How bad is Afghanistan? It’s so bad that Afghan President Hamid Karzai was able to run hundreds of fictitious polling sites, have over a million fraudulent votes cast on his behalf, then was able to get the run-off canceled after refusing to address voter fraud, then was saluted as the legitimately elected leader of Afghanistan by the international community.
It’s so bad that President Karzai’s brother is reportedly simultaneously on the take from opium traders and the CIA, and is still a member of the parliament.
It’s so bad that the international forces, the ones that have been promising to clean up Afghanistan and nation-build, are openly ordering troops on the ground to bribe insurgents instead of fighting them.
It should not come as much of a surprise, then, that Afghanistan finished virtually dead last in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. Only Somalia, a country with its “government” controlling a few city blocks and awash in US weapons, is in the same ballpark.
International aid continues to pour into Afghanistan, but where it goes once it arrives, nobody really knows. Officials have expressed hope that Karzai will “battle corruption” now that his second term has started, but that seems unreasonable as well. If there is a silver lining, it is that corruption can’t even hypothetically get much worse.
Yes the corruption in Afghanistan has gotten to the point of being almost as bad as that in the USA.
The title of the article is: "Afghanistan: About as Corrupt as They Come." Hardly, compared to America's Ruling Establishment; our very own political-military-banking-Wall Street criminal gang of liars, thieves, murderers and war mongers; the Karzai government is a bunch of bumbling amateurs.
I do not know which world Jason Dietz is living in. In the real world of foreign occupations corruption is the lifeblood of the system. Money comes only from the outside — no economy to speak of. Most of the money goes to the contractors of the occupying forces. This is how the money is made in wars, while taxpayers foot the bill.
But what is this gusto for blaming Karzai ? Having family "business" profit from the crumbs from the table of occupying forces is the way occupations function anywhere in the world. Why not complain before?
Karzai is a Pashtun, and won hands down. The problem is, the occupying forces were the ones trying to rig the elections. Some Taliban warlords are already bought off, and they voted for the challenger, or intimidated voters coming to the polls.
Some ballot boxes from Karazi areas were "by mistake" dropped from the hellicopters! Karzai won, and now Plan D. Have Karazi trashed. But the real queston is why? Why are helicopters ferrying new, and improved Taliban into northern Afghanistan? The answer will illuminate the Karzai farce.