You’re busted: motorbikes impounded in Kabul for failure to pay excessive fees

The Traffic Police impound lot near Sar Sabsi Square, on the north side of Kabul, is not on the rounds of foreign dignitaries, diplomats and generals.

Little wonder.

Because one glance over the steel jungle of impounded motorbikes, carts and compact cars would stir the conscience of any responsible international sponsor of the Kabul regime, and send him knocking – angrily - on President Karzai’s palace gate.

These are the vehicles of the poor. Hundreds of them, acres of them, seized by the foreign-trained-and-armed police from cash-strapped owners, people who simply can’t afford the exorbitant license fees imposed by the regime.

So it goes in Hamid Karzia’s Kabul. Ordinary citizens are stalked by pervasive and often dishonest policing, while thieves prosper within the president’s cabinet - even after their crimes become common knowledge among the regime’s sponsor nations.

It’s hard enough for a tradesman, merchant or student to slap down enough hard cash to buy a sputtering old Suzuki or Honda. But the 7,000 Afghani ($140) cost of a number plate is beyond the means of most of the city’s poor.

The fee typifies the depressing realities of Kabul’s economy. The base price is only 2,000 Afghanis, while the balance is the “commission” – read bribe - paid to a broker or middleman.

When impoverished riders are forced to take to the road without a valid number plate, the police are waiting. If stopped, the victim has a choice: pay an even steeper bribe, or watch the bike go off to the pound under the backside of one of Karzai’s finest.

By United Nations estimates, the average Afghan family pays $100 in bribes each year - a crippling burden, given that 70% of the population scrapes by on an income of only $1 a day. 

But that’s only half the story. Just ask Zarar Muqbul – that is if you can find him.

Zarar is Karzai’s ex-Interior Minister, formerly one of the most powerful officials in the U.S.-backed regime. He was fired in October when the odor of corruption rising up from the policing ministry under his command became too great even for the embattled president and his foreign patrons to ignore.

In 2001, Zarar’s family owned a shop, a home and a few gardens in the countryside north of the capital. Today, government insiders estimate his wealth at $20 million. Not bad for a functionary on an official salary of around $3,000 per month.

Of course, there were fringe benefits. Like the fleet of armored vehicles Zarar is alleged to have acquired and leased back to his own department. And the multitude of properties in his name at the central registry. And his presumed cut of the police shakedown scams that plague truckers on Afghanistan’s roadways (please see “U.S. And Allies Shrink From Confronting Karzia’s Crooks” from July 31, 2007, in Recent Stories to the left of this screen.)

And there is the greatest benefit of all, for Zarar is one of the regime’s favoured few, who are terminated from one top job, only to be offered another. The consolation in this case:  Zarar’s appointment to Minister of Refugee Affairs.

Evidently, however, the new post is not to Zarar’s tastes. He has chosen not to show up for work since the Oct. 10th cabinet shuffle, and is blamed by a number of security and diplomatic sources in the capital with trying to undermine his successor as Interior Minister, Hanif Atmar.

So a culprit who should, by rights, be destined for an extended visit in Pul-i-Charki prison, instead becomes another of the regime’s mysterious shadow-figures, protected by his wealth, a private militia, and the many secrets he could disclose to unsettle his colleagues, rivals and president.

All of this is cold comfort to a luckless student whose motorbike is confiscated for lacking a paid-up number plate. But it offers no end of encouragement to those other young Afghans with an eye on Kabul’s future, namely the Taliban.

Nothing draws the insurgents on like the spectacle of the western-backed regime haemorrhaging what little authority remains to it. And nothing obliterates authority like official corruption.