Afghans acting like Chicago politicians

Dexter Filkins:

When it comes to governing this violent, fractious land, everything, it seems, has its price.

Want to be a provincial police chief? It will cost you $100,000.

Want to drive a convoy of trucks loaded with fuel across the country? Be prepared to pay $6,000 per truck, so the police will not tip off the Taliban.

Need to settle a lawsuit over the ownership of your house? About $25,000, depending on the judge.

“It is very shameful, but probably I will pay the bribe,” Mohammed Naim, a young English teacher, said as he stood in front of the Secondary Courthouse in Kabul. His brother had been arrested a week before, and the police were demanding $4,000 for his release. “Everything is possible in this country now. Everything.”

Kept afloat by billions of dollars in American and other foreign aid, the government of Afghanistan is shot through with corruption and graft. From the lowliest traffic cop to the family of President Hamid Karzai himself, the state built on the ruins of the Taliban regime seven years ago now often seems to exist for little more than the enrichment of those who run it.

A raft of investigations has concluded that people at the highest levels of the Karzai administration, including President Karzai’s own brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, are cooperating in the country’s opium trade, now the world’s largest. In the streets and government offices, hardly a public transaction seems to unfold here that does not carry with it the requirement of a bribe, a gift, or, in case you are a beggar, “harchee” — whatever you have in your pocket.

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The decay of the Afghan government presents President-elect Barack Obama with perhaps his most under-appreciated challenge as he tries to reverse the course of the war here. Not only may Mr. Obama be required to save the Afghan government from the Taliban insurgency — committing thousands of additional American soldiers to do so — but also the Afghan government from itself.

“This government has lost the capacity to govern because a shadow government has taken over,” said Ashraf Ghani, a former Afghan finance minister. He quit that job in 2004, he said, because the state had been taken over by drug traffickers. “The narco-mafia state is now completely consolidated.”

On the streets here, tales of corruption are as easy to find as kebab stands. Everything seems for sale: public offices, access to government services, even a person’s freedom. The above mentioned examples — $25,000 to settle a lawsuit, $6,000 to bribe the police, $100,000 to secure a job as a provincial police chief — were told by people who experienced them directly or witnessed the transaction.

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This seems like a job more suited for Sarah Palin than Barack Obama who has been a bystander to corruption throughout his political career in Chicago and Illinois. He certainly has demonstrated a talent of working with corrupt politicians so cleaning up Afghanistan will be something new for him. Palin has shown much more willingness to challenge corrupt officials. Perhaps the czar crazed Democrat politicians will want to put her in charge of rooting out Afghan corruption.

Filkins is an excellent reporter and has done a good job of highlighting a problem in Afghanistan. Hopefully someone in Washington will pay attention to this story. The real question is who the Chicago boys will put in charge and how much will they charge?

Look at this post about an article in the New Yorker by Nina Furleigh chronicling events that led to the discovery of Blagojevich's attempts to get something of value for Obama's senate seat. I challenge you to find any material difference between the events she describes and those that Filkins describes.

The problem is that domestic reporters have demonstrated a pattern of disinterest in corruption in Chicago. Now if it had been happening in Wasilla there would have been greater scrutiny.