countries." Iran, for instance, is estimated to have 1.2 million opiate abusers, while Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan are also hard hit. There are around 50,000 drug addicts in Kyrgyzstan -- 12 percent of whom are under 18-years old, according to figures cited in Bishkek today by Timur Isakov, an adviser to the director of Kyrgyzstan's Drug Control Agency. James Callahan, who is based in Tashkent for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), tells RFE/RL's Turkmen Service that the northern route through Central Asia from Afghanistan to Russia and Europe probably accounts for at least 20 percent of the drugs that are trafficked out of Afghanistan. "The impact of that in Central Asia is that there has been a significant increase in drug abuse, particularly of heroin," Callahan says. "And along with the drug abuse comes HIV/AIDS because of sharing of needles and other unsterile equipment by injecting drug users." He says that additionally -- because of the large amounts of money available in drug trafficking -- public officials are tempted to take money from drug traffickers in order not to prosecute them. Callahan urges all the governments in the region to cooperate with one another to combat the drug-trafficking problem because the drug traffickers themselves don't pay any attention to borders. |
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The perceptive man is he who knows about himself, for in self-knowledge and insight lays knowledge of the holiest.
~ Khushal Khan Khattak |
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Afghanan
Chieftain
Durr e Durran Joined: 12-Jun-2005 Location: United States Online Status: Offline Posts: 1098 |
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Posted: 26-Nov-2007 at 23:00 |
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Corruption, bribes and trafficking:
A cancer that is engulfing Afghanistan
The Times (UK) November 24, 2007 Anthony Loyd in Kabul The general made an elementary mistake. Told by his superiors that his new posting as chief of police in a drug-rich northern province would cost him one hundred and fifty thousand, he assumed the bribe to be in Afghan currency. He paid the money to a go-between at a rendezvous in Kabuls Najib Zarab carpet market. For two days he was lorded in the office of General Azzam, then Chief of Staff to the Interior Minister, helping himself to chocolate and biscuits. I must have eaten a pound of the stuff, he recalled. But on the third day he received a different welcome. Get this mother****** out of my office, Azzam screamed, said the general. Hustled outside, he quickly discovered his error. He should have paid $150,000 (73,000) rather than a paltry 150,000 Afghanis for the bung. Now living in disgruntled internal exile in northern Afghanistan, his verdict on his former employers is succinct. Everyone in the Ministry of Interior is corrupt, he told The Times. They wouldnt sleep with their wives without wanting a backhander first. He never, though, expressed surprise. Governmental corruption in Afghanistan has become endemic and bribes to secure police and administrative positions along provincial drug routes is an established procedure. The British public would be up in arms if they knew that the district appointments in the south for which British soldiers are dying are there just to protect drug routes, said one analyst. Western and Afghan officials are also alarmed at how narco-kleptocracy has extended its grip around President Karzai, a figure regarded by some as increasingly isolated by a cadre of corrupt officials. The people around him tell him of a cuckoo land, said Shukria Barakzai, a Pashtun MP who is both a friend and critic of Karzai. He circles within a small mafia ring who are supporting the destruction of the system. At the beginning there were only 10 to 15 of them but since then they have spread like a cancer in Afghanistan. The Ministry of Interior, key to establishing security in the country, remains the worst offender. Disaffected police officers have named, to The Times, General Azzam, recently appointed Chief of Operations after his stint as Chief of Staff, and his deputy General Reshad as the prime recipients of bribes. The lawmen say they categorise Afghanistans 34 provinces as A, B or C states. A denotes those with the highest potential profits for drug-running; C states are the least remunerative. The bribes to buy a position in an A-grade province can be vast, up to $300,000. The rewards are even bigger. One border police commander in eastern Afghanistan was estimated by counter-narcotic officials to take home $400,000 a month from heroin smuggling. This summer a border police vehicle was stopped outside Kabul and found to have 123.5kg of heroin, with a value of nearly $300,000, bagged in the back. The five men inside, an officer, three policemen and a secretary, were under the command of Haji Zahir, formerly Border Police commander of Nangarhar province. Haji Zahir was questioned and removed from his post. He was never charged. Even the lowlier posts in provinces free of poppy traffic have a price. To buy a position as a detective in any province you pay $10,000, explained one police colonel, now on indefinite leave because he refused to pay a bribe. Then you pay your superior a cut of the money you make through bribes or trafficking. One former governor told The Times that every judge in his province had been corrupt. He claimed there were cases of the police handing detainees to the Taleban, or helping to transport Taleban commanders from one province to another. The Government has essentially collapsed, he said. It has lost its meaning in the provinces, it has lost the security situation and lost its grip on civil servants. Corruption is playing havoc with the country. The international community has played its own part in contributing to the crisis. One analyst in Kabul said: Its not Afghan culture. Its a culture of impunity. We created it. We came in in 2001 with cases of cash and made certain people untouchables. The dozens of drug-funded villas narcotechture in expat parlance that have sprung up around foreign embassies in Kabuls Sherpur district are a testament to the untouchable status of former warlords. Corruption among police and local authorities is worst in southern Afghanistan, where drug profits are highest. Despite his repeated public denials, President Karzais half-brother Wali, head of Kandahars provincial council, continues to be accused by senior government sources, as well as foreign analysts and officials, as having a key role in orchestrating the movement of heroin from Kandahar eastward through Helmand and out across the Iranian border. Britain has been keen for Kabul to begin arresting top drug smugglers in its ranks. Yet diplomats fear the countrys judicial system is so weak that the men would quickly be released or escape. Meanwhile, America has been lacklustre in lobbying for high-level arrests, fearing such detentions would further destabilise matters. The Afghan Government fears that if corrupt officials in the south were replaced by staunch law enforcers, the huge profits from heroin trafficking would end up with the Taleban. Kabul has, though, made efforts. A new agency, the directorate of local government (IDLG), was supposed to give the President rather than the Ministry of Interior more say over the appointment of provincial governors, a system notorious for its corrupt procedures. However, many of the IDLG staff were simply transferred from the Interior Ministry, tainting its potential from the start. Afghan anti-corruption agencies similarly lack cohesion and clout. Izzatullah Wasifi, director of Afghanistans GIAAC anti-corrution force, said he had been unable to brief President Karzai even once during the past 11 months. His own force is already under suspicion from rival anti-corruption players in the offices of the Attorney-General and the Ministry of Finance, who in turn face allegations of embezzlement and bribery. Wasifi did time in an American penitentiary 20 years ago for dealing heroin. You expect my guys to be clean working for $200 a month versus the millions in drug bribes? he asked. I dont see any serious measures being taken to solve the problem. |
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The perceptive man is he who knows about himself, for in self-knowledge and insight lays knowledge of the holiest.
~ Khushal Khan Khattak |
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Mughal e Azam
Colonel 
Joined: 10-Jul-2007 Online Status: Offline Posts: 646 |
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Posted: 04-Dec-2007 at 18:34 |
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What else is new? Feudalism and the belief that the laws dont apply to the elite are bed partners.
Afghanistan and Pakistan are both feudal. Complete with Political Families, lack of education for poor, corrupt politicians, etc.
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Mughal e Azam
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Afghanan
Chieftain
Durr e Durran Joined: 12-Jun-2005 Location: United States Online Status: Offline Posts: 1098 |
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Posted: 09-Dec-2007 at 16:55 |
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Mughaal,
Corruption was never this rampant in Afghanistan prior and after the Soviet Invasion..nepotism sure, but not rampant corruption at every level is something unheard of, even during the civil war and Taliban times.
Drug profits are seeping through all the government channels, all the way to the department of anti-corruption.
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The perceptive man is he who knows about himself, for in self-knowledge and insight lays knowledge of the holiest.
~ Khushal Khan Khattak |
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