“The farmer picking apples in the outskirts of Kabul must pay the Taliban $33 to ship out each truckload of fruit. The governor sends in armed men to chase workers off job sites if the official bribes aren’t paid. Poor neighborhoods never get their U.N.-provided wheat, long since sold on the black market.
These are some of the elements, large and small, that together form the elaborate organized crime environment Afghans contend with daily. And despite the hoped-for success of the U.S. military surge and President Barack Obama’s claims of significant progress, Afghanistan’s resemblance to a mafia state that cannot serve its citizens may only be getting worse, according to an upcoming report by the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank.
[…]
“Nearly a decade after the U.S.-led military intervention little has been done to challenge the perverse incentives of continued conflict in Afghanistan,” the research group says. Rather, violence and the billions of dollars in international aid have brought wealthy officials and insurgents together. And “the economy as a result is increasingly dominated by a criminal oligarchy of politically connected businessmen,” the report concludes.”
CIA Director Leon Panetta appeared on ABC’s This Week yesterday, where he laid out some of the “problems” we face in Afghanistan along with our “fundamental purpose” there and what “winning” might look like. From Think Progress:
Too bad most, if not all, of what Panetta describes is not based in reality.
“There are some serious problems here. We’re dealing with a tribal society. We’re dealing with a country that has problems with governance, problems with corruption, problems with narcotics trafficking, problems with a Taliban insurgency.”
We’re dealing with a country that isn’t a country. Afghanistan combat veteran Wes Moore was on Meet the Press yesterday where he gave this account:
“…one of the things we did–I was with a team in Afghanistan, you go out and you give out gifts to people. And one of the things that we would, we would give out to some of the tribal leaders were cutout–were maps, which were cutouts of Afghanistan. And literally, the most popular question was, “What is this?” And we’d say, “It’s your country.”
“In recent months…Afghan prosecutors and investigators have been ordered to cross names off case files, prevent senior officials from being placed under arrest and disregard evidence against executives of a major financial firm suspected of helping the nation’s elite move millions of dollars overseas.
Afghanistan is awash in international aid and regarded as one of the most corrupt countries in the world. Indeed, even as the United States and its allies pour money in, U.S. officials estimate that as much as $1 billion a year is flowing out as part of a massive cash exodus.
The money, as first reported in The Washington Post in February, is often carried out in full view of customs officials at Kabul’s airport, where such transfers are legal as long as they are declared. Officials suspect much of the cash is going to the Persian Gulf emirate of Dubai, where elite Afghans, including Karzai’s older brother, have villas.”
How do we on the one hand acknowledge that government corruption is a major problem while we continue to prop up the government and the president that is hip-deep in corruption?
Back to Panetta: “But I think the fundamental key, the key to success or failure is whether the Afghans accept responsibility, are able to deploy an effective army and police force to maintain stability. If they can do that, then I think we’re going to be able to achieve the kind of progress and the kind of stability that the president is after…it is going to take the Afghan army and police to be able to accept the responsibility that we pass on to them. That’s going to be the key. ”
The size of the Afghan security forces our generals say are needed to provide that stability, about 450.000, would cost about $3 billion a year to maintain. The annual budget of Afghanistan is $600 million. They can’t do it. Care to guess who will be expected to pick up the tab?
Panetta’s definition of “winning”:
“Winning in Afghanistan is having a country that is stable enough to ensure that there is no safe haven for Al Qaida or for a militant Taliban that welcomes Al Qaida…Our purpose, our whole mission there is to make sure that Al Qaida never finds another safe haven from which to attack this country. That’s the fundamental goal of why the United States is there.”
Earlier in the interview Panetta admitted that there are only 50 to 100 members of al Qaeda in Afghanistan, “maybe less.”
“So 1,000 US troops per al Qaeda member, at a cost of $1 million each. That’s $1 billion a year we spend for each al Qaeda member to fight our war in Afghanistan.
This sort of adds a new twist to that old Einstein quip about the definition of insanity being doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Because we’re doing the same thing over and over again–at a cost of $1 billion a year per nominal opponent–and expecting anything other than bankruptcy.”
“…a nearly inviolable rule governs this arena: Democracy cannot be imposed on any nation unless its people and its leaders all are asking for it. Otherwise the nation’s oligarchy will fight to restore the old order of things, to protect their positions and perquisites. It happens every time.”
I thought part of the strategy of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan was to stop corruption by officials in the Karzai government, not become an active participant in it. Turns out I was wrong, there’s a Mafia-style protection racket going on there, funded by you and me, which even includes payments to our supposed enemies–-the Taliban. And of course, Hamid Karzai and some more of his crooked relatives have their hands in the pie as well. What a surprise:
“The U.S. military is funding a massive protection racket in Afghanistan, indirectly paying tens of millions of dollars to warlords, corrupt public officials and the Taliban to ensure safe passage of its supply convoys throughout the country, according to congressional investigators.
The security arrangements, part of a $2.16 billion transport contract, violate laws on the use of private contractors, as well as Defense Department regulations, and “dramatically undermine” larger U.S. objectives of curtailing corruption and strengthening effective governance in Afghanistan, a report released late Monday said.”
Not that any of this is news to the DOD:
“The report describes a Defense Department that is well aware that some of the money paid to contractors winds up in the hands of warlords and insurgents.”
What do they care, it’s our money, and there’s always plenty more where that came from.
“In testimony shortly after Obama’s strategy announcement, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that “much of the corruption” in Afghanistan has been fueled by billions of dollars’ worth of foreign money spent there, “and one of the major sources of funding for the Taliban is the protection money.”
It must have been a momentary case of amnesia that caused Secretary Clinton to neglect to mention that the US happens to be a major source of that “foreign money.” Just an unintentional oversight, I’m sure.
But not to worry, this is what Gen. McChrystal calls “entrepreneurship.”
“Unlike in the Iraq war, the security and vast majority of the trucks are provided by Afghans, a difference that Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, has praised as promoting local entrepreneurship.”
And wherever there’s corruption the Karzai-leone crime family can’t be far behind:
“The report describes a system in which subcontractors — most of them well-known warlords who maintain their own militias — charge $1,500 to $15,000 per truck to supply guards and help secure safe passage through territory they control. The most powerful of them, known as Commander Ruhullah, controls passage along Highway One, the principal route between Kabul and Kandahar, under the auspices of Watan Risk Management, a company owned by two of Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s cousins.
Overall management of who wins the security subcontracts, it said, is often controlled by local political powerbrokers such as Karzai’s half brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, head of the Kandahar provincial council.”
The Afghan warlords, the Taliban, and the Karzai family would like to express their appreciation to the American taxpayers for their continued support. And they hope we hang around another 10 or 20 years.
Desperado's Outpost 