pakistani342
SENIOR MEMBER
- Joined
- Jan 20, 2013
- Messages
- 3,485
- Reaction score
- 6
- Country
- Location
An decent piece on the Global Post on Afghan corruption -- the subtitle says it all:
"Reporter’s notebook: A peek behind the curtain at one of the world’s shadiest nations."
However, what I find more interesting than the very interesting anecdotes of corruption the author lays out is his description of the sense of entitlement the Afghans have -- which I have experienced first hand.
original article here, excerpts below:
...
But in many Afghans courage, nobility of spirit and graciousness toward guests exist side by side with rampant venality, fed, no doubt, by a lingering resentment of the foreign occupation.
A feeling that Afghans are owed some reparation for their pain doesn't help much, either.
I have spent significant time in several of Transparency International’s pantheon of the crooked: Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Belarus and Russia — all old haunts of mine — share the bottom third of the scale with Afghanistan.
None of them comes close to the casual disregard for what’s normally considered legality that I saw in my years in Kabul.
...
In my experience, corruption in Afghanistan is everywhere, from the smallest office to the largest contractor. Examples range from the mildly irritating to the downright dangerous.
President Hamid Karzai insists the problem came with the foreigners. In an interview with author William Dalrymple, he shifted blame to his major benefactor.
“There is corruption, no doubt,” he said. “Our own petty corruption in the delivery of services was there before, is here today and will continue for some time. The big corruption was designed by the Americans. The contracts were used by the US government to buy influence in Afghanistan. It was designed to corrupt the Afghan political leadership so as to be usable by them.”
...
"Reporter’s notebook: A peek behind the curtain at one of the world’s shadiest nations."
However, what I find more interesting than the very interesting anecdotes of corruption the author lays out is his description of the sense of entitlement the Afghans have -- which I have experienced first hand.
original article here, excerpts below:
...
But in many Afghans courage, nobility of spirit and graciousness toward guests exist side by side with rampant venality, fed, no doubt, by a lingering resentment of the foreign occupation.
A feeling that Afghans are owed some reparation for their pain doesn't help much, either.
I have spent significant time in several of Transparency International’s pantheon of the crooked: Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Belarus and Russia — all old haunts of mine — share the bottom third of the scale with Afghanistan.
None of them comes close to the casual disregard for what’s normally considered legality that I saw in my years in Kabul.
...
In my experience, corruption in Afghanistan is everywhere, from the smallest office to the largest contractor. Examples range from the mildly irritating to the downright dangerous.
President Hamid Karzai insists the problem came with the foreigners. In an interview with author William Dalrymple, he shifted blame to his major benefactor.
“There is corruption, no doubt,” he said. “Our own petty corruption in the delivery of services was there before, is here today and will continue for some time. The big corruption was designed by the Americans. The contracts were used by the US government to buy influence in Afghanistan. It was designed to corrupt the Afghan political leadership so as to be usable by them.”
...
