In my last post, February 6, 2011, I commented on and referred to articles that document how tens of billions of dollars in US and UK development funds have been squandered or just vanished in a maze of official and unofficial corruption in Afghanistan. The corruption doesn’t stop with the misuse of “development” funds. Indeed, Afghanistan is rated by Transparency International in their “Corruption Perceptions Index 2010” as the second most corrupt country in a list of 178 countries. Afghanistan is tied with Myanmar for second, just ahead of Somalia, viewed as the most corrupt, and just below Iraq the fourth most corrupt country.
When corruption is widespread and explicitly or implicitly sanctioned by powerful governing groups in a society, it follows that there is little true “democracy.” Corruption requires secrecy among networks of beneficiaries who nefariously steal or divert the people’s taxes, foreign aid, and some of the profits from foreign investment into their own pockets or the pockets of their cronies instead of into programs that are publicly beneficial. Corruption may also involve bureaucrats and police who compel people to pay bribes for services that in law or by convention are considered rights. It may involve kickbacks from foreign or domestic companies to government officials that want government contracts. It may involve the income and profits that come from the production and distribution of illegal drugs, which is particularly true of Afghanistan. Corruption in it various manifestations is inherently anti-democratic, self-serving, favors inequality, works against sustainable development, and requires secrecy and authoritarian and/or plutocratic government to thrive.
Consider some examples of the evidence.
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A year ago, Daniel Schulman examined a UN study on drugs and bribery in Afghanistan in an article for the Mother Jones magazine. His article refers to the massive costs of bribes, kickbacks, and the opium trade. [See full citation after quotes.]
“Earlier this month [Jan 2011], Afghan President Hamid Karzai [1] fought back against allegations of pervasive graft [2] within his government, telling [3] Al Jazeera that ‘the Western media has blown corruption totally out of all proportion in Afghanistan.’
“Perhaps Karzai should have a conversation with Antonio Maria Costa, the United Nations' drug and crime czar. His office released a report [4]on Tuesday concluding that in the past year Afghans paid out $2.5 billion in bribes and kickbacks—the equivalent of 23 percent of the country's gross domestic product. The income generated by corruption is exceeded only by the booming opium trade [5], which brings in an estimated $2.8 billion annually. ‘In other words, this is shocking, drugs and bribes are the two largest income generators in Afghanistan,’ writes Costa, who heads the UN's Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), in the preface of the study.
The report, based on interviews with 7,600 Afghans, is yet another indicator that any US policy on Afghanistan that is predicated on cooperation with the government is threatened by endemic graft. As it stands, writes Costa, ‘It is almost impossible to obtain a public service in Afghanistan without greasing a palm: bribing authorities is a way of life.’
“The average payoff, according to UNODC, was $159—a modest sum in Western terms, but a massive expenditure in a country with a per-capita income of $425. This, Costa says, amounts to a ‘crippling tax on people who are already among the world's poorest.’ And he notes that the massive influx of aid funding coupled with soaring drug revenues ‘have created a new cast [sic] of rich and powerful individuals who operate outside the traditional power/tribal structures and bid the cost of favours and loyalty to levels not compatible with the under-developed nature of the country.’
“According to the study, 59 percent of Afghans identified corruption as their biggest concern—more worrisome even than the deteriorating security situation and widespread unemployment.
[….]
“….Presently, says Costa, members of the Afghan government are not doing their part to fight graft. That's not entirely surprising, since Afghan officials—on both the local and national level—appear to be the ones profiting most handsomely from bribes and kickbacks.”
Source: http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/01/corruption-afghanistan-its-even-worse-you-think#
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Since last summer, there have been spates of articles focused on an particularly egregious example of corruption, namely, the people who stole from billions from Da Kabul Bank, the state bank, and caused it to collapse.
CORRUPTION AT THE HIGHEST LEVELS OF THE FINANCIAL INDUSTRY AND THE GOVERNMENT MEAN THAT OUR SOLDIERS ARE DYING FOR A LOST CAUSE
On his blog Informed Comment (Sept, 3, 2010), the title of Juan Cole’s article reflects the thrust of his analysis - “Collapse of Kabul Banks Points to Fatal Corruption of Karzai Government.” I quote from the article.
“I [Juan Cole] write in anger. Not blind rage, mind you. A cool, searing, steady anger. I think it is a righteous anger. It is not consequential, but it is my reality. I am angry about the 1,172 US troops dead in the Afghanistan War, and all the other brave NATO and Afghan soldiers who gave their lives for a new Afghanistan. Because they haven’t gotten a new Afghanistan. They have paid the ultimate sacrifice for a ponzi scheme masquerading as a reformist government. And, as usual, you and I may well get stuck with the bill for the economic damage done by the fraud.
“The house of cards that is the Hamid Karzai government in Kabul may be falling before our eyes, as vast, globe-spanning webs of corruption, formerly hidden in shadows, have suddenly had a spotlight thrown on them. The crisis raises the severest questions about whether the Obama administration can plausibly hope to stand up a stable government in Afghanistan before US troops depart.
“As with the second phase of the Great Depression in the United States, the crisis begins with a run on Da Kabul Bank. Depositors took out $85 million on Wednesday, after a damning story appeared in the Washington Post. They took out another $70 million on Thursday. The bank, which owes $300 million, may now have as little as $120 million left in the kitty, though it had once been worth over a billion. But the problem is not just a run on one bank. Can Afghanistan’s whole financial system and economy emerge unscathed?
“Pajhwok News Service reports,
‘The immediate concern was that news of the bank’s financial irregularities, already spreading through the capital, would prompt a run on the bank itself and that the panic would spread to other financial institutions. Bank deposits in Afghanistan are not guaranteed by the central government, officials here said. “This could be catastrophic for the country,” a senior Afghan banking official said. “The next few days are critical. I am worried.” ‘
[….]
“The story begins with Sherkhan Farnood, a financier who founded Da Kabul Bank after the fall of the Taliban. Over the years he appears to have used the institution for patronage for politicians and their families. Farnood gave millions to the presidential campaign of Hamid Karzai last summer, a campaign that Karzai was accused of only winning through substantial ballot fraud. (Hint: a vote wouldn’t cost much to buy in Afghanistan, and ‘millions’ would buy a lot). The other top executive at the bank, Khalilu’llah Frozi, was a campaign adviser to Karzai. Hamid Karzai’s brother Mahmoud has a 9% share in the bank.
[….]
“Farnood often gave out loans without proper collateral or other formalities. He loaned $100 million to Haseen Fahim, the brother of Marshal Mohammad Fahim (an old-time Northern Alliance warlord whom Karzai brought back into government as his vice-presidential running mate in summer of 2009). Haseen Fahim has substantial investments in Afghanistan’s small natural gas sector.
Farnood also apparently loaned himself $140 million to invest in real estate in Dubai, including in villas on the world islands off Jumeirah.
[….]
With the world economic downturn and real estate crash of 2008-2009, the Dubai world project largely fell apart, with investors going bankrupt in droves.
[….]
“So Farnood’s $140 million investment was suddenly not worth anything at all, and his bank began spiraling down. The details of his other bad investments have not yet emerged. The bank went from having over $1 billion in capital to now having only $120 million and owing $300 million.
“President Hamid Karzai is notorious for running interference for his corrupt cronies, and that Farnood and Frozi were out of control appears to have been known for some time but nothing was allowed to be done about it. The two have now been forced out, but the question is whether it is in time to save not only the bank (doubtful) but also the entire Afghan financial system, rebuilt after the fall of the Taliban.
“The Karzai government is corrupt and rotten to the core. Not a single US soldier should die to prop it up. The lie that we are fighting “al-Qaeda” in Afghanistan needs to be exposed. The US and NATO are fighting four or five groups of Pashtun insurgents, some of them until fairly recently US allies. The goal of the fighting is to keep the Karzai government from falling to the guerrillas and to train up an army and police force that could go on defending Kabul. The Afghanistan National Army from all accounts has poor morale. No wonder. What Afghan soldier
[….]
http://www.juancole.com/2010/09/collapse-of-kabul-bank-points-to-terminal-corruption-of-karzai-government.html
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STEAL WHAT YOU CAN BECAUSE THE COUNTRY DOES NOT HAVE A FUTURE
Julius Cavendish provides an updated report (Feb 2, 2011) on the bank failure in an article for The Independent titled “Afghan elite 'plundered $900m' from leading bank.”
“A coterie of well-connected Afghan businessmen and politicians may have plundered as much as $900m from the country's biggest commercial bank, three times the amount of earlier estimates, and the equivalent of about 7 per cent of Afghanistan's total gross domestic product.
“Kabul Bank's funds were treated like personal accounts, it is claimed by several well-known members of Afghan society. Mahmoud Karzai, a brother of the Afghan President and prominent shareholder in Kabul Bank, told The New York Times that the bank's former chairman lent himself about $98m (£62m) to buy one of Afghanistan's airlines, and then used deposits to subsidise the carrier in an attempt to drive rivals out of business. Yet so difficult has the hunt for the missing millions become that the very same man, Sherkhan Farnood, had been brought in to help trace the missing cash.
“Officials say the value of questionable outstanding loans written by the bank is far greater than originally thought – and auditors pouring over the lender's books think up to $800m is potentially unrecoverable.
“The crisis is so severe – with fears that a run on the embattled Kabul Bank could lead to its collapse – that Afghanistan's central bank chief, Abdul Qadir Fitrat, was forced yesterday to deny reports that the embattled lender was close to failure.
[….]
“The case is acutely embarrassing both for President Hamid Karzai, whose tenure has seen Afghanistan turn into a mafia state, and the Obama administration, which has adopted a policy of ignoring institutionalised corruption after several bitter diplomatic spats with Mr Karzai got it nowhere.
“In an account of goings-on at Kabul Bank that is devastating in its detail, the New Yorker magazine records how ‘Kabul Bank's largesse included members of parliament and almost anyone whose silence would allow bank executives to embark on a spree of buying, lending and looting.
"In addition, some former and current Afghan officials say, Kabul Bank became an unofficial arm of the Karzai government, bribing parliamentarians in order to secure votes for its legislative agenda,’ it reports.
"Dozens of Afghan leaders and businessmen... collectively, accepted tens of millions of dollars in gifts and bribes – some sources say as much as a hundred million dollars – from executives at Kabul Bank."
[….]
“American investigators say many of Mr Karzai's closest advisers, some with regulatory responsibilities over the Afghan financial system, are implicated in the scandal.
[….]
“It's a meticulous account of the workings of kleptocracy, but from a Western perspective perhaps the most terrifying part of the tale is the motive. The businessmen, politicians and officials – the cream of Afghan society – are milking Afghanistan for all they can. Why? Because they don't believe their country has a future.”
Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/afghan-elite-plundered-900m-from-leading-bank-2200176.html#
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Another source: Dexter Filkins, “The Afghan Bank Heist,” The New Yorker, Feb 14, 2011 – http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/02/14/110214fa_fact_filkins?currentPage=all
Showing posts with label corruption. Show all posts
Showing posts with label corruption. Show all posts
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Corruption and Waste in developmental funds going to Afghanistan
The widespread problem of official and unofficial corruption in Afghanistan is not a new topic. But it is an ongoing problem that has not been fixed or even reduced according to investigative reports over the past year or so. In my old New World Dictionary, “corruption” is defined in a number of ways. For example, it is defined as “evil or wicked behavior; depravity…bribery or similar dishonest dealings….”
Specifically, in the context of the US/NATO occupation of Afghanistan, corruption may be a way to divert money from its intended purpose for personal gain or influence. Or, in violation of a contract, it may involve cost cutting measures that produce shoddy or unfinished projects. It may entail the exploitation of workers, often brought in from other countries. Often it involves bribes or payoffs to government officials or police.
American corporations that receive big contracts from the US government are often at the center of corrupt dealings, subcontracting much of the work to Afghan or other national enterprises, suspected of putting profits over the expected work. The same is true when the Afghan government receives assistance from the US or the UK. Keep some and pass the rest on.
In many cases, the problem of corruption results in poor planning or inadequate vetting of contractors or sub-contractors by the funding source. Political favoritism is a factor. Too often little or none of the contracted work being done is up to even minimal standards. And through the process, local leaders or communities are not given the opportunity to participate.
The results of corruption are to enrich a few, undermine development projects, alienate Afghans from the government and its representatives, and keep too many Afghan citizens and their children, many of them dirt poor, from gaining opportunities that were intended for them – like jobs, a working infrastructure, effective schools, access to health care, housing, and a government that represents their interests and provides them with security in their lives and communities.
To illustrate some of these points, I draw on five articles and organize them chronologically, with the first article reported at an earlier date than the next ones, and so on. The thrust of the articles is that corruption and waste continue to be massive problems in Afghanistan.
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ARTICLE #1: “The report reveals that in 2006-07, more than half of the department’s large projects, in which millions of pounds were invested, were deemed likely to fail.”
Deborah Haynes, Defense Correspondent for RAWA (Revolutionary Afghan Women’s Association) provides an of corruption in an article titled “Public millions fail to provide wells, schools and clinics in Afghanistan. [You can see the URL at the end of the article.]
Haynes’ article, reported May 22, 2009, focuses on British funded projects carried out in Afghanistan in 2004-2007 and an assessment of these projects by the Department for International Development.
“Millions of pounds in taxpayers’ money have been wasted on failed reconstruction projects in Afghanistan, according to an internal assessment by the Department for International Development.
“An evaluation by independent consultants criticized the department’s approach to planning, risk management and staffing, and said poor co-ordination with the rest of Whitehall meant that the department was slow to shift strategy as the military effort moved to counter-insurgency.
“The report reveals that in 2006-07, more than half of the department’s large projects, in which millions of pounds were invested, were deemed likely to fail, excluding money put into a fund run by the World Bank. Only a quarter of state building projects were rated successful in 2006, with 4.5 per cent of them rated value for money.
“Among the failed projects singled out in the Country Programme Evaluation is the Afghanistan Stabilisation Fund, designed to ‘establish basic security and good governance in the district and provinces of Afghanistan’. This was begun in 2004 with a £20 million payment to the Afghan Government but ended three years later with “little evidence of tangible benefit’.
“The department’s own review in 2005 warned of ‘potentially catastrophic consequences’ if weaknesses in the programme were not corrected. Beset by poor planning, a lack of transparency and failed delivery, it was abandoned in March 2007. Only 639 people received training. Commentators criticised the “disastrous” project.
“In another programme in Helmand, the department paid for 300 wells to be dug in an area prone to drought, without carrying out a geological survey. Some of the wells have since run dry as the water table retreated. The report finds that the department’s risk assessment ignored the absence of the rule of law and corruption in the region.
“A survey of Afghan opinion in Helmand found local residents complaining about poor construction, a lack of monitoring and unhappiness with the role of interpreters, while the department rated its own projects there a success. It took until late 2007 for the department to recruit a conflict adviser even though British troops started operating in Helmand in 2006.
Staffing levels in Kabul were described as ‘wholly unrealistic’. Until 2006 the development department attempted to run its programmes with only six non-Afghan staff in Kabul.
[….]
“Only one person is overseeing a massive, $404 million Afghan reconstruction contract -- and is thousands of miles away in Maryland, auditors say. The contract's supervising officer in Maryland hired someone else to work in Afghanistan, but that person didn't have much experience and wasn't able to visit many of the actual work sites, the audit said.”
[….]
“Some projects were a success, including a £20 million initiative to give small loans to the poor and an £18 million programme to build and repair roads, schools and clinics. By 2007 the department’s portfolio in Afghanistan contained 58 projects with a value of about £520 million, including £317 million for the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund, administered by the World Bank.
[….]
http://www.rawa/org/temp/runews/2009/05/22/public-millions-fail-to-provide-wells-schools-and-clinics-in-afghanistan.html
Read more: http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/2009/05/22/public-millions-fail-to-provide-wells-schools-and-clinics-in-afghanistan.html#ixzz1D6OaqfnN
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ARTICLE #2: American taxpayers lose when billions of dollars in development funds from US to Afghanistan wasted
Sara A. Carter, “Commission tracks billions of contracting dollars wasted in Afghanistan, The Washington Examiner, August 23, 2010.
“American taxpayers have picked up the tab for billions of dollars worth of shoddy schools, phantom health care clinics and government buildings abandoned before completion in Afghanistan, according to members of a U.S. team that arrived in Kabul on Monday to document the waste and fraud.
“The Commission on Wartime Contracting will look into charges ranging from massive contracting fraud to abandoned foreign laborers on U.S. military installations that have left American taxpayers ripped off and the people of Afghanistan disappointed by broken promises.
“Christopher Shays, a former Republican congressman from Connecticut who co-chairs the commission, said the allegations warrant a full investigation and that the scams involving foreign workers are presenting security risks on the bases as well as human rights abuses.
"’We are looking into cases of some contractors or outright scam artists who charge people from other countries to fly them to supposed jobs in Dubai but instead dump them with no jobs or documents on airbases in Afghanistan. That's a human-rights abuse that cannot be tolerated,’ said Shays, who heads a four-man team.
“Foreign workers -- many from the Philippines -- paid up to $2,000 dollars to contracting companies for airfare and housing "only to be left alone on the bases without identification and no way home," said one official who asked not to be named.
"’The bigger problem is that we don't know who they are but they are inside our installations without identification or jobs, and this presents a security risk for the troops on base, civilians, as well as the innocent victims of the scams," the official said.
“The commission, which will issue a semi-annual report in December to Congress and a final report next July as the administration begins a troop draw-down from Afghanistan, is investigating a host of other problems.
“Abandoned and substandard school projects, unfinished government buildings and health care facilities without management staffs are among the reported failures being reviewed by the commission.
[….]
“Other projects paid for by American taxpayers that will be examined by the commissioners include military bases, power plants, office buildings, fuel storage, schools and training centers for Afghan security forces. Many times these projects are abandoned before completion or the supplies needed to sustain their operations never arrive.
“Examples are evident throughout Afghanistan. Last October, in the small village of Hutal, American soldiers set out to get school supplies from local contractors in Kandahar. Money was made available, the supplier was contacted and the village elders were promised that the thousands of dollars in educational materials would arrive in three weeks. The supplies never arrived. It is uncertain how much money was lost on the project.
[….]
"Construction contracting in a war zone half a world away involves real challenges on cost, quality, timeliness, suitability and sustainability," commission co-chair Michael Thibault said.
‘The government needs a clearer view on the way these projects are planned, contracted and supervised. We often don't know how many people are working on U.S. bases, whether prime contractors are effectively managing their subcontractors, whether employee vetting and access control are adequate and whether Afghans can sustain projects like the $300 million Kabul power plant after U.S. personnel leave.’”
Sara A. Carter is The Washington Examiner's national security correspondent. She can be reached at scarter@washingtonexaminer.com.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/politics/commission-tracks-billions-contracting-dollars-wasted-afghanistan
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ARTICLE #3 – Billions contracted with US corporations for “development” projects in Afghanistan unaccounted for and open up massive opportunities for corruption.
Iman Hasan, “Afghans point finger at US: Who’s corrupt now?” The Express Tribune with the International Tribune, November 2010.
“Many Afghans, from government officials and parliamentarians to the common man are disgruntled with the US officials relentlessly accusing them of being corrupt – while ignoring their own government’s fraud and misappropriations in the $56 billion development budget approved by the Congress for the reconstruction of Afghanistan. Afghans deem US responsible for corrupting their society.
“For Obama’s administration, ‘corruption warnings’ are a new blackmail tool to use against the Karzai government. There has been constant rhetoric to ‘eradicate corruption’ and ‘stop misusing US tax payers’ money,’ without realising that only 20% of the allocated funds are at the disposal of the Afghan government while 80% are utilised by the US Department of State, Defence and USAID. These three departments rely extensively on private contractors for the implementation of various projects, ranging from reconstruction of Afghanistan, eradicating drugs, training of Afghan security forces and officials and providing security to Nato supply convoys.
“Since 2001, the US congress has appropriated nearly $56 billion for the reconstruction funds of Afghanistan, which cannot be tracked down. It has either been wasted, stolen or abused.
Missing records
“There is absolutely no record of the amount utilised from 2001 to 2006 except for the vague documentation of $17.7 billion spent during the financial year 2007 – 2009, which only identifies the 7000 contractors hired to implement the projects – but does not evaluate the projects. Therefore, there is no guarantee if the US tax payers’ money amounting to $56 billion is fairly spent or abused.
“Bush’s government after eight years of engagement in Afghanistan established the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) in 2008 ‘to conduct independent and objective audits, inspections, and investigations on the use of taxpayer dollars and related funds’.
“Even the Office of the Special Inspector General is unable to track down the money spent during 2001 to 2006. It recently released a report on the ‘waste, fraud and abuse’ of $17.7 billion (spent during the financial year 2007 – 2009) of the total reconstruction fund of $56 billion.
“The report is essentially a document holding the US responsible for the corruption in Afghanistan. ‘The large US investment in Afghanistan remains at risk of being wasted or subject to waste, fraud and abuse,’ reads the document.
Who benefits from America’s wars?
“65 per cent of the $17.7 billion has been channelled through the Department of Defence, which hired largely those companies who are essentially part of the Military Industrial Complex (MIC). These huge corporations depend mostly or entirely on the Pentagon for their profits and have hugely benefited from the US wars.
[….]
“Some of the largest defense contractors belonging to the Military Industrial Complex hired by the Defence Department, for Afghanistan are DynCorp, Black Water (Xe Services), Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Louis Berger and Bearing Pont.
[….]
“Besides the Military Industrial Complex, there is also the intelligence complex which has been playing a greater role in corrupting the Afghan society since 2001, whose billions of dollars of expenditure has never been accounted for.
“The intelligence complex’s profligate distribution of boxes and suitcases of cash amongst the different segments of Afghan society – Afghan media, NGOs and allegedly government officials – has also encouraged other countries. India is one of the countries which has taken a leaf out of the CIA’s book.
[….]
Lack of transparency
“This is still not the complete picture of US corruption and lack of oversight of reconstruction funds – meant for achieving long term goals in Afghanistan. There is no transparency even in the salary support provided to the Afghan government employees and technical advisors since 2002. The US government is unable to determine the amount it has been paying, the identity and the total number of recipients. Since the number and identity of the recipients is not clear the salaries can go to anyone in anyone’s name.
[….]
http://blogs.tribune.com.pk/story/2955/afghans-point-finger-at-us-whos-corrupt-now
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ARTICLE #4: Another report on the missing billions of US taxpayer development funds for Afghanistan
Michael Tennant, “Afghanistan Reconstruction: Billions Spent, But No One Knows Just How,” New American, Dec. 29, 2010
[….]
“In Iraq, for example, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction found over $5 billion had been wasted on various projects, including hundreds of abandoned or incomplete projects such as a $40 million prison, a $5.7 million convention center, and a roughly $100 million wastewater treatment plant. In addition, the special inspector general discovered that the Pentagon could not account for over 95 percent of $9.1 billion in Iraqi funds set aside for reconstruction.“To no one’s great surprise, the situation in Afghanistan, site of another undeclared U.S. war, is no better. David Francis of the Fiscal Times reports:
'In its bid to win the hearts and minds of Afghanistan’s teeming population, the United States has spent more than $55 billion to rebuild and bolster the war-ravaged country. That money was meant to cover everything from the construction of government buildings and economic development projects to the salaries of U.S. government employees working closely with Afghans.Yet no one can say with any authority or precision how that money was spent and who profited from it. Most of the funds were funneled to a vast array of U.S. and foreign contractors. But according to a recent audit by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), there is no way of knowing whether the money went for the intended purposes.'
[….]
“The reason for these agencies’ inability to say where taxpayers’ money is going is simply that the government hasn’t demanded any sort of accountability from its recipients. ‘The money,’ Francis writes, ‘flows from Washington to Afghanistan, with little oversight and accountability, and at every step along the way someone else takes a cut.’[….]
From Francis article:
“Another report found that the United States has spent nearly $200 million on Afghan security service buildings that cannot be used. SIGAR also found that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) couldn’t account for nearly $18 billion that was paid to some 7,000 U.S. and Afghan contractors for development projects. Afghan contractors often pay kickbacks to local warlords, like Ahmad Wali Karzai, the president’s brother and the so-called “King of Kandahar.” Their actions often undermine the work of the coalition."
[….]
http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/foreignpolicy/5695-afghanistan-reconstruction-billions-spent-but-no-one-knows-just-how
---------------
ARTICLE #5: The head watchdog against the massive corruption in Afghanistan resigns because of weakness of enforcement authority.
Jason Ditz, “US Watchdog for Afghan Projects Resigns,” Antiwar.com, Jan 10, 2011
“Special Inspector General Arnold Fields, the Obama Administration’s top watchdog against the massive corruption in Afghanistan, followed up last week’s pledge not to resign with a formal announcement of his resignation.
“Fields has been regularly presenting reports on the corruption surrounding US aid programmes in occupied Afghanistan, and has cautioned that there are virtually no controls in place and that much of the aid is being stolen or wasted as a result.
[….]
http://news.antiwar.com/2011/01/10/us-watchdog-for-afghan-projects-resigns
Specifically, in the context of the US/NATO occupation of Afghanistan, corruption may be a way to divert money from its intended purpose for personal gain or influence. Or, in violation of a contract, it may involve cost cutting measures that produce shoddy or unfinished projects. It may entail the exploitation of workers, often brought in from other countries. Often it involves bribes or payoffs to government officials or police.
American corporations that receive big contracts from the US government are often at the center of corrupt dealings, subcontracting much of the work to Afghan or other national enterprises, suspected of putting profits over the expected work. The same is true when the Afghan government receives assistance from the US or the UK. Keep some and pass the rest on.
In many cases, the problem of corruption results in poor planning or inadequate vetting of contractors or sub-contractors by the funding source. Political favoritism is a factor. Too often little or none of the contracted work being done is up to even minimal standards. And through the process, local leaders or communities are not given the opportunity to participate.
The results of corruption are to enrich a few, undermine development projects, alienate Afghans from the government and its representatives, and keep too many Afghan citizens and their children, many of them dirt poor, from gaining opportunities that were intended for them – like jobs, a working infrastructure, effective schools, access to health care, housing, and a government that represents their interests and provides them with security in their lives and communities.
To illustrate some of these points, I draw on five articles and organize them chronologically, with the first article reported at an earlier date than the next ones, and so on. The thrust of the articles is that corruption and waste continue to be massive problems in Afghanistan.
---------------
ARTICLE #1: “The report reveals that in 2006-07, more than half of the department’s large projects, in which millions of pounds were invested, were deemed likely to fail.”
Deborah Haynes, Defense Correspondent for RAWA (Revolutionary Afghan Women’s Association) provides an of corruption in an article titled “Public millions fail to provide wells, schools and clinics in Afghanistan. [You can see the URL at the end of the article.]
Haynes’ article, reported May 22, 2009, focuses on British funded projects carried out in Afghanistan in 2004-2007 and an assessment of these projects by the Department for International Development.
“Millions of pounds in taxpayers’ money have been wasted on failed reconstruction projects in Afghanistan, according to an internal assessment by the Department for International Development.
“An evaluation by independent consultants criticized the department’s approach to planning, risk management and staffing, and said poor co-ordination with the rest of Whitehall meant that the department was slow to shift strategy as the military effort moved to counter-insurgency.
“The report reveals that in 2006-07, more than half of the department’s large projects, in which millions of pounds were invested, were deemed likely to fail, excluding money put into a fund run by the World Bank. Only a quarter of state building projects were rated successful in 2006, with 4.5 per cent of them rated value for money.
“Among the failed projects singled out in the Country Programme Evaluation is the Afghanistan Stabilisation Fund, designed to ‘establish basic security and good governance in the district and provinces of Afghanistan’. This was begun in 2004 with a £20 million payment to the Afghan Government but ended three years later with “little evidence of tangible benefit’.
“The department’s own review in 2005 warned of ‘potentially catastrophic consequences’ if weaknesses in the programme were not corrected. Beset by poor planning, a lack of transparency and failed delivery, it was abandoned in March 2007. Only 639 people received training. Commentators criticised the “disastrous” project.
“In another programme in Helmand, the department paid for 300 wells to be dug in an area prone to drought, without carrying out a geological survey. Some of the wells have since run dry as the water table retreated. The report finds that the department’s risk assessment ignored the absence of the rule of law and corruption in the region.
“A survey of Afghan opinion in Helmand found local residents complaining about poor construction, a lack of monitoring and unhappiness with the role of interpreters, while the department rated its own projects there a success. It took until late 2007 for the department to recruit a conflict adviser even though British troops started operating in Helmand in 2006.
Staffing levels in Kabul were described as ‘wholly unrealistic’. Until 2006 the development department attempted to run its programmes with only six non-Afghan staff in Kabul.
[….]
“Only one person is overseeing a massive, $404 million Afghan reconstruction contract -- and is thousands of miles away in Maryland, auditors say. The contract's supervising officer in Maryland hired someone else to work in Afghanistan, but that person didn't have much experience and wasn't able to visit many of the actual work sites, the audit said.”
[….]
“Some projects were a success, including a £20 million initiative to give small loans to the poor and an £18 million programme to build and repair roads, schools and clinics. By 2007 the department’s portfolio in Afghanistan contained 58 projects with a value of about £520 million, including £317 million for the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund, administered by the World Bank.
[….]
http://www.rawa/org/temp/runews/2009/05/22/public-millions-fail-to-provide-wells-schools-and-clinics-in-afghanistan.html
Read more: http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/2009/05/22/public-millions-fail-to-provide-wells-schools-and-clinics-in-afghanistan.html#ixzz1D6OaqfnN
---------------
ARTICLE #2: American taxpayers lose when billions of dollars in development funds from US to Afghanistan wasted
Sara A. Carter, “Commission tracks billions of contracting dollars wasted in Afghanistan, The Washington Examiner, August 23, 2010.
“American taxpayers have picked up the tab for billions of dollars worth of shoddy schools, phantom health care clinics and government buildings abandoned before completion in Afghanistan, according to members of a U.S. team that arrived in Kabul on Monday to document the waste and fraud.
“The Commission on Wartime Contracting will look into charges ranging from massive contracting fraud to abandoned foreign laborers on U.S. military installations that have left American taxpayers ripped off and the people of Afghanistan disappointed by broken promises.
“Christopher Shays, a former Republican congressman from Connecticut who co-chairs the commission, said the allegations warrant a full investigation and that the scams involving foreign workers are presenting security risks on the bases as well as human rights abuses.
"’We are looking into cases of some contractors or outright scam artists who charge people from other countries to fly them to supposed jobs in Dubai but instead dump them with no jobs or documents on airbases in Afghanistan. That's a human-rights abuse that cannot be tolerated,’ said Shays, who heads a four-man team.
“Foreign workers -- many from the Philippines -- paid up to $2,000 dollars to contracting companies for airfare and housing "only to be left alone on the bases without identification and no way home," said one official who asked not to be named.
"’The bigger problem is that we don't know who they are but they are inside our installations without identification or jobs, and this presents a security risk for the troops on base, civilians, as well as the innocent victims of the scams," the official said.
“The commission, which will issue a semi-annual report in December to Congress and a final report next July as the administration begins a troop draw-down from Afghanistan, is investigating a host of other problems.
“Abandoned and substandard school projects, unfinished government buildings and health care facilities without management staffs are among the reported failures being reviewed by the commission.
[….]
“Other projects paid for by American taxpayers that will be examined by the commissioners include military bases, power plants, office buildings, fuel storage, schools and training centers for Afghan security forces. Many times these projects are abandoned before completion or the supplies needed to sustain their operations never arrive.
“Examples are evident throughout Afghanistan. Last October, in the small village of Hutal, American soldiers set out to get school supplies from local contractors in Kandahar. Money was made available, the supplier was contacted and the village elders were promised that the thousands of dollars in educational materials would arrive in three weeks. The supplies never arrived. It is uncertain how much money was lost on the project.
[….]
"Construction contracting in a war zone half a world away involves real challenges on cost, quality, timeliness, suitability and sustainability," commission co-chair Michael Thibault said.
‘The government needs a clearer view on the way these projects are planned, contracted and supervised. We often don't know how many people are working on U.S. bases, whether prime contractors are effectively managing their subcontractors, whether employee vetting and access control are adequate and whether Afghans can sustain projects like the $300 million Kabul power plant after U.S. personnel leave.’”
Sara A. Carter is The Washington Examiner's national security correspondent. She can be reached at scarter@washingtonexaminer.com.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/politics/commission-tracks-billions-contracting-dollars-wasted-afghanistan
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ARTICLE #3 – Billions contracted with US corporations for “development” projects in Afghanistan unaccounted for and open up massive opportunities for corruption.
Iman Hasan, “Afghans point finger at US: Who’s corrupt now?” The Express Tribune with the International Tribune, November 2010.
“Many Afghans, from government officials and parliamentarians to the common man are disgruntled with the US officials relentlessly accusing them of being corrupt – while ignoring their own government’s fraud and misappropriations in the $56 billion development budget approved by the Congress for the reconstruction of Afghanistan. Afghans deem US responsible for corrupting their society.
“For Obama’s administration, ‘corruption warnings’ are a new blackmail tool to use against the Karzai government. There has been constant rhetoric to ‘eradicate corruption’ and ‘stop misusing US tax payers’ money,’ without realising that only 20% of the allocated funds are at the disposal of the Afghan government while 80% are utilised by the US Department of State, Defence and USAID. These three departments rely extensively on private contractors for the implementation of various projects, ranging from reconstruction of Afghanistan, eradicating drugs, training of Afghan security forces and officials and providing security to Nato supply convoys.
“Since 2001, the US congress has appropriated nearly $56 billion for the reconstruction funds of Afghanistan, which cannot be tracked down. It has either been wasted, stolen or abused.
Missing records
“There is absolutely no record of the amount utilised from 2001 to 2006 except for the vague documentation of $17.7 billion spent during the financial year 2007 – 2009, which only identifies the 7000 contractors hired to implement the projects – but does not evaluate the projects. Therefore, there is no guarantee if the US tax payers’ money amounting to $56 billion is fairly spent or abused.
“Bush’s government after eight years of engagement in Afghanistan established the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) in 2008 ‘to conduct independent and objective audits, inspections, and investigations on the use of taxpayer dollars and related funds’.
“Even the Office of the Special Inspector General is unable to track down the money spent during 2001 to 2006. It recently released a report on the ‘waste, fraud and abuse’ of $17.7 billion (spent during the financial year 2007 – 2009) of the total reconstruction fund of $56 billion.
“The report is essentially a document holding the US responsible for the corruption in Afghanistan. ‘The large US investment in Afghanistan remains at risk of being wasted or subject to waste, fraud and abuse,’ reads the document.
Who benefits from America’s wars?
“65 per cent of the $17.7 billion has been channelled through the Department of Defence, which hired largely those companies who are essentially part of the Military Industrial Complex (MIC). These huge corporations depend mostly or entirely on the Pentagon for their profits and have hugely benefited from the US wars.
[….]
“Some of the largest defense contractors belonging to the Military Industrial Complex hired by the Defence Department, for Afghanistan are DynCorp, Black Water (Xe Services), Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Louis Berger and Bearing Pont.
[….]
“Besides the Military Industrial Complex, there is also the intelligence complex which has been playing a greater role in corrupting the Afghan society since 2001, whose billions of dollars of expenditure has never been accounted for.
“The intelligence complex’s profligate distribution of boxes and suitcases of cash amongst the different segments of Afghan society – Afghan media, NGOs and allegedly government officials – has also encouraged other countries. India is one of the countries which has taken a leaf out of the CIA’s book.
[….]
Lack of transparency
“This is still not the complete picture of US corruption and lack of oversight of reconstruction funds – meant for achieving long term goals in Afghanistan. There is no transparency even in the salary support provided to the Afghan government employees and technical advisors since 2002. The US government is unable to determine the amount it has been paying, the identity and the total number of recipients. Since the number and identity of the recipients is not clear the salaries can go to anyone in anyone’s name.
[….]
http://blogs.tribune.com.pk/story/2955/afghans-point-finger-at-us-whos-corrupt-now
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ARTICLE #4: Another report on the missing billions of US taxpayer development funds for Afghanistan
Michael Tennant, “Afghanistan Reconstruction: Billions Spent, But No One Knows Just How,” New American, Dec. 29, 2010
[….]
“In Iraq, for example, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction found over $5 billion had been wasted on various projects, including hundreds of abandoned or incomplete projects such as a $40 million prison, a $5.7 million convention center, and a roughly $100 million wastewater treatment plant. In addition, the special inspector general discovered that the Pentagon could not account for over 95 percent of $9.1 billion in Iraqi funds set aside for reconstruction.“To no one’s great surprise, the situation in Afghanistan, site of another undeclared U.S. war, is no better. David Francis of the Fiscal Times reports:
'In its bid to win the hearts and minds of Afghanistan’s teeming population, the United States has spent more than $55 billion to rebuild and bolster the war-ravaged country. That money was meant to cover everything from the construction of government buildings and economic development projects to the salaries of U.S. government employees working closely with Afghans.Yet no one can say with any authority or precision how that money was spent and who profited from it. Most of the funds were funneled to a vast array of U.S. and foreign contractors. But according to a recent audit by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), there is no way of knowing whether the money went for the intended purposes.'
[….]
“The reason for these agencies’ inability to say where taxpayers’ money is going is simply that the government hasn’t demanded any sort of accountability from its recipients. ‘The money,’ Francis writes, ‘flows from Washington to Afghanistan, with little oversight and accountability, and at every step along the way someone else takes a cut.’[….]
From Francis article:
“Another report found that the United States has spent nearly $200 million on Afghan security service buildings that cannot be used. SIGAR also found that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) couldn’t account for nearly $18 billion that was paid to some 7,000 U.S. and Afghan contractors for development projects. Afghan contractors often pay kickbacks to local warlords, like Ahmad Wali Karzai, the president’s brother and the so-called “King of Kandahar.” Their actions often undermine the work of the coalition."
[….]
http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/foreignpolicy/5695-afghanistan-reconstruction-billions-spent-but-no-one-knows-just-how
---------------
ARTICLE #5: The head watchdog against the massive corruption in Afghanistan resigns because of weakness of enforcement authority.
Jason Ditz, “US Watchdog for Afghan Projects Resigns,” Antiwar.com, Jan 10, 2011
“Special Inspector General Arnold Fields, the Obama Administration’s top watchdog against the massive corruption in Afghanistan, followed up last week’s pledge not to resign with a formal announcement of his resignation.
“Fields has been regularly presenting reports on the corruption surrounding US aid programmes in occupied Afghanistan, and has cautioned that there are virtually no controls in place and that much of the aid is being stolen or wasted as a result.
[….]
http://news.antiwar.com/2011/01/10/us-watchdog-for-afghan-projects-resigns
Saturday, January 29, 2011
What Obama didn't say about the US intervention in Afghanistan
In his State of the Union address to the nation, President Obama did not spend much time on foreign policy and, with respect to Afghanistan, offered an upbeat picture that doesn’t jive with many reports of the actual conditions in that country. Consider some of the highlights from just a few of the sources that challenge Obama’s things-are-going-well assessment.
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Mismanaged War, Corrupt Afghan Government, Spreading Taliban Control –
Robert Dreyfuss provides an excellent analysis of the foreign-policy aspects of Obama’s speech in an article titled, “State of the Union Glosses Over Obama’s Foreign Policy Failures.” Of particular interest for this website, Dreyfuss makes the following points on some of the bad news from Afghanistan that Obama disregards.
“On Afghanistan... Obama put a rosy gloss on the catastrophically mismanaged war, in which more and more Afghan provinces have fallen under Taliban control or influence, with impregnable safe havens in neighboring Pakistan feeding an insurgency that won’t go away, in a country whose government is irreparably corrupt and feckless. To Obama, though, everything’s fine.”
Source: http://www.thenation.com/blog/158034/obamas-sotu-make-world-go-away
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No clear withdrawal date for bringing US troops home. Even Obama is unsure.
Jason Ditz focuses on the on contradictory statements coming from the White House regarding a withdrawal date for at least a start of withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. Here Ditz refers to President Obama’s SOTU speech.
“…he [President Obama] lauded the Afghan War and the “enduring partnership” it was creating. Perhaps the only interesting thing, and I say this only for desperation to find something, is that he insisted troops would begin to withdraw from Afghanistan in July.
“Of course, he announced the July drawdown in December, and the comments seem to be taken largely from that, but it seems that his speechwriters forget that he publicly disavowed the July 2011 drawdown date in June, and several more times since then.”
Source: http://news/antiwar.com/2011/01/25/president-obama-rehashes-dubious-claims-about-wars/
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Some officials believe the occupation of Afghan will continue well beyond 2014. Obama has not rejected this belief.
In another post, Jason Ditz quotes a EU envoy who can imagine another 30 years of NATO (including US) occupation, while less effusive US and other officials see the war/occupation lasting past 2014, the latest target date mentioned by Obama.
“Speaking today from Kabul, European Union Special Representative Vygaudas Usackas mocked the notion of ending the Afghan War in 2014, insisting it was time to “be honest with ourselves” that the war will last much, much longer.
“How long? Well according to Usackas, who was the former Foreign Minister of Luthuania, he believes NATO will have to commit to another 30 years of war, though he conceded that somewhere along the line, the 150,000 NATO troops could probably be reduced before then.
“…Despite repeated claims of vague “progress” in the war a number of officials from the US and Britain have openly talked about the war lasting another decade or longer.”
Source: http://news/antiwar.com/2011/01/26/eu-envoy-eyes-another-30-years-of-nato-occupation-in-afghanistan
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US building more military bases in Afghanistan – another fact Obama failed to include in his State of the Union address
The Skeptics, writing on The National Interest blog, note that President Obama is not much interested in informing the American people about “the expansion of America’s Afghan military bases.” The Skeptic draw their evidence from Nick Turse, associate editor of TomDispatch.com, who “has done a fantastic job collating which of America’s forward operating bases (FOBs) are being expanded, improved, and hardened.” Here’s one example:
“FOB Shank in Logar Province has a new $12 million, 1.4-mile-long airstrip that can accommodate Lockheed C-130 Hercules and Boeing C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft. According to Turse, government documents released in August show that in addition, FOB Shank ‘will be adding a new two-story barracks, constructed of containerized housing units known as ‘relocatable buildings’ or RLBs, to accommodate 1,100 more troops. Support facilities, access roads, parking areas, new utilities, and other infrastructure required to sustain the housing complex will also be installed for an estimated $5 million to $10 million….New aircraft maintenance facilities and 80,000 square feet more of taxiways will also be built at the cost of another $10 million to $25 million.’”
You can find the full list at: The Skeptics Base Building in Afghanistan? The National Interest, Jan 25, 2011-01-29. Source: http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-skeptics/base-building-afghanistan-4774
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Jason Ditz points to recent evidence of a “dramatic increase in US troops killed by Afghanistan IEDs in 2010.” Obama stayed away from this subject.
Citing “official war data,” the trend in US military fatalities and wounded continues upward.
“The toll showed a 60 percent increase in deaths, with 268 US troops killed in 2010. This was also about the same number as were killed in all of 2007, 2008 and 2009 combined. This was despite claims from officials that the Pentagon several times during 2010 that the number of IEDs was ‘falling’.”
“The number of wounded was even worse, however, with figures showing a 178 percent increase from 2009 to 2010, and 3,366 confirmed injuries from IED attacks. This was dramatically more than had been wounded by IEDs in the entire rest of the war.”
Source: http://news.antiwar.com/2011/01/26/dramatic-increase-in-us-troops-killed-by-afghanistan-ieds-in-2010
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US plans for supporting Afghan national security forces ineffective and a waste of billions. Nothing like this from Obama.
Marisa Taylor writes for McClatchy Newspapers on a report by “auditors with the office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction” who find that the “Obama administration’s $11.4 billion plan to bolster Afghanistan’s security forces is ‘at risk’ because of poor planning.” The report was released on Wednesday, January 26.
“Auditors with the office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction said the U.S. government ‘could not provide the plans or justifications’ for building nearly 900 police stations and garrisons and other facilities for Afghanistan's national security forces.
“The report confirms earlier findings in a series late last year by McClatchy that found the ambitious strategy, like much of the wider Afghan reconstruction effort, is faltering. The program is a linchpin of President Barack Obama's strategy to strengthen Afghan security forces so 100,000 U.S. troops can come home by the end of 2014.”
[….]
“McClatchy also discovered that dozens of structures across the country either were poorly constructed or never completed at all. Tens of thousands of Afghan soldiers who were supposed to be living in garrisons were still housed in tents.”
[….]
"’The government of Afghanistan does not have the financial or technical capacity to sustain’" buildings once they are completed, the auditors concluded.
“As a result, the U.S. has awarded two contracts to ITT Corp. totaling $800 million to help maintain the facilities.”
[….]
“McClatchy found that ITT's work was one of nearly $4.5 billion in contracts in Afghanistan that were awarded to companies even though they violated laws or had high-profile disputes over previous projects.”
Source: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/01/26/107500/watchdog-faults-obamas-afghan.html#
Also see: http://thehill.com/news-by-subjetc-defense-homeland-security/139729-afghanistan-watchdog-says-11-billion-in-us-funds-are-at-risk
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Other failures in US-funded reconstruction projects, including the largest power plant in Kabul. Generally, projects are over-budget, of poor construction, involving corrupt officials, unfinished, unmaintained if and when completed. Another subject the Obama administration leaves alone.
Reporting for McClatchy Newspapers, Marisa Taylor and Dion Nissenbaum write on “Kabul's largest power plant project” and how it has been held up by US officials as “a shining example of how American taxpayers' dollars would pull Afghanistan out of grinding poverty and decades of demoralizing conflict.” This is just one of the examples of inefficiency on which they report. Here I quote from the article.
“But behind the scenes…officials were voicing outrage over the slow pace of the [power plant] project and its skyrocketing costs. The problems were so numerous that one company official told the U.S. government that he'd understand if the contract were canceled.
“‘We are discouraged and exhausted with the continued flow of bad information,’ one U.S. official complained in an internal memo that McClatchy obtained. ‘This is a huge example of poor performance on an extremely important development project.’
“Despite expressing serious misgivings in internal memos and meetings, the U.S. agency [USAID] that was overseeing the project more than doubled the plant's budget.
[….]
“In the rush to rebuild Afghanistan, the U.S. government has charged ahead with ever-expanding development programs despite questions about their impact, cost and value to America's multi-billion-dollar campaign to shore up the pro-Western Afghan president and prevent Taliban insurgents from seizing control.
[….]
“An approach that experts denounce as ad hoc and politicized has led to programs with mixed, if not poor, results and has soured many Afghans on the U.S. military's presence in their country, even as the Obama administration is banking on their support.
“McClatchy found that U.S. government funding for at least 15 large-scale programs and projects grew from just over $1 billion to nearly $3 billion despite the government's questions about their effectiveness or cost.
[….]
“The projects, overseen by the U.S. Agency for International Development, are designed to address different goals in Afghanistan but all offer evidence that the U.S. has downplayed their waste and inefficiency in its zeal to demonstrate short-term success.”
"Meanwhile, Afghanistan is littered with scores of unfinished or hazardous buildings constructed with American money. Programs continue to receive tens of millions of dollars in U.S. aid even as contractors or government officials concede that the goals are unrealistic or inappropriate for Afghanistan. For instance, the U.S. is seeking to dramatically increase the number of women employed by local governments, even though previous projects with similar aims have failed because of threats to female workers.
“While many of the programs were launched under the Bush administration, several have continued and have been given more money on President Barack Obama's watch.
[….]
“Adding to the problems, the list of recipients seemed to include thousands of phantom farmers: Fingerprints collected as proof that the farmers had received vouchers for buying seeds appeared to be falsified in more than half the 4,500 records the auditors reviewed.
“Even so, the Obama administration revamped the program's safeguards, dramatically increased its budget and transformed it into a broader counterinsurgency initiative that hands out jobs, fertilizer and support to farmers who are willing to cooperate with the U.S-backed government.
The program's original price tag: $33 million. Since the questions were raised: $431 million.
[….]
Some U.S. officials and contractors acknowledge privately that they're spending more on high-profile, flawed projects because of the pressure to show results quickly that could help bolster the government of President Hamid Karzai.
[….]
“To manage spending in Afghanistan, the USAID increased its staff, but it still struggles to keep tabs on programs. One U.S. official said the agency got "tied down doing paperwork and can't get out into the field to see if the projects are moving ahead." At the same time, it's quadrupled its overall spending to $300 million a month, with more than a quarter of it going directly to the Afghan government.
“When it comes to large-scale, ambitious aid programs, many outside experts are at a loss as how to handle programs in Afghanistan better, and they say the problems raise fundamental questions about whether the U.S.'s efforts to rebuild the country can work.”
[….]
Source: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/01/12/106681/troubled-us-afghan-projects-mushroom.html#
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Poppy eradication efforts by NATO and Afghan government backfiring. Such efforts have frequently ended up supporting large heroin dealers and corrupt government officials, while driving farmers to look for protection from various Taliban groups. Obama - not a word.
Ryan Harvey explores how large poppy growers and high government officials have benefited from the Afghan governments “efforts” to eradicate poppy farms. That’s called counter-productive, not counter-insurgency. Here I quote the first paragraphs from Harvey’s long and informative article.
“It has long been known inside Afghanistan that heroin dealers in high positions benefit from the United States and Afghan governments' counternarcotics policies.
“Now the American public can get a glimpse. US embassy cables published recently by WikiLeaks expose the insider opinion that Afghan officials are using poppy eradication teams to weed out the competitors of major traffickers with whom they are linked.
“The leaked cables follow previous observations, investigations, government reports and testimonials by former contractors that say eradication efforts have long been corrupted and misused, and that Afghan officials have consistently thwarted any serious attempts at stemming the heroin trade.
“The US and Britain began the operations in 2002, with the Afghan government acting as a silent partner and contractors like DynCorp pulling security. The theory was that if the Taliban was to be defeated, it would largely be through removing their access to the heroin industry and its associated taxes and bribes.
[….]
“But many of the people who were and still are responsible for the eradication program are corrupt officials in the Afghan government, most of whom are just as involved in the heroin economy, if not more, as the growers they are targeting.
“Indeed, instead of hurting the Taliban, the operations, in the words of former US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke, were ‘driving farmers into the hands of the Taliban.’
“It was for that reason that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has stepped back recently, giving the Afghan government the reins in order to give the programs an "Afghan face." Consolidating Power
“But there's more to NATO's shift than farmers running to the Taliban after having their livelihoods destroyed by eradication teams.
“US embassy cables written in 2007 and leaked this December suggest that poppy eradication teams have been used by warlords and other powerful provincial leaders to consolidate power.”
Source: http://www.truth-out.org/how-afghan-poppy-eradication-efforts-are-helping-worlds-largest-heroin-dealers67175
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In short, Obama’s words begin to appear hollow when the darker aspects of the US/NATO war/occupation of Afghanistan are put forth. Politically, the President's upbeat message and references to a hopeful future may temporarily grip his audience and raise their spirits, but it is not sustainable in light of the facts.
David Swanson concludes his fine article, “Why Pentagon Claims MLK Would Love War in Afghanistan, with the following words from Martin Luther King, Jr,” making clear that the Obama administration is hardly in the King tradition when it comes of Afghanistan.
"I am convinced," King said, "that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society into a person-oriented society. . . . On the one hand we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. . . . The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: 'This way of settling differences is not just.' This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more on military 'defense' than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
Source: http://zcommunications.org/why-pentagon-claims-mlk-would-love-war-on-afghanistan-by-david-swanson
.
----------
Mismanaged War, Corrupt Afghan Government, Spreading Taliban Control –
Robert Dreyfuss provides an excellent analysis of the foreign-policy aspects of Obama’s speech in an article titled, “State of the Union Glosses Over Obama’s Foreign Policy Failures.” Of particular interest for this website, Dreyfuss makes the following points on some of the bad news from Afghanistan that Obama disregards.
“On Afghanistan... Obama put a rosy gloss on the catastrophically mismanaged war, in which more and more Afghan provinces have fallen under Taliban control or influence, with impregnable safe havens in neighboring Pakistan feeding an insurgency that won’t go away, in a country whose government is irreparably corrupt and feckless. To Obama, though, everything’s fine.”
Source: http://www.thenation.com/blog/158034/obamas-sotu-make-world-go-away
----------
No clear withdrawal date for bringing US troops home. Even Obama is unsure.
Jason Ditz focuses on the on contradictory statements coming from the White House regarding a withdrawal date for at least a start of withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. Here Ditz refers to President Obama’s SOTU speech.
“…he [President Obama] lauded the Afghan War and the “enduring partnership” it was creating. Perhaps the only interesting thing, and I say this only for desperation to find something, is that he insisted troops would begin to withdraw from Afghanistan in July.
“Of course, he announced the July drawdown in December, and the comments seem to be taken largely from that, but it seems that his speechwriters forget that he publicly disavowed the July 2011 drawdown date in June, and several more times since then.”
Source: http://news/antiwar.com/2011/01/25/president-obama-rehashes-dubious-claims-about-wars/
----------
Some officials believe the occupation of Afghan will continue well beyond 2014. Obama has not rejected this belief.
In another post, Jason Ditz quotes a EU envoy who can imagine another 30 years of NATO (including US) occupation, while less effusive US and other officials see the war/occupation lasting past 2014, the latest target date mentioned by Obama.
“Speaking today from Kabul, European Union Special Representative Vygaudas Usackas mocked the notion of ending the Afghan War in 2014, insisting it was time to “be honest with ourselves” that the war will last much, much longer.
“How long? Well according to Usackas, who was the former Foreign Minister of Luthuania, he believes NATO will have to commit to another 30 years of war, though he conceded that somewhere along the line, the 150,000 NATO troops could probably be reduced before then.
“…Despite repeated claims of vague “progress” in the war a number of officials from the US and Britain have openly talked about the war lasting another decade or longer.”
Source: http://news/antiwar.com/2011/01/26/eu-envoy-eyes-another-30-years-of-nato-occupation-in-afghanistan
----------
US building more military bases in Afghanistan – another fact Obama failed to include in his State of the Union address
The Skeptics, writing on The National Interest blog, note that President Obama is not much interested in informing the American people about “the expansion of America’s Afghan military bases.” The Skeptic draw their evidence from Nick Turse, associate editor of TomDispatch.com, who “has done a fantastic job collating which of America’s forward operating bases (FOBs) are being expanded, improved, and hardened.” Here’s one example:
“FOB Shank in Logar Province has a new $12 million, 1.4-mile-long airstrip that can accommodate Lockheed C-130 Hercules and Boeing C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft. According to Turse, government documents released in August show that in addition, FOB Shank ‘will be adding a new two-story barracks, constructed of containerized housing units known as ‘relocatable buildings’ or RLBs, to accommodate 1,100 more troops. Support facilities, access roads, parking areas, new utilities, and other infrastructure required to sustain the housing complex will also be installed for an estimated $5 million to $10 million….New aircraft maintenance facilities and 80,000 square feet more of taxiways will also be built at the cost of another $10 million to $25 million.’”
You can find the full list at: The Skeptics Base Building in Afghanistan? The National Interest, Jan 25, 2011-01-29. Source: http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-skeptics/base-building-afghanistan-4774
----------
Jason Ditz points to recent evidence of a “dramatic increase in US troops killed by Afghanistan IEDs in 2010.” Obama stayed away from this subject.
Citing “official war data,” the trend in US military fatalities and wounded continues upward.
“The toll showed a 60 percent increase in deaths, with 268 US troops killed in 2010. This was also about the same number as were killed in all of 2007, 2008 and 2009 combined. This was despite claims from officials that the Pentagon several times during 2010 that the number of IEDs was ‘falling’.”
“The number of wounded was even worse, however, with figures showing a 178 percent increase from 2009 to 2010, and 3,366 confirmed injuries from IED attacks. This was dramatically more than had been wounded by IEDs in the entire rest of the war.”
Source: http://news.antiwar.com/2011/01/26/dramatic-increase-in-us-troops-killed-by-afghanistan-ieds-in-2010
----------
US plans for supporting Afghan national security forces ineffective and a waste of billions. Nothing like this from Obama.
Marisa Taylor writes for McClatchy Newspapers on a report by “auditors with the office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction” who find that the “Obama administration’s $11.4 billion plan to bolster Afghanistan’s security forces is ‘at risk’ because of poor planning.” The report was released on Wednesday, January 26.
“Auditors with the office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction said the U.S. government ‘could not provide the plans or justifications’ for building nearly 900 police stations and garrisons and other facilities for Afghanistan's national security forces.
“The report confirms earlier findings in a series late last year by McClatchy that found the ambitious strategy, like much of the wider Afghan reconstruction effort, is faltering. The program is a linchpin of President Barack Obama's strategy to strengthen Afghan security forces so 100,000 U.S. troops can come home by the end of 2014.”
[….]
“McClatchy also discovered that dozens of structures across the country either were poorly constructed or never completed at all. Tens of thousands of Afghan soldiers who were supposed to be living in garrisons were still housed in tents.”
[….]
"’The government of Afghanistan does not have the financial or technical capacity to sustain’" buildings once they are completed, the auditors concluded.
“As a result, the U.S. has awarded two contracts to ITT Corp. totaling $800 million to help maintain the facilities.”
[….]
“McClatchy found that ITT's work was one of nearly $4.5 billion in contracts in Afghanistan that were awarded to companies even though they violated laws or had high-profile disputes over previous projects.”
Source: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/01/26/107500/watchdog-faults-obamas-afghan.html#
Also see: http://thehill.com/news-by-subjetc-defense-homeland-security/139729-afghanistan-watchdog-says-11-billion-in-us-funds-are-at-risk
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Other failures in US-funded reconstruction projects, including the largest power plant in Kabul. Generally, projects are over-budget, of poor construction, involving corrupt officials, unfinished, unmaintained if and when completed. Another subject the Obama administration leaves alone.
Reporting for McClatchy Newspapers, Marisa Taylor and Dion Nissenbaum write on “Kabul's largest power plant project” and how it has been held up by US officials as “a shining example of how American taxpayers' dollars would pull Afghanistan out of grinding poverty and decades of demoralizing conflict.” This is just one of the examples of inefficiency on which they report. Here I quote from the article.
“But behind the scenes…officials were voicing outrage over the slow pace of the [power plant] project and its skyrocketing costs. The problems were so numerous that one company official told the U.S. government that he'd understand if the contract were canceled.
“‘We are discouraged and exhausted with the continued flow of bad information,’ one U.S. official complained in an internal memo that McClatchy obtained. ‘This is a huge example of poor performance on an extremely important development project.’
“Despite expressing serious misgivings in internal memos and meetings, the U.S. agency [USAID] that was overseeing the project more than doubled the plant's budget.
[….]
“In the rush to rebuild Afghanistan, the U.S. government has charged ahead with ever-expanding development programs despite questions about their impact, cost and value to America's multi-billion-dollar campaign to shore up the pro-Western Afghan president and prevent Taliban insurgents from seizing control.
[….]
“An approach that experts denounce as ad hoc and politicized has led to programs with mixed, if not poor, results and has soured many Afghans on the U.S. military's presence in their country, even as the Obama administration is banking on their support.
“McClatchy found that U.S. government funding for at least 15 large-scale programs and projects grew from just over $1 billion to nearly $3 billion despite the government's questions about their effectiveness or cost.
[….]
“The projects, overseen by the U.S. Agency for International Development, are designed to address different goals in Afghanistan but all offer evidence that the U.S. has downplayed their waste and inefficiency in its zeal to demonstrate short-term success.”
"Meanwhile, Afghanistan is littered with scores of unfinished or hazardous buildings constructed with American money. Programs continue to receive tens of millions of dollars in U.S. aid even as contractors or government officials concede that the goals are unrealistic or inappropriate for Afghanistan. For instance, the U.S. is seeking to dramatically increase the number of women employed by local governments, even though previous projects with similar aims have failed because of threats to female workers.
“While many of the programs were launched under the Bush administration, several have continued and have been given more money on President Barack Obama's watch.
[….]
“Adding to the problems, the list of recipients seemed to include thousands of phantom farmers: Fingerprints collected as proof that the farmers had received vouchers for buying seeds appeared to be falsified in more than half the 4,500 records the auditors reviewed.
“Even so, the Obama administration revamped the program's safeguards, dramatically increased its budget and transformed it into a broader counterinsurgency initiative that hands out jobs, fertilizer and support to farmers who are willing to cooperate with the U.S-backed government.
The program's original price tag: $33 million. Since the questions were raised: $431 million.
[….]
Some U.S. officials and contractors acknowledge privately that they're spending more on high-profile, flawed projects because of the pressure to show results quickly that could help bolster the government of President Hamid Karzai.
[….]
“To manage spending in Afghanistan, the USAID increased its staff, but it still struggles to keep tabs on programs. One U.S. official said the agency got "tied down doing paperwork and can't get out into the field to see if the projects are moving ahead." At the same time, it's quadrupled its overall spending to $300 million a month, with more than a quarter of it going directly to the Afghan government.
“When it comes to large-scale, ambitious aid programs, many outside experts are at a loss as how to handle programs in Afghanistan better, and they say the problems raise fundamental questions about whether the U.S.'s efforts to rebuild the country can work.”
[….]
Source: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/01/12/106681/troubled-us-afghan-projects-mushroom.html#
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Poppy eradication efforts by NATO and Afghan government backfiring. Such efforts have frequently ended up supporting large heroin dealers and corrupt government officials, while driving farmers to look for protection from various Taliban groups. Obama - not a word.
Ryan Harvey explores how large poppy growers and high government officials have benefited from the Afghan governments “efforts” to eradicate poppy farms. That’s called counter-productive, not counter-insurgency. Here I quote the first paragraphs from Harvey’s long and informative article.
“It has long been known inside Afghanistan that heroin dealers in high positions benefit from the United States and Afghan governments' counternarcotics policies.
“Now the American public can get a glimpse. US embassy cables published recently by WikiLeaks expose the insider opinion that Afghan officials are using poppy eradication teams to weed out the competitors of major traffickers with whom they are linked.
“The leaked cables follow previous observations, investigations, government reports and testimonials by former contractors that say eradication efforts have long been corrupted and misused, and that Afghan officials have consistently thwarted any serious attempts at stemming the heroin trade.
“The US and Britain began the operations in 2002, with the Afghan government acting as a silent partner and contractors like DynCorp pulling security. The theory was that if the Taliban was to be defeated, it would largely be through removing their access to the heroin industry and its associated taxes and bribes.
[….]
“But many of the people who were and still are responsible for the eradication program are corrupt officials in the Afghan government, most of whom are just as involved in the heroin economy, if not more, as the growers they are targeting.
“Indeed, instead of hurting the Taliban, the operations, in the words of former US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke, were ‘driving farmers into the hands of the Taliban.’
“It was for that reason that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has stepped back recently, giving the Afghan government the reins in order to give the programs an "Afghan face." Consolidating Power
“But there's more to NATO's shift than farmers running to the Taliban after having their livelihoods destroyed by eradication teams.
“US embassy cables written in 2007 and leaked this December suggest that poppy eradication teams have been used by warlords and other powerful provincial leaders to consolidate power.”
Source: http://www.truth-out.org/how-afghan-poppy-eradication-efforts-are-helping-worlds-largest-heroin-dealers67175
----------
In short, Obama’s words begin to appear hollow when the darker aspects of the US/NATO war/occupation of Afghanistan are put forth. Politically, the President's upbeat message and references to a hopeful future may temporarily grip his audience and raise their spirits, but it is not sustainable in light of the facts.
David Swanson concludes his fine article, “Why Pentagon Claims MLK Would Love War in Afghanistan, with the following words from Martin Luther King, Jr,” making clear that the Obama administration is hardly in the King tradition when it comes of Afghanistan.
"I am convinced," King said, "that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society into a person-oriented society. . . . On the one hand we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. . . . The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: 'This way of settling differences is not just.' This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more on military 'defense' than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
Source: http://zcommunications.org/why-pentagon-claims-mlk-would-love-war-on-afghanistan-by-david-swanson
.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Where do ordinary Afghan citizens fit in the future of the US/NATO occupation
The US/NATO strategy in Afghanistan is based mostly on some mixture of counter-terrorism (killing Taliban leaders in Afghanistan and Pakistan) and counter-insurgency (forcing insurgents out of targeted areas and winning the hearts and minds of the Afghan residents). Nir Rosen and Marika Theros refer to evidence of the failure of the strategy up to now. (You can access the full article at http://www.commondreans.org/view/2011/01/18-8.) I’ll identify some of their central points with quotes from their article and few statements.
First, Rosen and Marika challenge Obama’s recent cautious but upbeat annual review of purported military progress and improved Afghan security in 2010. Their cogent summary doesn’t support Obama’s views.
“The year 2010 witnessed a significant spike in violence both in the south, with offensive military operations triggering greater Taliban intimidation [2] and assassinations of civilians, and in the north [3] in heretofore ‘stable areas’ where international neglect and government abuse provide fertile ground for insurgent expansion. Real progress has been further complicated by the increasingly poisonous relationship between the Afghan government, the international community, and the Afghan people, aggravated by a potentially catastrophic electoral crisis [4], even more predatory government corruption and brazen war-profiteering [5], and near total disregard for the average Afghan citizen. As American and NATO forces enter their tenth year in Afghanistan, Afghan communities find themselves increasingly caught in a complex system of violence generated by insurgents, criminal gangs, drug lords, corrupt officials, US-allied local strongmen, and aggressive international forces.”
Second, the US military strategy during 2010 resulted in continuing and extensive damage to the Afghan population, property, and environment. They write:
“In Kandahar, the US is bombarding populated areas with smart rocket launchers and guided warheads, razing orchards, destroying homes, and partnering with people like the brutal commander [8] Colonel Abdul Razik and his militia. This increase in offensive operations, night raids, drone attacks, and use of irregular local forces remain precisely the tactics that provoke civilian outrage [9] even as they increase Taliban losses. Even more problematic, the international community never developed a complementary and much-needed political strategy that reinforces Afghan national unity and builds trust between state and society through genuine political reform and reconciliation at all levels of society.”
Third, Rosen and Marika provide evidence on the views of ordinary Afghan cities, focusing on their own experiences and future prospects. The evidence comes from a study sponsored in 2009 by LSE Global Governance at the London School of Economics and the Civil Society Development Center in Afghanistan. Rosen and Marika
“engaged a range of selected Afghan citizens - community, religious, and tribal leaders; NGO and community activists; teachers and educators; and, students and youth leaders – in seven regions to capture their experiences of insecurity and their views on how to secure Afghanistan’s future, including the provinces of Balkh, Baghlan, Herat, Kabul, Kandahar, Khost, and Nangarhar.” They identify three themes from the first rounds of interviews.
“ Firstly, the Taliban movement is a symptom of larger ills, and the continued focus on defeating them obscures the fact that the post-2001 political and economic order the international community helped create is the fundamental driver of instability, violence, and recruitment into the insurgency. Secondly, the current strategy with its near exclusive focus on government and armed actors as partners in the war effort perpetuates a system of personalized politics, power-grabbing and profiteering that fosters insecurity, corrupts Afghan society, and prevents the emergence of alternative political forces…. [while continuing] more as a mutual business enterprise in which belligerents – the political and economic elites, the internationals, and the insurgents – use insecurity as a cover for personal political and economic ambitions. They point to the massive amounts of international aid underwriting a perverse political economy that has created a nexus of financial interests between corrupt government officials, warlords, international contractors, and even the Taliban….”
“Finally… most Afghans want a rational outcome that produces a participatory system of governance rooted in Afghan values and able to provide minimally adequate services of justice, health, and education. Most Afghans do not challenge the existence of the state itself and support a unified Afghanistan…. In assessing the current struggle, Afghans look to progress on questions of justice, representation and allocation of resources rather than to kill-and-capture rates or announcements of new programmes in Kandahar or Helmand that link the populace to the government.”
In short, the situation in Afghanistan remains mired in conflict, corruption, destruction, and extensive human casualties and death. A major part of the problem is that the US and its allies are out-of-touch with or are misreading the views of ordinary Afghan citizens. Rosen and Marika believe that the situation can be ameliorated, though “not all of it can be undone.” Nonetheless, they can imagine policies that would be in the interests of the broad range of Afghan citizens they have interviewed.
First, with respect to the international aid coming into the country, the interviewees say that it must be better targeted, designed, and overseen, as well as making sure “that aid produces tangible results on the ground.”
Second, the international community could use the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act to “crack down on corruption.” And, further, the “US Government should seriously consider prosecuting those Afghan-Americans who have participated in corrupt practices.”
Third, “the international community – particularly the US – must do more than pay lip service to a political solution and de-escalate the conflict….This requires more emphasis on issues of governance, justice, and representation; a reconsideration of the exclusive partnerships developed with the pro-government local strongmen; a genuine effort to defend the Afghan population from predatory political and economic elites (and not only insurgents); and, increased checks on impunity and marginalization.”
Unfortunately, there is little in US history that would justify much hope in seeing US foreign and military policies transformed in ways to give humanitarian and democratic values priority over the interests of those in the US who dominate the economic and political systems. It’s not out of the question, though there is no recent precedent. We’ll see. It depends in part on how the following questions are answered. Will we witness the Obama administration and the US Congress reduce the allocation of money and resources to the US military in Afghanistan? Will there be a withdrawal of a large number of troops over the course of the year? Will the US and her allies, along with other concerned nations and the UN, find ways to support the reconstruction of Afghanistan that are consistent with the views of the majority of the Afghan people?
First, Rosen and Marika challenge Obama’s recent cautious but upbeat annual review of purported military progress and improved Afghan security in 2010. Their cogent summary doesn’t support Obama’s views.
“The year 2010 witnessed a significant spike in violence both in the south, with offensive military operations triggering greater Taliban intimidation [2] and assassinations of civilians, and in the north [3] in heretofore ‘stable areas’ where international neglect and government abuse provide fertile ground for insurgent expansion. Real progress has been further complicated by the increasingly poisonous relationship between the Afghan government, the international community, and the Afghan people, aggravated by a potentially catastrophic electoral crisis [4], even more predatory government corruption and brazen war-profiteering [5], and near total disregard for the average Afghan citizen. As American and NATO forces enter their tenth year in Afghanistan, Afghan communities find themselves increasingly caught in a complex system of violence generated by insurgents, criminal gangs, drug lords, corrupt officials, US-allied local strongmen, and aggressive international forces.”
Second, the US military strategy during 2010 resulted in continuing and extensive damage to the Afghan population, property, and environment. They write:
“In Kandahar, the US is bombarding populated areas with smart rocket launchers and guided warheads, razing orchards, destroying homes, and partnering with people like the brutal commander [8] Colonel Abdul Razik and his militia. This increase in offensive operations, night raids, drone attacks, and use of irregular local forces remain precisely the tactics that provoke civilian outrage [9] even as they increase Taliban losses. Even more problematic, the international community never developed a complementary and much-needed political strategy that reinforces Afghan national unity and builds trust between state and society through genuine political reform and reconciliation at all levels of society.”
Third, Rosen and Marika provide evidence on the views of ordinary Afghan cities, focusing on their own experiences and future prospects. The evidence comes from a study sponsored in 2009 by LSE Global Governance at the London School of Economics and the Civil Society Development Center in Afghanistan. Rosen and Marika
“engaged a range of selected Afghan citizens - community, religious, and tribal leaders; NGO and community activists; teachers and educators; and, students and youth leaders – in seven regions to capture their experiences of insecurity and their views on how to secure Afghanistan’s future, including the provinces of Balkh, Baghlan, Herat, Kabul, Kandahar, Khost, and Nangarhar.” They identify three themes from the first rounds of interviews.
“ Firstly, the Taliban movement is a symptom of larger ills, and the continued focus on defeating them obscures the fact that the post-2001 political and economic order the international community helped create is the fundamental driver of instability, violence, and recruitment into the insurgency. Secondly, the current strategy with its near exclusive focus on government and armed actors as partners in the war effort perpetuates a system of personalized politics, power-grabbing and profiteering that fosters insecurity, corrupts Afghan society, and prevents the emergence of alternative political forces…. [while continuing] more as a mutual business enterprise in which belligerents – the political and economic elites, the internationals, and the insurgents – use insecurity as a cover for personal political and economic ambitions. They point to the massive amounts of international aid underwriting a perverse political economy that has created a nexus of financial interests between corrupt government officials, warlords, international contractors, and even the Taliban….”
“Finally… most Afghans want a rational outcome that produces a participatory system of governance rooted in Afghan values and able to provide minimally adequate services of justice, health, and education. Most Afghans do not challenge the existence of the state itself and support a unified Afghanistan…. In assessing the current struggle, Afghans look to progress on questions of justice, representation and allocation of resources rather than to kill-and-capture rates or announcements of new programmes in Kandahar or Helmand that link the populace to the government.”
In short, the situation in Afghanistan remains mired in conflict, corruption, destruction, and extensive human casualties and death. A major part of the problem is that the US and its allies are out-of-touch with or are misreading the views of ordinary Afghan citizens. Rosen and Marika believe that the situation can be ameliorated, though “not all of it can be undone.” Nonetheless, they can imagine policies that would be in the interests of the broad range of Afghan citizens they have interviewed.
First, with respect to the international aid coming into the country, the interviewees say that it must be better targeted, designed, and overseen, as well as making sure “that aid produces tangible results on the ground.”
Second, the international community could use the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act to “crack down on corruption.” And, further, the “US Government should seriously consider prosecuting those Afghan-Americans who have participated in corrupt practices.”
Third, “the international community – particularly the US – must do more than pay lip service to a political solution and de-escalate the conflict….This requires more emphasis on issues of governance, justice, and representation; a reconsideration of the exclusive partnerships developed with the pro-government local strongmen; a genuine effort to defend the Afghan population from predatory political and economic elites (and not only insurgents); and, increased checks on impunity and marginalization.”
Unfortunately, there is little in US history that would justify much hope in seeing US foreign and military policies transformed in ways to give humanitarian and democratic values priority over the interests of those in the US who dominate the economic and political systems. It’s not out of the question, though there is no recent precedent. We’ll see. It depends in part on how the following questions are answered. Will we witness the Obama administration and the US Congress reduce the allocation of money and resources to the US military in Afghanistan? Will there be a withdrawal of a large number of troops over the course of the year? Will the US and her allies, along with other concerned nations and the UN, find ways to support the reconstruction of Afghanistan that are consistent with the views of the majority of the Afghan people?
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Afghanistan as deepening quagmire
One definition of “quagmire” is “a difficult or inextricable position,” and some definitions of the word inextricable are (1) “cannot be disentangled or untied” and (2) “so complicated or involved as to be insolvable.” As time passes, the 9-year-plus US/NATO war/occupation of Afghanistan seems more and more like a quagmire, or (let me expand a bit) being bogged down in a deteriorating and increasingly insolvable, harmful, and costly circumstances that alienate a growing number of Afghan people and citizens in other countries of the Middle East and Central Asia, leads to growing opposition to the war among the American public, and helps to perpetuate the idea that military force, once deployed, must continue.
In human terms, the casualty rates among US and allied forces are climbing and the civilian casualty rates are going up.
Here is just one example of the human damage from a Reuters article, January 11, 2011, based on reporting by Hamid Shalizi, writing by Michelle Nichols, and editing by Ron Popeski.
KABUL “Afghan and foreign forces have caused more than $100 million damage to fruit crops and homes during security operations in southern Kandahar province, a government delegation said on Tuesday.
“Tens of thousands of foreign and Afghan troops are deployed in Kandahar, a traditional stronghold of the Afghan Taliban, where they have been conducting military offensives over the past year.
“Violence is at its worst since U.S.-backed Afghan forces overthrew the Islamist government in 2001 after it refused to hand over al Qaeda militants, including Osama bin Laden, after the September 11 attacks on the United States.
“The government delegation, led by President Hamid Karzai's adviser, Mohammad Sadiq Aziz, said Afghan and foreign forces caused unreasonable damage to homes and orchards, just as the harvest was about to begin, and displaced a number of people.
[….]
“In November, the Afghan Rights Monitor (ARM), a human rights group, reported widespread damage to hundreds of houses in the same three districts, home to about 300,000 of the province's more than one million inhabitants.
“It said foreign forces had used aerial bombing to strike Taliban strongholds and to set off mines and homemade bombs sometimes hidden as booby traps in private homes.”
In addition, the economic costs for the US are soaring and adding as much as $120 billion for the next fiscal year. The rising US expenditures on the war/occupation are off budget and identified as “supplementary funding,” just like they were during the eight years of the Bush administration. But the expenditures don’t vanish. They show up – or will show up - in the US annual deficit, expected to be well over $1.5 trillion in 2011-2012, and to the ever-climbing, now $14 trillion plus, US national debt. What an awful, stupid waste.
Furthermore, the economy of Afghanistan, outside of the world-leading poppy and opium sectors, and outside of some neighborhoods in Kabul, remains largely in shambles.
This is not to say there are not some success stories. The Central Asia Institute, inspired by Greg Mortenson’s work, had by 2009 “established 131 schools that currently serve more than 58,000 students, most of them girls” (Stones into Schools, p. 15).
But the larger picture is grim, and reflected in one of the highest poverty and illiteracy rates in the world, in the increased US air war as well as in the increased ground war, and in the destruction and corruption spurred by it all. The UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights provides some gruesome facts in a report titled “Massive human rights deficit”:
“Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries on earth with two out of every three of its citizens struggling to provide naan-o-chai (bread and tea) for their families. The maternal mortality rate is the second highest in the world, it ranks at three for child mortality, only a quarter of the population have access to supplies of drinking water and less than 15 percent of women are literate.” (http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/massivehrdeficit.aspx)
Also counterproductive as well as disaffecting. Juan Cole posts the following headline on his blog Informed Comment (Jan. 4, 2011): “Taliban getting stronger as US public support for Afghanistan War collapses.” Cole continues:
“Afghan President Hamid Karzai is getting weaker over time, and the Taliban are getting stronger, according to Jessica Mathews, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Matthews says that there will be a lull in the winter, but insurgent operations will pick up in the spring. As NATO allies draw down (many have announced their intention to leave the country), the US will likely need more troops to replace the departing European ones and to confront the growing insurgent challenge, she says. She does not think Afghanistan will emerge as a political issue in the next presidential race.”
Cole also refers to a recent CNN poll and its implications.
“A recent CNN poll found that only 35% of Americans support the US military mission in Afghanistan, and 63% oppose it. Even among Republicans, where there is a slight majority in favor, some 44% oppose the war! And, 56% of Americans think the war is going badly. Since Americans like a winner, that statistic is perhaps the most deadly for the Obama administration and the Pentagon. As recently as March, 2010, the country was evenly divided and a majority thought that the war was going well. But note that March was just after the Marjah campaign in Helmand province, which created a press image of activity and progress, and there was talk about a big offensive in Qandahar. But Marjah was not the quick victory Americans had hoped for and the Qandahar campaign is a far subtler and less dramatic affair than had been envisioned last spring.”
“But in postmodern warfare, it doesn’t seem to matter if the public supports the war or not.”
[….]
In his final sentence, Cole writes:
“In a recent paper at Chatham House, Kate Clark argues that lack of social justice and bad government policy are driving the increasing insurgency” – and it appears to be getting worse.
We should be reminded of what Malalai Joya pointed out in her book, A Woman Among Warlords (2009): “Today we Afghans remain trapped, between two enemies: the Taliban on one side and US/NATO forces and their warlord hirelings on the other” (p. 227). But it may be that the corruption and terror for Afghans has spread since Joya wrote her book a couple of years ago.
For example, Mujib Mashal finds evidence on “Rogue militias abuse rural Afghans” in an article for Al Jazeera (Jan. 12, 2011). He writes:
“’At night, they come out on the roads with their faces covered,’" said Obaid Sediq, a resident of Central Baghlan in northeastern Afghanistan. ‘Many times they have stopped our car and emptied our pockets. They have guns and you can't say anything back.’
“The Arbakai, semi-official local militias, have committed tremendous abuses in Afghanistan's northeastern provinces of Kunduz and Baghlan. President Hamid Karzai finally ordered their disarmament last month.
“These militias are known to collect forced ‘taxes’ from feeble locals, create illegal checkpoints, seize property, and detain people in private jails - all at gun point and sanctioned by the government in Kabul.
“This widespread abuse damages government legitimacy and casts doubt over a recent program to create local police forces in other parts of the country. It also brings into question the effectiveness of the quick solutions sought to the security problems in Afghanistan.
“Historically, Arbakai militias were a major part of the tribal security apparatus in southeastern Afghanistan. Loosely linked to the central government, these groups typically came together from village families and provided security in times of need. A standing police force in these areas was a rarity.
“In the north, however, the idea of Arbakai is new. In fact, they are largely made up of former Mujahideen from the civil war period who were disarmed in the early years of President Karzai's government. In the past couple years, they have regrouped under their former commanders, re-christened as Arbakai with new weapons.”
[….]
“In the past three years, however, the security situation has deteriorated, even in the north. The national police, nine years after its rebirth, failed to meet security needs. The central government has resorted to arming local groups. Those who had recently been disarmed found themselves in a position of power again - by gathering as Arbakai militias to fill the security void. These men were to defend against any Taliban spread within the bounds of their village. But, as has happened so many times in Afghanistan, some Arbakai militias turned on the locals and used their guns for abuse of every kind.
[….]
“According to the governor, over 800 Arbakai forces have been active in Khanabad for the past year and half. In this period, they have occupied people's land, forced people to pay their everyday expenses, imprisoned people over personal animosities, and have been involved in murder and mayhem, much of which has gone unaccounted.
"’As the governor, I feel ashamed in my helplessness,’ says Nizamuldin. ‘People come to complain of their abuses often, but my hands are tied because my police cannot match them.’ According to the governor, there are 152 registered villages in Khanabad but only 117 active police officers at the governor's disposal.
[….]
"’In theory, the Afghan Local Police are different from the Arbakais, and steps to prevent abuse might exist,’ says Lt. General Hadi Khaled, a former Deputy Minister of the Interior. ‘The implementation is usually hasty and left to powerful locals. That's where the problem begins.’
“According to General Khaled, the creation of such groups - under any name - will make governance difficult. In appearance, he says, security might improve. But beneath the surface, tremendous problems will arise.
"’Lets face up to the reality,’ says General Khaled. ‘These men will answer to their own bosses, and not to the government. With their presence, law and order will be impossible.’”
So many Afghans suffer. And yet US military and political leaders insist that the same approach to Afghanistan must continue until at least 2014 and probably for many years thereafter. This is not so unusual, this foolhardy and counterproductive pattern. Go back and read the books by William Blum (e.g., Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II) or the new book by David Swanson, War is a Lie.
Let me finish with a quote from Kurt Vonnegut’s book, A Man Without a Country (2005):
“I apologize to all of you who are the same age as my grandchildren. And many of you reading this are probably the same age as my grandchildren.
“They, like you, are being royally shafted and lied to by our Baby Bomber corporations and government.
Yes, this planet is in a terrible mess. But it has always been a mess. There have never been any ‘Good Old Days,’ there have just been days. And as I say to my grandchildren, ‘Don’t look at me, I just got here.’”
In human terms, the casualty rates among US and allied forces are climbing and the civilian casualty rates are going up.
Here is just one example of the human damage from a Reuters article, January 11, 2011, based on reporting by Hamid Shalizi, writing by Michelle Nichols, and editing by Ron Popeski.
KABUL “Afghan and foreign forces have caused more than $100 million damage to fruit crops and homes during security operations in southern Kandahar province, a government delegation said on Tuesday.
“Tens of thousands of foreign and Afghan troops are deployed in Kandahar, a traditional stronghold of the Afghan Taliban, where they have been conducting military offensives over the past year.
“Violence is at its worst since U.S.-backed Afghan forces overthrew the Islamist government in 2001 after it refused to hand over al Qaeda militants, including Osama bin Laden, after the September 11 attacks on the United States.
“The government delegation, led by President Hamid Karzai's adviser, Mohammad Sadiq Aziz, said Afghan and foreign forces caused unreasonable damage to homes and orchards, just as the harvest was about to begin, and displaced a number of people.
[….]
“In November, the Afghan Rights Monitor (ARM), a human rights group, reported widespread damage to hundreds of houses in the same three districts, home to about 300,000 of the province's more than one million inhabitants.
“It said foreign forces had used aerial bombing to strike Taliban strongholds and to set off mines and homemade bombs sometimes hidden as booby traps in private homes.”
In addition, the economic costs for the US are soaring and adding as much as $120 billion for the next fiscal year. The rising US expenditures on the war/occupation are off budget and identified as “supplementary funding,” just like they were during the eight years of the Bush administration. But the expenditures don’t vanish. They show up – or will show up - in the US annual deficit, expected to be well over $1.5 trillion in 2011-2012, and to the ever-climbing, now $14 trillion plus, US national debt. What an awful, stupid waste.
Furthermore, the economy of Afghanistan, outside of the world-leading poppy and opium sectors, and outside of some neighborhoods in Kabul, remains largely in shambles.
This is not to say there are not some success stories. The Central Asia Institute, inspired by Greg Mortenson’s work, had by 2009 “established 131 schools that currently serve more than 58,000 students, most of them girls” (Stones into Schools, p. 15).
But the larger picture is grim, and reflected in one of the highest poverty and illiteracy rates in the world, in the increased US air war as well as in the increased ground war, and in the destruction and corruption spurred by it all. The UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights provides some gruesome facts in a report titled “Massive human rights deficit”:
“Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries on earth with two out of every three of its citizens struggling to provide naan-o-chai (bread and tea) for their families. The maternal mortality rate is the second highest in the world, it ranks at three for child mortality, only a quarter of the population have access to supplies of drinking water and less than 15 percent of women are literate.” (http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/massivehrdeficit.aspx)
Also counterproductive as well as disaffecting. Juan Cole posts the following headline on his blog Informed Comment (Jan. 4, 2011): “Taliban getting stronger as US public support for Afghanistan War collapses.” Cole continues:
“Afghan President Hamid Karzai is getting weaker over time, and the Taliban are getting stronger, according to Jessica Mathews, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Matthews says that there will be a lull in the winter, but insurgent operations will pick up in the spring. As NATO allies draw down (many have announced their intention to leave the country), the US will likely need more troops to replace the departing European ones and to confront the growing insurgent challenge, she says. She does not think Afghanistan will emerge as a political issue in the next presidential race.”
Cole also refers to a recent CNN poll and its implications.
“A recent CNN poll found that only 35% of Americans support the US military mission in Afghanistan, and 63% oppose it. Even among Republicans, where there is a slight majority in favor, some 44% oppose the war! And, 56% of Americans think the war is going badly. Since Americans like a winner, that statistic is perhaps the most deadly for the Obama administration and the Pentagon. As recently as March, 2010, the country was evenly divided and a majority thought that the war was going well. But note that March was just after the Marjah campaign in Helmand province, which created a press image of activity and progress, and there was talk about a big offensive in Qandahar. But Marjah was not the quick victory Americans had hoped for and the Qandahar campaign is a far subtler and less dramatic affair than had been envisioned last spring.”
“But in postmodern warfare, it doesn’t seem to matter if the public supports the war or not.”
[….]
In his final sentence, Cole writes:
“In a recent paper at Chatham House, Kate Clark argues that lack of social justice and bad government policy are driving the increasing insurgency” – and it appears to be getting worse.
We should be reminded of what Malalai Joya pointed out in her book, A Woman Among Warlords (2009): “Today we Afghans remain trapped, between two enemies: the Taliban on one side and US/NATO forces and their warlord hirelings on the other” (p. 227). But it may be that the corruption and terror for Afghans has spread since Joya wrote her book a couple of years ago.
For example, Mujib Mashal finds evidence on “Rogue militias abuse rural Afghans” in an article for Al Jazeera (Jan. 12, 2011). He writes:
“’At night, they come out on the roads with their faces covered,’" said Obaid Sediq, a resident of Central Baghlan in northeastern Afghanistan. ‘Many times they have stopped our car and emptied our pockets. They have guns and you can't say anything back.’
“The Arbakai, semi-official local militias, have committed tremendous abuses in Afghanistan's northeastern provinces of Kunduz and Baghlan. President Hamid Karzai finally ordered their disarmament last month.
“These militias are known to collect forced ‘taxes’ from feeble locals, create illegal checkpoints, seize property, and detain people in private jails - all at gun point and sanctioned by the government in Kabul.
“This widespread abuse damages government legitimacy and casts doubt over a recent program to create local police forces in other parts of the country. It also brings into question the effectiveness of the quick solutions sought to the security problems in Afghanistan.
“Historically, Arbakai militias were a major part of the tribal security apparatus in southeastern Afghanistan. Loosely linked to the central government, these groups typically came together from village families and provided security in times of need. A standing police force in these areas was a rarity.
“In the north, however, the idea of Arbakai is new. In fact, they are largely made up of former Mujahideen from the civil war period who were disarmed in the early years of President Karzai's government. In the past couple years, they have regrouped under their former commanders, re-christened as Arbakai with new weapons.”
[….]
“In the past three years, however, the security situation has deteriorated, even in the north. The national police, nine years after its rebirth, failed to meet security needs. The central government has resorted to arming local groups. Those who had recently been disarmed found themselves in a position of power again - by gathering as Arbakai militias to fill the security void. These men were to defend against any Taliban spread within the bounds of their village. But, as has happened so many times in Afghanistan, some Arbakai militias turned on the locals and used their guns for abuse of every kind.
[….]
“According to the governor, over 800 Arbakai forces have been active in Khanabad for the past year and half. In this period, they have occupied people's land, forced people to pay their everyday expenses, imprisoned people over personal animosities, and have been involved in murder and mayhem, much of which has gone unaccounted.
"’As the governor, I feel ashamed in my helplessness,’ says Nizamuldin. ‘People come to complain of their abuses often, but my hands are tied because my police cannot match them.’ According to the governor, there are 152 registered villages in Khanabad but only 117 active police officers at the governor's disposal.
[….]
"’In theory, the Afghan Local Police are different from the Arbakais, and steps to prevent abuse might exist,’ says Lt. General Hadi Khaled, a former Deputy Minister of the Interior. ‘The implementation is usually hasty and left to powerful locals. That's where the problem begins.’
“According to General Khaled, the creation of such groups - under any name - will make governance difficult. In appearance, he says, security might improve. But beneath the surface, tremendous problems will arise.
"’Lets face up to the reality,’ says General Khaled. ‘These men will answer to their own bosses, and not to the government. With their presence, law and order will be impossible.’”
So many Afghans suffer. And yet US military and political leaders insist that the same approach to Afghanistan must continue until at least 2014 and probably for many years thereafter. This is not so unusual, this foolhardy and counterproductive pattern. Go back and read the books by William Blum (e.g., Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II) or the new book by David Swanson, War is a Lie.
Let me finish with a quote from Kurt Vonnegut’s book, A Man Without a Country (2005):
“I apologize to all of you who are the same age as my grandchildren. And many of you reading this are probably the same age as my grandchildren.
“They, like you, are being royally shafted and lied to by our Baby Bomber corporations and government.
Yes, this planet is in a terrible mess. But it has always been a mess. There have never been any ‘Good Old Days,’ there have just been days. And as I say to my grandchildren, ‘Don’t look at me, I just got here.’”
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Voices from Afghanistan demanding an immediate withdrawal of US troops
After my two paragraphs, I reproduce a very moving and powerful letter from the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers and Afghans for Peace It does not mince words. With illuminating clarity, the letter calls for a withdrawal of US and allied troops immediately. The costs of the occupation are just too great. The letter offers a profound antithesis to President Obama's upbeat message to America on Thursday, Dec. 16, 2010, in which the President insists that the occupation in Afghanistan is succeeding and that the US will remain in Afghanistan until at least 2014 and perhaps "beyond."
The President did not allude to polls of Afghan opinions or, for that matter, to recent polls of American opinion. Nor did he refer to the ongoing devastation of the country by an escalated US airwar, US special forces, undisciplined Afghan police and soldiers, Afghan warlords, or to the mounting civilian casualties and displaced persons among the Afghan people, or to the increasing casualties among US troops. President Obama insisted that our core goal is to wipe out al Qaeda, and to do this safe havens for al Qaeda in Pakistan must be eliminated, one way or another. In the meantime, US generals are suggesting yet more US troops are necessary to reign in the Taliban, a category implicitly covering diverse Afghan insurgent groups, to overcome widespread corruption, as well as to stamping out al Qaeda once and for all, which is a pipe dream given the decentralized nature of the group and how, according to many experts, most of the violence in Afghanistan is waged by local, not international, groups.
We Want You Out: An Open Letter from the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers and Afghans for Peace
Friday 17 December 2010
by: Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers, t r u t h o u t Op-Ed
Voices for Creative Nonviolence representatives in Kabul are privileged to be meeting with representatives of the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers (AYPV), a group of teenagers based in Bamiyan, Afghanistan who campaign to promote nonviolence. As the Obama administration releases its December review of the US war in Afghanistan, the AYPV, along with Afghans for Peace, have issued a review of their experiences. To express support for their letter, follow this link.
To all the leaders of our world, the leaders of the US-led coalition, the Afghan government, the "Taliban/Al-Qaeda" and regional countries:
We are intolerably angry.
All our senses are hurting.
Our women, our men and, yes, shame on you, our children, are grieving.
Your Afghan civilian-military strategy is a murderous stench we smell, see, hear and breathe.
President Obama, and all the elite players and people of the world, why?
America's $250 million annual communications budget just to scream propaganda on this war of perceptions, with its nauseating rhetoric mimicked by Osama and other warlords, is powerless before the silent wailing of every anemic mother.
We will no longer be passive prey to your disrespectful systems of oligarchic, plutocratic war against the people.
Your systems feed the rich and powerful. They are glaringly unequal. They do not listen, do not think, and, worst, they do not care.
We choose not to gluttonize with you. We choose not to be trained by you. We choose not to be pawned by you.
We henceforth refuse every weapon you kill us with, every dollar you bait us with and every lie you manipulate us with.
We are not beasts.
We are Afghans, Americans, Europeans, Asians and global citizens.
Yes, you have the false, self-appointed power to arrest us over expressing the public opinion of ordinary folk, students, farmers, shepherds, laborers, teachers, doctors … people who now have nowhere to turn and nowhere to hide.
This world public opinion against the Afghan war has been clearly expressed and is larger than any number of Wikileaks you seek to suppress. So, come arrest us all as we civilly disobey you.
Come arrest us all.
Yes, you have the army, police and apparatchik to smother us and to bribe those who are Pavlov-reflexed to money, but you cannot stop us from restoring our voice.
We refuse to prostitute our hearts and minds.
We refuse you.
Not you the human person, but you the greedy system of self-interested power.
Again and again here in Afghanistan, we have seen a hope for nonviolence light up; every day we see a yearning for humane relationships, and because of this, love is how we now firmly take our stand.
We will listen to the People on December 19th, on the Global Day of Listening to Afghans, and we invite every one of you to pick up your phone to call us, to share one another's pain, and to call our world to urgent reconciliation. We invite the world public opinion to overwhelm us! Email youthpeacevolunteers@gmail.com to arrange a call.
We wish to invite all the people of the world because when the powers are not listening to the people, listening becomes an act of love, it becomes a solidarity of nonviolent resistance.
How can we do any less?
14-year-old Abdulai's father was killed by the "Taliban" and so, like every other human being, he copes with sorrow, hate, fear and anger.
But he wakes up to the chronic war days in his land sensing that "something is very wrong with the world I'm caught up in"; "these elders of the world are not getting it."
How does trillion-deficit killing, followed by the strategy of escalated killing and yet another review for more killing, work?
How does it make anyone safer?
How does it solve the incorruptible corruption, unequalled inequality and inviolate violence we face daily?
Your policies, skewed-ly "diagnosed" and "reviewed" in a cold, clinical manner divorced from reality, have been deaf to the concerns and needs of the people; thus we endeavor to have a People's Afghanistan December Review, because that's what ordinary people can do.
We would try not to "throw" our shoes at you. We would try to recognize the better side of all human beings and thus continue to serve our commoner's tea and bread to one and all. But we do ask, plead and demand that you stop your unsustainable, superpower militarism.
We want peace.
We want you out.
With singular sincerity,
Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers Afghans for Peace
Quote from Malalia Joya: My people, the suppressed millions, are my heroes. They are the real source of any positive change in Afghanistan and their power is stronger than anything else. And anti-war protesters around the world, those who are standing against the destructive policies of world powers. There is a superpower in the world besides the US government - world public opinion. -Malalai Joya
Excerpts from Wikipedia's entry on "International public opinion on the war in Afghanistan":
International public opinion is largely opposed to the war in Afghanistan.
The 25-nation Pew Global Attitudes survey in June 2009 reported that majorities or pluralities in 18 out of 25 countries want U.S. and NATO to remove their military troops from Afghanistan as soon as possible.
Despite American calls for NATO allies to send more troops to Afghanistan, there was majority or plurality opposition to such action in every one of the NATO countries surveyed: Germany (63% opposition), France (62%), Poland (57%), Canada (55%), Britain (51%), Spain (50%), and Turkey (49%).
In Europe, poll after poll in France, Germany and even Britain show that the European public want their troops to be pulled out and less money spent on the war in Afghanistan
ABC News/BBC/ARD/Washington Post poll of 1,691 Afghan adults from October 29-November 13, 2010
Afghans indicated they were more pessimistic about the direction of their country, less confident about US-led coalition troops providing security and more willing to negotiate with the Taliban than a year ago. More than half of Afghans interviewed said US and NATO forces should begin withdrawing from the country in mid-2011 or sooner.
Malalai Joya:
There are the occupation forces from the sky, dropping cluster bombs and depleted uranium, and on the ground there are the fundamentalist warlords and the Taliban, with their own guns.
If I should die, and you should choose to carry on my work, you are welcome to visit my grave. Pour some water on it and shout three times. I want to hear your voice. - Malalai Joya
Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers (AYPV), a group of teenagers based in Bamiyan
The President did not allude to polls of Afghan opinions or, for that matter, to recent polls of American opinion. Nor did he refer to the ongoing devastation of the country by an escalated US airwar, US special forces, undisciplined Afghan police and soldiers, Afghan warlords, or to the mounting civilian casualties and displaced persons among the Afghan people, or to the increasing casualties among US troops. President Obama insisted that our core goal is to wipe out al Qaeda, and to do this safe havens for al Qaeda in Pakistan must be eliminated, one way or another. In the meantime, US generals are suggesting yet more US troops are necessary to reign in the Taliban, a category implicitly covering diverse Afghan insurgent groups, to overcome widespread corruption, as well as to stamping out al Qaeda once and for all, which is a pipe dream given the decentralized nature of the group and how, according to many experts, most of the violence in Afghanistan is waged by local, not international, groups.
We Want You Out: An Open Letter from the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers and Afghans for Peace
Friday 17 December 2010
by: Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers, t r u t h o u t Op-Ed
Voices for Creative Nonviolence representatives in Kabul are privileged to be meeting with representatives of the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers (AYPV), a group of teenagers based in Bamiyan, Afghanistan who campaign to promote nonviolence. As the Obama administration releases its December review of the US war in Afghanistan, the AYPV, along with Afghans for Peace, have issued a review of their experiences. To express support for their letter, follow this link.
To all the leaders of our world, the leaders of the US-led coalition, the Afghan government, the "Taliban/Al-Qaeda" and regional countries:
We are intolerably angry.
All our senses are hurting.
Our women, our men and, yes, shame on you, our children, are grieving.
Your Afghan civilian-military strategy is a murderous stench we smell, see, hear and breathe.
President Obama, and all the elite players and people of the world, why?
America's $250 million annual communications budget just to scream propaganda on this war of perceptions, with its nauseating rhetoric mimicked by Osama and other warlords, is powerless before the silent wailing of every anemic mother.
We will no longer be passive prey to your disrespectful systems of oligarchic, plutocratic war against the people.
Your systems feed the rich and powerful. They are glaringly unequal. They do not listen, do not think, and, worst, they do not care.
We choose not to gluttonize with you. We choose not to be trained by you. We choose not to be pawned by you.
We henceforth refuse every weapon you kill us with, every dollar you bait us with and every lie you manipulate us with.
We are not beasts.
We are Afghans, Americans, Europeans, Asians and global citizens.
Yes, you have the false, self-appointed power to arrest us over expressing the public opinion of ordinary folk, students, farmers, shepherds, laborers, teachers, doctors … people who now have nowhere to turn and nowhere to hide.
This world public opinion against the Afghan war has been clearly expressed and is larger than any number of Wikileaks you seek to suppress. So, come arrest us all as we civilly disobey you.
Come arrest us all.
Yes, you have the army, police and apparatchik to smother us and to bribe those who are Pavlov-reflexed to money, but you cannot stop us from restoring our voice.
We refuse to prostitute our hearts and minds.
We refuse you.
Not you the human person, but you the greedy system of self-interested power.
Again and again here in Afghanistan, we have seen a hope for nonviolence light up; every day we see a yearning for humane relationships, and because of this, love is how we now firmly take our stand.
We will listen to the People on December 19th, on the Global Day of Listening to Afghans, and we invite every one of you to pick up your phone to call us, to share one another's pain, and to call our world to urgent reconciliation. We invite the world public opinion to overwhelm us! Email youthpeacevolunteers@gmail.com to arrange a call.
We wish to invite all the people of the world because when the powers are not listening to the people, listening becomes an act of love, it becomes a solidarity of nonviolent resistance.
How can we do any less?
14-year-old Abdulai's father was killed by the "Taliban" and so, like every other human being, he copes with sorrow, hate, fear and anger.
But he wakes up to the chronic war days in his land sensing that "something is very wrong with the world I'm caught up in"; "these elders of the world are not getting it."
How does trillion-deficit killing, followed by the strategy of escalated killing and yet another review for more killing, work?
How does it make anyone safer?
How does it solve the incorruptible corruption, unequalled inequality and inviolate violence we face daily?
Your policies, skewed-ly "diagnosed" and "reviewed" in a cold, clinical manner divorced from reality, have been deaf to the concerns and needs of the people; thus we endeavor to have a People's Afghanistan December Review, because that's what ordinary people can do.
We would try not to "throw" our shoes at you. We would try to recognize the better side of all human beings and thus continue to serve our commoner's tea and bread to one and all. But we do ask, plead and demand that you stop your unsustainable, superpower militarism.
We want peace.
We want you out.
With singular sincerity,
Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers Afghans for Peace
Quote from Malalia Joya: My people, the suppressed millions, are my heroes. They are the real source of any positive change in Afghanistan and their power is stronger than anything else. And anti-war protesters around the world, those who are standing against the destructive policies of world powers. There is a superpower in the world besides the US government - world public opinion. -Malalai Joya
Excerpts from Wikipedia's entry on "International public opinion on the war in Afghanistan":
International public opinion is largely opposed to the war in Afghanistan.
The 25-nation Pew Global Attitudes survey in June 2009 reported that majorities or pluralities in 18 out of 25 countries want U.S. and NATO to remove their military troops from Afghanistan as soon as possible.
Despite American calls for NATO allies to send more troops to Afghanistan, there was majority or plurality opposition to such action in every one of the NATO countries surveyed: Germany (63% opposition), France (62%), Poland (57%), Canada (55%), Britain (51%), Spain (50%), and Turkey (49%).
In Europe, poll after poll in France, Germany and even Britain show that the European public want their troops to be pulled out and less money spent on the war in Afghanistan
ABC News/BBC/ARD/Washington Post poll of 1,691 Afghan adults from October 29-November 13, 2010
Afghans indicated they were more pessimistic about the direction of their country, less confident about US-led coalition troops providing security and more willing to negotiate with the Taliban than a year ago. More than half of Afghans interviewed said US and NATO forces should begin withdrawing from the country in mid-2011 or sooner.
Malalai Joya:
There are the occupation forces from the sky, dropping cluster bombs and depleted uranium, and on the ground there are the fundamentalist warlords and the Taliban, with their own guns.
If I should die, and you should choose to carry on my work, you are welcome to visit my grave. Pour some water on it and shout three times. I want to hear your voice. - Malalai Joya
Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers (AYPV), a group of teenagers based in Bamiyan
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Two levels in understanding US Afghanistan War
Two levels for understanding US Afghanistan War
Post for stopafghanwar
There are two levels for understanding the US-led and ongoing occupation of Afghanistan.
One level deals with news and analysis about current developments and debates about US troop casualties, whether troop levels are sufficient, whether US forces are making military progress (or is there light at the end of the tunnel), whether the Afghan elections are honest (or just how dishonest), whether the Karzai government is totally corrupt or only partially so, whether the special forces and unmanned drones and other destructive tactics are counterproductive with the goals of counterinsurgency, whether and to what extent the “Taliban” is gaining the support of the Afghan people, whether or how much private contractors are exploiting US taxpayer funds, whether the US military is forced to pay lucrative bribes to Taliban forces and certain tribal groups just to allow military supplies to get to their destinations, how long the US-led occupation will last, whether there will be a need for additional “surges,” and so forth, like, what’s with the training efforts of Afghan police and army and what is Pakistan up to. US think tanks and policy advisers are constantly offering ideas on how to deal with one or more of these problems.
Here is an example of analysis at this level. Juan Cole, the expert commentator on the Afghanistan situation – and much more – provides the following post on Dec 3, 2010, from his award-winning blog, Informed Comment. The title: “The Karzai Problem in Afghanistan: Wikileaks”
“The bodies of the six US troops — killed Monday by a newly recruited Afghan border guard who turned Taliban — arrived back in the United States late Wednesday. That 6 US soldiers were killed in one day was generally not news on the so-called news networks, though of course the major print media reported it.
“The troubling question is what they died fighting for. My own hypothesis is that the US is still in Afghanistan at this late date mainly to shore up the central government of President Hamid Karzai.
“But Karzai is himself extremely problematic. According to cables released by Wikileaks, and summarized by the Guardian, Karzai is prone to paranoid conspiracy theories, believes that the US is animated by sinister motives such as breaking up Pakistan and undermining Afghanistan, and is erratic and corrupt. He blithely just released 5 notorious drug runners captured by the US and turned over to him. He accused the US of funding the presidential campaign of his rival, Abdallah Abdallah, in the fall of 2009.
“Gen. David Petraeus is quoted as admitting that Karzai is “weak” but saying it is better to leave him there.
“But the problem with Karzai is not that he is weak. Rather it is that he is corrupt and believes in conspiracy theories, and the combination of the two causes him to act high-handedly and improperly.
“And here is the moral question: Is it right to ask US warriors to fight and die to prop up the administration of Hamid Karzai?
“And, how likely is it that Afghanistan National Army officers and troops are going to risk their lives for someone who is paranoid, erratic and corrupt?
“In short, the whole strategy of the US, of rapidly training Afghan security forces who could establish order in the country, assumes that the Afghanistan National Army and the police will be loyal to Karzai. But how likely is that?
“PS Wikileaks was down Thursday evening but went live with a new dns early Friday morning. The 600 or so State Department cables so far releasedcan be searched here.”
There is nothing wrong with this first level of analysis. As in Cole’s many posts, they are absolutely necessary to help us keep abreast of events in this war-torn and devastated country. Another level of analysis, which Cole well understands and writes about in some other posts, articles, and a book, deals with more fundamental strategic and political-economic forces. David Williams and Phyllis Bennis provide an example of this perspective in their book, Ending the US War in Afghanistan: A Primer, which is an outstanding reference book for learning about a host of important questions and answers on Afghanistan. They write as follows.
“While Afghanistan has only relatively small reserves of strategic resources, it is located smack in the middle of the oil- and gas-rich Central Asia/Caspian Sea Basin region. Land-locked Afghanistan has a millennial history as part of the trade and cultural exchange of the Silk Road, and in the modern world remains a strategic transit point for its resource-rich neighbors to get oil and gas to far-off markets. The US relationship with Afghanistan both pre- and post-9/11…has been grounded in the potential for these oil and natural gas pipelines.
“Afghanistan’s neighbors are also almost all of strategic interest to the US. US tensions with Pakistan and Iran dominate the southern east-to-west arc of Afghanistan’s frontier. Dependence on airbases, access to natural gas and oil, and especially competition – resource-driven and otherwise – with an ascendant Russia…shape US relations with Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan on Afghanistan’s northern borders” (pp. 44-47).
Additionally, one should bear in mind that both Pakistan and India have major interests in how Afghanistan is governed, there are great tensions between them (e.g., Kashmir), and they both have nuclear weapons, along with the capacity to deliver them on each other’s territory. Also recall that the US has played a significant role in the development of their nuclear capacities. The reasons go on. US leaders also want to do everything they can to persuade India not to develop relations with China that may further undermine US hegemonic aspirations in Asia. It’s all bewildering, but real.
So what’s the point of all this. We shouldn’t get entirely lost in the rapid-fire and changing events that are covered by the media and delivered in policy-statements by the White House. And we should never forget that all wars are based on lies, the manipulation of public opinion, destruction and huge numbers of civilian deaths and casualties in the affected countries, our own troop casualities, the waste of US resources, the weakening of diplomatic and other peace-oriented approaches to conflict, the strengthening of conservative and reactionary forces in the US itself, justifications for yet more military spending and a distortion of budget priorities, etc. It all adds up to a no-win, no-win, even worst, unfolding and tragic process.
For a provocative and useful defense of the claim that “War is a Lie,” read the book by that title, authored by David Swanson.
Post for stopafghanwar
There are two levels for understanding the US-led and ongoing occupation of Afghanistan.
One level deals with news and analysis about current developments and debates about US troop casualties, whether troop levels are sufficient, whether US forces are making military progress (or is there light at the end of the tunnel), whether the Afghan elections are honest (or just how dishonest), whether the Karzai government is totally corrupt or only partially so, whether the special forces and unmanned drones and other destructive tactics are counterproductive with the goals of counterinsurgency, whether and to what extent the “Taliban” is gaining the support of the Afghan people, whether or how much private contractors are exploiting US taxpayer funds, whether the US military is forced to pay lucrative bribes to Taliban forces and certain tribal groups just to allow military supplies to get to their destinations, how long the US-led occupation will last, whether there will be a need for additional “surges,” and so forth, like, what’s with the training efforts of Afghan police and army and what is Pakistan up to. US think tanks and policy advisers are constantly offering ideas on how to deal with one or more of these problems.
Here is an example of analysis at this level. Juan Cole, the expert commentator on the Afghanistan situation – and much more – provides the following post on Dec 3, 2010, from his award-winning blog, Informed Comment. The title: “The Karzai Problem in Afghanistan: Wikileaks”
“The bodies of the six US troops — killed Monday by a newly recruited Afghan border guard who turned Taliban — arrived back in the United States late Wednesday. That 6 US soldiers were killed in one day was generally not news on the so-called news networks, though of course the major print media reported it.
“The troubling question is what they died fighting for. My own hypothesis is that the US is still in Afghanistan at this late date mainly to shore up the central government of President Hamid Karzai.
“But Karzai is himself extremely problematic. According to cables released by Wikileaks, and summarized by the Guardian, Karzai is prone to paranoid conspiracy theories, believes that the US is animated by sinister motives such as breaking up Pakistan and undermining Afghanistan, and is erratic and corrupt. He blithely just released 5 notorious drug runners captured by the US and turned over to him. He accused the US of funding the presidential campaign of his rival, Abdallah Abdallah, in the fall of 2009.
“Gen. David Petraeus is quoted as admitting that Karzai is “weak” but saying it is better to leave him there.
“But the problem with Karzai is not that he is weak. Rather it is that he is corrupt and believes in conspiracy theories, and the combination of the two causes him to act high-handedly and improperly.
“And here is the moral question: Is it right to ask US warriors to fight and die to prop up the administration of Hamid Karzai?
“And, how likely is it that Afghanistan National Army officers and troops are going to risk their lives for someone who is paranoid, erratic and corrupt?
“In short, the whole strategy of the US, of rapidly training Afghan security forces who could establish order in the country, assumes that the Afghanistan National Army and the police will be loyal to Karzai. But how likely is that?
“PS Wikileaks was down Thursday evening but went live with a new dns early Friday morning. The 600 or so State Department cables so far releasedcan be searched here.”
There is nothing wrong with this first level of analysis. As in Cole’s many posts, they are absolutely necessary to help us keep abreast of events in this war-torn and devastated country. Another level of analysis, which Cole well understands and writes about in some other posts, articles, and a book, deals with more fundamental strategic and political-economic forces. David Williams and Phyllis Bennis provide an example of this perspective in their book, Ending the US War in Afghanistan: A Primer, which is an outstanding reference book for learning about a host of important questions and answers on Afghanistan. They write as follows.
“While Afghanistan has only relatively small reserves of strategic resources, it is located smack in the middle of the oil- and gas-rich Central Asia/Caspian Sea Basin region. Land-locked Afghanistan has a millennial history as part of the trade and cultural exchange of the Silk Road, and in the modern world remains a strategic transit point for its resource-rich neighbors to get oil and gas to far-off markets. The US relationship with Afghanistan both pre- and post-9/11…has been grounded in the potential for these oil and natural gas pipelines.
“Afghanistan’s neighbors are also almost all of strategic interest to the US. US tensions with Pakistan and Iran dominate the southern east-to-west arc of Afghanistan’s frontier. Dependence on airbases, access to natural gas and oil, and especially competition – resource-driven and otherwise – with an ascendant Russia…shape US relations with Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan on Afghanistan’s northern borders” (pp. 44-47).
Additionally, one should bear in mind that both Pakistan and India have major interests in how Afghanistan is governed, there are great tensions between them (e.g., Kashmir), and they both have nuclear weapons, along with the capacity to deliver them on each other’s territory. Also recall that the US has played a significant role in the development of their nuclear capacities. The reasons go on. US leaders also want to do everything they can to persuade India not to develop relations with China that may further undermine US hegemonic aspirations in Asia. It’s all bewildering, but real.
So what’s the point of all this. We shouldn’t get entirely lost in the rapid-fire and changing events that are covered by the media and delivered in policy-statements by the White House. And we should never forget that all wars are based on lies, the manipulation of public opinion, destruction and huge numbers of civilian deaths and casualties in the affected countries, our own troop casualities, the waste of US resources, the weakening of diplomatic and other peace-oriented approaches to conflict, the strengthening of conservative and reactionary forces in the US itself, justifications for yet more military spending and a distortion of budget priorities, etc. It all adds up to a no-win, no-win, even worst, unfolding and tragic process.
For a provocative and useful defense of the claim that “War is a Lie,” read the book by that title, authored by David Swanson.
Friday, October 29, 2010
Billions of dollars for Afghanistan occupation off budget
The seemingly growing and angry right-wingers in the US are energized by many concerns. They oppose abortion, taxes, any regulation on guns. They want prayer back in the schools. They want an impenetrable wall built across the South West of the US to keep all illegal immigrants out of the country- and want fewer immigrants overall. They want to keep homosexuals out of the military services and stigmatized and marginalized, that is, until Christian therapy can bring them back to "normality."
The go along with the Republican ideas of privatization and deregulation. Don't say much abour outsourcing of jobs to low-wage countries. They hate the idea of government, though personally want the benefits they get from some government programs. Implicitly, this means a different kind of big government, one that would make all of us less free.
This becomes clear, for example, in their support of strong military forces to protect us from enemies. They want a strong military also because, they think, it is the foundation of US power in the world - America first! They also tend to somehow think that military power is necessary to protect our "free market" economy, which, in their logic, makes them personally free, or freer, than otherwise. It also stirs their patriotic feelings and reinforces their macho views of themselves and that disagreements can best be handled by force .
Today, there were two "headlines" on Democracy Now that have some relevance for the right-wingers' views. The headlines reveal how they are being ripped off or not told the whole truth by their own mostly unregulated, but federally debt-financed, military establishment.
Headlines from Democracy Now:
Audit: US Can’t Account for $17.7B in Afghan Spending
A new government audit shows the US can’t account for nearly $18 billion earmarked for the Afghan war. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction says the government doesn’t know how some $17.7 billion obligated to over 7,000 contractors has been disbursed.
Inquiry: Pentagon Official Misled on Spy Program
A Pentagon inquiry has found a senior official deliberately misled top military officers when he established a spy program run by private contractors in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The official, Michael Furlong, established the off-the-books operation to help track and kill suspected militants. Furlong has claimed his superiors authorized the program.
The go along with the Republican ideas of privatization and deregulation. Don't say much abour outsourcing of jobs to low-wage countries. They hate the idea of government, though personally want the benefits they get from some government programs. Implicitly, this means a different kind of big government, one that would make all of us less free.
This becomes clear, for example, in their support of strong military forces to protect us from enemies. They want a strong military also because, they think, it is the foundation of US power in the world - America first! They also tend to somehow think that military power is necessary to protect our "free market" economy, which, in their logic, makes them personally free, or freer, than otherwise. It also stirs their patriotic feelings and reinforces their macho views of themselves and that disagreements can best be handled by force .
Today, there were two "headlines" on Democracy Now that have some relevance for the right-wingers' views. The headlines reveal how they are being ripped off or not told the whole truth by their own mostly unregulated, but federally debt-financed, military establishment.
Headlines from Democracy Now:
Audit: US Can’t Account for $17.7B in Afghan Spending
A new government audit shows the US can’t account for nearly $18 billion earmarked for the Afghan war. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction says the government doesn’t know how some $17.7 billion obligated to over 7,000 contractors has been disbursed.
Inquiry: Pentagon Official Misled on Spy Program
A Pentagon inquiry has found a senior official deliberately misled top military officers when he established a spy program run by private contractors in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The official, Michael Furlong, established the off-the-books operation to help track and kill suspected militants. Furlong has claimed his superiors authorized the program.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Increasing poverty and inequality in Kabul and across Afghanistan
Count the ways that inequality is being increased in Kabul.
On the one hand, powerful oligarchs in government benefit from government corruption. Militias, government officials and gangs control some of the profiable parts of poppy/opium distribution. Those with wealth and connections who have the power to acquire land through force and dispossession, and through massive evictions.
On the other hand, the growing number of poor are forced to survive by creating illegal shanty towns, squatter settlements, and slums, by scrambling to earn a little cash in the informal economy admist high rates of uenemployment and in an overall situations where there is little assistance from the government and where access to NGOs is problematic. The inequality grows across many parts of the country, as US and NATO forces give overwhelming priority to seeking out and trying to kill or capture the Taliban and other insurgents, dropping bombs, and generating chaos that drives yet additional Afghans out of their homes and towns to become refugees, who then wind up living in dismal and seriously under-provisioned camps.
The following article provides further information on the intensified polarization going on in Kabul.
AFGHANISTAN: Mansions amid poverty
19 May 2010 18:18:43 GMT 19 May 2010
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/IRIN/63143f556015f2f3e321065c159687d5.htm
[....]
KABUL, 19 May 2010 (IRIN) - Almost seven years after dozens of poor families were evicted from the suburb of Shirpur in central Kabul where they had lived for decades, they have still not got justice, and the new mansions which have taken their place underline the yawning gap between the haves and the have-nots.
The former shanty town has become a symbol of wealth, affluence and some say decadence, in the second least developed country in the world. Many Afghans mockingly call it "Shirchoor" (lion-grabbing), as it contains many of the city's most outlandish buildings - generally owned by current and former ministers, warlords and other powerful individuals.
A UN special rapporteur, Miloon Kothari, who investigated the Shirpur case in 2003, said in a report: [http://www.unhchr.ch/huricane/huricane.nsf/0/BC10EB9D755A5D8FC1256F5B004A7D97?opendocument] "Notwithstanding the legal considerations as to property rights in this case, I expressed the view that the way in which the forced evictions took place, including excessive use of force, amounted to serious human rights violations."
The spread of Shirpur's mansions, however, can nowhere near keep pace with the mushrooming squatter settlements and slums in and around Kabul where, according to the Ministry of Urban Development, illegal urbanization and land grabbing [http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75508] have been going on for years.
"Shirpur is a small sign of the huge crisis of disparity between the rich and the poor in this country," Kabir Ranjbar, a representative of Kabul in the lower house of parliament, told IRIN.
"The rich are powerful and have manipulated everything to their benefit, while the poor are weak and have been marginalized and deprived of their basic rights," he said.
Ranjbar's concerns were echoed, albeit more modestly, by Abdul Rahman Ghafoory, director of the Central Statistics Office (CSO): "Gaps between rich and poor are widening."
He based the remark [http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=88732] on a National Risks and Vulnerability Assessment which says nine million Afghans (36 percent of the population) live in absolute poverty, and five million "non-poor" live on less than US$2 a day.
Unevenly distributed wealth
Over the past eight years Afghanistan has seen an unprecedented injection of funds for rebuilding and development, thanks to the generosity and strategic interests of donors.
Despite worsening security, the country has made strong macroeconomic progress, achieving a record rise of 22.5 percent in its gross domestic product (GDP) in 2009-2010, according to the World Bank.
[http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWFiles2010.nsf/FilesByRWDocUnidFilename/EGUA-85CR2C-full_report.pdf/$File/full_report.pdf]
However, the benefits have not been equally distributed, experts and aid workers say.
"The rich have become richer and more powerful while the majority of poor have been marginalized," said Sayed Masoud, an economics lecturer at Kabul University, adding that the aid-inspired GDP growth had been "hijacked by oligarchs".
"Economic growth can help alleviate poverty - but it can also exacerbate inequality, with only a few benefiting from newfound wealth. To some extent, this is what we are seeing in Afghanistan. While entrepreneurs and new businesses, particularly those based around the aid industry, have flourished, many - especially the poor and those in rural areas - have seen few positive benefits," said Ashley Jackson, head of policy and advocacy for Oxfam in Afghanistan.
Risk of social unrest?
According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime: [http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/frontpage/2010/January/corruption-widespread-in-afghanistan-unodc-survey-says.html] "Unprecedented resource flows have created a new cast of rich and powerful individuals who operate outside the traditional power/tribal structures and bid the cost of favours and loyalty to levels not compatible with the under-developed nature of the country."
Pervasive corruption and the abuse of weak state structures by the wealthy and powerful undermine justice and the rule of law, [http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=89078] and fuel dangerous grievances, expert say.
Officials in the Ministry of Urban Development and Kabul Municipality say up to 70 percent of new high-rise buildings in the capital are illegal and built without regard to local laws or regulations by powerful individuals known as the "land mafia".
The Ministry of Agriculture says up to a million hectares of state land has been seized by militia commanders and powerful warlords across the country in the past few years.
"Social unrest, violence and rebellion against the state are the most likely outcomes in a society where a majority of people live in extreme poverty but small elite groups thrive in affluence," said Masoud of Kabul University, adding that social justice was a prerequisite for peace-making in war-torn Afghanistan.
"The big majority of the poor is indeed a huge problem in this country," said the CSO's Ghafoory, adding that opportunities and resources must be distributed fairly.
Almost seven years have passed since calls for transparency and justice in connection with Shirpur's evictions and land seizures, but nothing has come into the public domain.
The UN's Kothari warned in his report that a failure of justice and transparency on Shirpur would send out the wrong signals to "war lords and commanders to continue to illegally occupy land with impunity".
He was prescient, according to MP Ranjbar and lecturer Masoud.
On the one hand, powerful oligarchs in government benefit from government corruption. Militias, government officials and gangs control some of the profiable parts of poppy/opium distribution. Those with wealth and connections who have the power to acquire land through force and dispossession, and through massive evictions.
On the other hand, the growing number of poor are forced to survive by creating illegal shanty towns, squatter settlements, and slums, by scrambling to earn a little cash in the informal economy admist high rates of uenemployment and in an overall situations where there is little assistance from the government and where access to NGOs is problematic. The inequality grows across many parts of the country, as US and NATO forces give overwhelming priority to seeking out and trying to kill or capture the Taliban and other insurgents, dropping bombs, and generating chaos that drives yet additional Afghans out of their homes and towns to become refugees, who then wind up living in dismal and seriously under-provisioned camps.
The following article provides further information on the intensified polarization going on in Kabul.
AFGHANISTAN: Mansions amid poverty
19 May 2010 18:18:43 GMT 19 May 2010
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/IRIN/63143f556015f2f3e321065c159687d5.htm
[....]
KABUL, 19 May 2010 (IRIN) - Almost seven years after dozens of poor families were evicted from the suburb of Shirpur in central Kabul where they had lived for decades, they have still not got justice, and the new mansions which have taken their place underline the yawning gap between the haves and the have-nots.
The former shanty town has become a symbol of wealth, affluence and some say decadence, in the second least developed country in the world. Many Afghans mockingly call it "Shirchoor" (lion-grabbing), as it contains many of the city's most outlandish buildings - generally owned by current and former ministers, warlords and other powerful individuals.
A UN special rapporteur, Miloon Kothari, who investigated the Shirpur case in 2003, said in a report: [http://www.unhchr.ch/huricane/huricane.nsf/0/BC10EB9D755A5D8FC1256F5B004A7D97?opendocument] "Notwithstanding the legal considerations as to property rights in this case, I expressed the view that the way in which the forced evictions took place, including excessive use of force, amounted to serious human rights violations."
The spread of Shirpur's mansions, however, can nowhere near keep pace with the mushrooming squatter settlements and slums in and around Kabul where, according to the Ministry of Urban Development, illegal urbanization and land grabbing [http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75508] have been going on for years.
"Shirpur is a small sign of the huge crisis of disparity between the rich and the poor in this country," Kabir Ranjbar, a representative of Kabul in the lower house of parliament, told IRIN.
"The rich are powerful and have manipulated everything to their benefit, while the poor are weak and have been marginalized and deprived of their basic rights," he said.
Ranjbar's concerns were echoed, albeit more modestly, by Abdul Rahman Ghafoory, director of the Central Statistics Office (CSO): "Gaps between rich and poor are widening."
He based the remark [http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=88732] on a National Risks and Vulnerability Assessment which says nine million Afghans (36 percent of the population) live in absolute poverty, and five million "non-poor" live on less than US$2 a day.
Unevenly distributed wealth
Over the past eight years Afghanistan has seen an unprecedented injection of funds for rebuilding and development, thanks to the generosity and strategic interests of donors.
Despite worsening security, the country has made strong macroeconomic progress, achieving a record rise of 22.5 percent in its gross domestic product (GDP) in 2009-2010, according to the World Bank.
[http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWFiles2010.nsf/FilesByRWDocUnidFilename/EGUA-85CR2C-full_report.pdf/$File/full_report.pdf]
However, the benefits have not been equally distributed, experts and aid workers say.
"The rich have become richer and more powerful while the majority of poor have been marginalized," said Sayed Masoud, an economics lecturer at Kabul University, adding that the aid-inspired GDP growth had been "hijacked by oligarchs".
"Economic growth can help alleviate poverty - but it can also exacerbate inequality, with only a few benefiting from newfound wealth. To some extent, this is what we are seeing in Afghanistan. While entrepreneurs and new businesses, particularly those based around the aid industry, have flourished, many - especially the poor and those in rural areas - have seen few positive benefits," said Ashley Jackson, head of policy and advocacy for Oxfam in Afghanistan.
Risk of social unrest?
According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime: [http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/frontpage/2010/January/corruption-widespread-in-afghanistan-unodc-survey-says.html] "Unprecedented resource flows have created a new cast of rich and powerful individuals who operate outside the traditional power/tribal structures and bid the cost of favours and loyalty to levels not compatible with the under-developed nature of the country."
Pervasive corruption and the abuse of weak state structures by the wealthy and powerful undermine justice and the rule of law, [http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=89078] and fuel dangerous grievances, expert say.
Officials in the Ministry of Urban Development and Kabul Municipality say up to 70 percent of new high-rise buildings in the capital are illegal and built without regard to local laws or regulations by powerful individuals known as the "land mafia".
The Ministry of Agriculture says up to a million hectares of state land has been seized by militia commanders and powerful warlords across the country in the past few years.
"Social unrest, violence and rebellion against the state are the most likely outcomes in a society where a majority of people live in extreme poverty but small elite groups thrive in affluence," said Masoud of Kabul University, adding that social justice was a prerequisite for peace-making in war-torn Afghanistan.
"The big majority of the poor is indeed a huge problem in this country," said the CSO's Ghafoory, adding that opportunities and resources must be distributed fairly.
Almost seven years have passed since calls for transparency and justice in connection with Shirpur's evictions and land seizures, but nothing has come into the public domain.
The UN's Kothari warned in his report that a failure of justice and transparency on Shirpur would send out the wrong signals to "war lords and commanders to continue to illegally occupy land with impunity".
He was prescient, according to MP Ranjbar and lecturer Masoud.
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