Policy Research Group   - Strategic Insight: For General Petraeus, battling corruption in Afghanistan is a priority

For General Petraeus, battling corruption in Afghanistan is a priority
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editor on 29 July, 2010 03:15:00
 
By Joshua Partlow  in The Washington Post, July 29
KABUL -- Every day, Gen. David H. Petraeus meets with senior NATO officials at
headquarters for a 7:30 a.m. update, and at nearly every session, he returns to
an issue that has bedeviled the U.S. campaign for years: Afghan corruption.
In his first month on the job, Petraeus has intensified efforts to uncover the
scope and mechanics of the pervasive theft, graft and bribery in the Afghan
government, examine U.S. contracting practices, and assist Afghan authorities in
arresting and convicting corrupt bureaucrats, according to U.S. and NATO
officials.
"It is his drumbeat that he started on Day One," said a NATO military official
who participates in the morning "stand-up" meeting. Petraeus sees corruption "as
an enemy. It is counter to our strategy. And it is readily apparent to me . . .
there is a new sense of urgency."
The issue was also a central concern for Petraeus's predecessor, Gen. Stanley A.
McChrystal, as the U.S. military has come to realize that its counterinsurgency
goals depend on fighting corruption. NATO surveys have found that anger at
corruption is the top reason Afghans support the Taliban over the government.
From police shakedowns to profits from drug trafficking, NATO officials put the
yearly price tag of corruption and black-market business at $12.3 billion, just
shy of Afghanistan's gross domestic product. Citing U.N. statistics, they
estimate that about half of that comes from the smuggling industry and illicit
taxes levied on trucks crisscrossing the country. About $2.5 billion is paid in
bribes each year, stolen Afghan government revenue tops $1 billion, and billions
more is pilfered from foreign aid and NATO contracts, according to a briefing
prepared by NATO's anti-corruption task force.
"It has progressively gotten worse. It's at all levels," said one senior NATO
official who works on corruption issues. Reversing the situation is "a moral
imperative, and it's an operational imperative."
The NATO officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the
sensitivity of the issue.
Petraeus has asked his subordinates to brief him more often on progress on this
front -- twice a week, instead of once -- and is considering naming a one-star
general to oversee anti-corruption work. In his first three weeks in
Afghanistan, Petraeus has met with President Hamid Karzai at least 20 times, and
corruption has been a regular topic of discussion, the NATO officials said.
In addition to fielding two new teams in Afghanistan to study how American money
is spent through reconstruction and security contracts, the U.S. Embassy in
Kabul is preparing a proposal that would require the Afghan government to meet
anti-corruption benchmarks to receive U.S. funds.
"We expect they will live up to their commitments, and we will give them
incentives to live up to their commitments," a Western diplomat said.
At an international conference in Kabul this month, the Afghan government
pledged to meet several goals within the next year, including publishing the
assets of all senior government officials, regulating cash that leaves the
country in bulk and drafting laws to help prosecute corrupt bureaucrats.
But some of the government's earlier commitments have not been met. For example,
Afghan ministries failed to meet a June deadline to draft an anti-corruption
action plan naming three reforms each could undertake.
Western diplomats are concerned that the country's premier anti-corruption body,
the High Office of Oversight, suffers from weak leadership and a lack of
independence from Karzai. International officials also have long worried that
high-level political pressure has prevented indictments of senior Afghan
officials suspected of corruption.
"There is no political will on the government side to do anything that is
meaningful, although everybody knows they have to say the word 'corruption'
every time they talk about Afghanistan," said one Western official who works on
the issue in Kabul.
NATO officials see some hopeful signs -- particularly a string of arrests of
senior Afghan army and police officials for drug trafficking, corruption and
aiding the Taliban.
In June, Afghan authorities arrested Brig. Gen. Malham Pohanyar, the border
police commander in the western province of Herat, on accusations that he was
trafficking drugs out of the airport there.
This followed the arrest last October of a senior border police commander in
Kandahar, Brig. Gen. Saifullah Hakim, who was charged with collecting the
salaries of nonexistent officers and stealing money from a "martyr's fund" for
families of slain police officers. A border police official from Paktika
province, Col. Ali Shah, has also been arrested, for allegedly stealing and
reselling supplies and collecting taxes at illegal checkpoints.
Brig. Gen. Aziz Ahmad Wardak, the Paktia province police chief, was arrested
this year on corruption charges and is awaiting trial, according to Afghan
officials, and so is the deputy police chief of Kapisa province.
"The recent arrests of corrupt Afghan police and army officers are heartening
and represent important steps as the Afghan government works to carry out
President Karzai's commitments in recent months to combat corruption," said a
senior NATO military officer.espite little tangible progress, the senior officer
said that Karzai has been "very firm regarding corruption."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/28/AR2010072805683_pf.html
2.Local strongman is U.S. troops' most reliable friend in Kandahar province
By Karin Brulliard  in The Washington Post, July 29
NOW RUZI, AFGHANISTAN -- Haji Ghani is an illiterate, hashish-growing former
warlord who directs a semiofficial police force and is known to show his anger
through beatings. In this Taliban nest west of Kandahar, he is also U.S. forces'
main partner.
Never mind that the district governor says Ghani, 44, works against him, or that
U.S. soldiers describe him as Godfather-like and his police as vaguely crooked.
In an area rife with insurgents who stalk soldiers' every move, Ghani's militia
has carved out a four-square-mile bubble of tranquillity. Farmers can safely
collect U.S.-funded seeds, and children will soon attend a new American-backed
school.
"What's his is ours. What's ours is his," Lt. John Paszterko, 29, said of Ghani,
a onetime anti-Soviet commander who now rules his tribal forefathers' lands.
"He's a good friend to have."
As coalition forces struggle to weaken the Taliban, they insist that the key to
doing so lies in bolstering Afghan institutions. Yet with government rule
confined to certain densely populated areas, U.S. officials rely on strongmen
who can maintain order in the most treacherous locales, even if their commitment
to formal governance is dubious.
That inconsistency is causing unease in Washington, where Congress is
scrutinizing payments of U.S. tax dollars to warlords who protected NATO
convoys, and in Kabul, where critics fear that a U.S.-backed plan for village
defense groups could spawn rogue militias or undermine government authority.
"In that scenario, the Afghan government doesn't gain any strength or
legitimacy," one U.S. official working in Kandahar province said of alliances
with strongmen who operate independently of the state. But, the official said,
"we're on such a short timetable that people are looking and going, 'Oh, well.
That area's stable -- full stop.' "
Common mission
The dynamic is present across this long-embattled nation, where former warlords
are a dime a dozen and power is typically won with guns or money. Against that
backdrop, Ghani is a minor player. With an AK-47 slung over his bony shoulder,
he lords over 3,000 acres of his ancestors' farmland.
But Ghani's area, which includes three villages along the fertile Arghandab
River, has suddenly become the focus of U.S. forces' latest push to defeat the
Taliban. It lies along a critical entry point into Kandahar city used by the
Taliban as a supply route, and government leadership here has long been feeble.
So Ghani and his force of about 40 "soldiers" -- he has about 50 more in reserve
-- are vital partners, according to U.S. troops, who said the force might
eventually be incorporated into the new village defense plan.
American soldiers and the district governor say that only some of Ghani's men
have law enforcement training but that the local police chief, an ally of Ghani,
equips them all with uniforms and weapons anyway. On a recent day at Ghani's
leafy compound, a few uniformed fighters cleaned tables and served lunch to
guests.
They are the closest thing in this area to an Afghan security force. The Afghan
army soldiers set to share the U.S. outpost near Now Ruzi had not been deployed
by early July. So when the Taliban ambushed Pazsterko's soldiers in late June,
Ghani's police helped fight them off. After a roadside bomb detonated near the
village, Ghani called in elders and menacingly told them to make sure it did not
happen again.
Ghani is "one of the few people who does feel that responsibility" to fight the
Taliban, said Capt. Paul N. DeLeon, 29, commander of Combat Outpost Durkin.
That is partly because his lifestyle would be fairly incompatible with Taliban
rule. On Ghani's land is a vast field of hashish, which he insists he does not
smoke. He offers guests whiskey, though his preferred drink is Red Bull imported
from Thailand. He shows off scars from 30 years battling the Soviets and the
Taliban under the command of Abdurrab Rasul Sayyaf, a former Northern Alliance
leader whose fighters have been accused of committing atrocities in the 1990s.
He parades a white horse that he says belonged to Taliban founder Mohammad Omar
until 2001, when he fled U.S. forces. One of Omar's laborers passed it to a
cleric, who gave it to Ghani as a spoil of war.
"I am the only one who can keep this horse. Only people who have a weapon can
keep this horse," Ghani said of the animal, whose mane and tail, like Ghani's
hair, are streaked with henna. "If the Taliban sees this horse with anyone else,
they will shoot him."
Ghani says his wealth comes from his land, which he leases to farmers, and from
the "security services" he provides to a Japanese company operating the large
gravel quarry on his property. Gravel blankets the U.S. outpost nearby -- a gift
from Ghani.
His partnership has been rewarded. U.S. soldiers make sure his fighters have
ammunition. Flowing through Ghani's carefully tended garden is a gurgling canal,
a project recently completed by the U.S. Agency for International Development
that beautified a public park on his land. Outside, construction on the
schoolhouse -- which U.S. troops refer to as "Haji Ghani's school" -- is almost
done.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/28/AR2010072806147_pf.html
3.Reference to missile-downed helicopter in leaked Afghanistan reports
highlights a threat
By Laura King and Paul Richter in The Los Angeles Times
Kabul/Washington: Wherever there are Western troops in Afghanistan, the
clatter-thump of helicopter rotors serves as the soundtrack. Choppers are the
workhorses of this war, with hundreds of them moving soldiers and supplies daily
across a rugged landscape.
Because of the NATO force's heavy reliance on them, one of the most eye-catching
revelations in a trove of classified documents posted on the Internet this week
was that insurgents apparently used a portable heat-seeking surface-to-air
missile to shoot down a twin-rotor CH-47 Chinook in Helmand province in May
2007, killing seven Western service members.
If the Taliban and other insurgent groups possessed large numbers of these
weapons, it could dramatically alter the dynamics of a war effort that already
is struggling. Shoulder-launched missiles downed scores of Soviet helicopters in
the 1980s, helping ragtag Afghan rebels prevail against a vastly superior force.
Most experts believe that the antiaircraft threat currently posed by the
insurgents is relatively limited, and that they don't have significant stocks of
surface-to-air missiles, at least for now.
The shooting down of choppers remains a relative rarity in the Afghan conflict,
and heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades are almost always found to
have been used.
"After nine years, if they had a lot of them, we would have seen them by now,"
said a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not
authorized to speak about the subject on the record. Sporadic reports of attacks
with surface-to-air missiles have often turned out to involve other weapons, the
official said.
But portable surface-to-air missiles can be procured from many illicit sources
in the region. Afghanistan's neighbors include Iran, Pakistan and China. NATO
said this month that an intercepted memo from Taliban supreme leader Mullah
Mohammed Omar suggested that the insurgents were redoubling efforts to obtain a
variety of sophisticated armaments.
"It's wartime, and our warriors are searching for new weapons," said Taliban
spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid, reached by telephone.
By their nature, shoulder-launched missiles — "manpads," in military parlance
— are easily transportable, making them less difficult to smuggle than bulkier
weapons systems. Mujahid declined to discuss any recent additions to the Taliban
arsenal, but said, "It is difficult to stop weapons trafficking. The world's
black market is open to us."
Matt Schroeder, an analyst with the Federation of American Scientists, said it
is possible that there have been more attacks on coalition aircraft than have
come to light. Yet Schroeder was skeptical that shoulder-fired missiles
represented a major threat because such attacks in large numbers would be likely
to come to public attention.
The downing of any aircraft is usually announced quickly by NATO's International
Security Assistance Force. Two U.S. servicemen died last week when a helicopter
was brought down by hostile fire in Afghanistan's south; the incident was
disclosed by military officials within hours.
Missiles being used by Afghan insurgents are generally thought to be of older
Soviet and Chinese design, types that can be neutralized by common
countermeasures such as diversionary flares.
The missiles are not easy to aim, and sometimes can be thrown off target even by
sunlight and clouds. That could account for the fact that the classified
documents posted by the organization WikiLeaks referred to at least 10 suspected
missiles having missed their targets, according to an analysis by Britain's
Guardian newspaper.
Taliban leaders have said the movement has a number of stored Stinger missiles
left over from the period of Soviet occupation, which ended more than 20 years
ago. The leaked documents suggested that some of them still might have been
usable.
"The presumption had been that those systems that were distributed by the United
States in the 1980s would be inoperable because their batteries would have run
out," said Jeremy Binnie, a senior terrorism and insurgency analyst at IHS
Jane's. "But [in the leaked documents] there are people reporting to have seen
contrails like those left by a Stinger."
Lincoln P. Bloomfield Jr., who was appointed in 2008 by the George W. Bush
administration to take the shoulder-fired missiles out of circulation, said
there remains a real threat from the weapons in Afghanistan, as elsewhere."The
U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan attract adversaries," he said. "This is
among the elements in their playbook."He said that even though older missiles
may have been sitting in hot, dusty warehouses for years, "sometimes they still
work."
Bloomfield said the U.S. government has destroyed about 28,000 of the weapons
since 2002 through buyback programs and other efforts. As special envoy, he
negotiated with governments to destroy the portable missiles in their arsenals,
or at least to ensure that they were safe from theft.
On the black market, the missiles' cost ranges from a few hundred dollars to
many thousands of dollars. But at least for some insurgent factions, money may
not be much of an issue.
The German magazine Der Spiegel, which like the Guardian and the New York Times
received advance access to the WikiLeaks documents, cited insurgent leader
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar as exhorting followers to procure weapons, including
surface-to-air missiles, to use against coalition forces.
"Attack him with Stinger missiles!" Hekmatyar told followers in Lowgar province
in 2005, according to the magazine. "No matter the cost, $150,000 or $200,000, I
will
pay."http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-afghan-missiles-20100729,0,7616106,print.story