Afghan policemen: too many of their salaries continue to line officials' pockets

Yesterday’s report about the chronic embezzlement of foreign aid cash by Hamid Karzai’s Interior Ministry speaks not only to the extravagant dishonesty of some of the president’s appointees, but also to the total failure of the Kabul regime’s international sponsors to address the issue.

This isn’t just an exercise in bureaucratic integrity. When the Western-backed government’s key ministry responsible for security can’t be trusted to pay its own policemen across the country, citizens in regions stalked by Taliban guerrilla groups are understandably reluctant to give their support to the regime.

That’s the predicament Delbar Arman, the Governor of Zabul province, is confronted by each day. As our report showed, Gov. Arman made a direct plea one year ago to the Canadian and American military officers responsible for fighting the Taliban in Zabul. Please ensure, he asked, that your governments force President Hamid Karzai and his functionaries to pay policemen in remote regions of Afghanistan - in full and on time.

Back then, in March, 2006, many policemen in Zabul’s most restive districts hadn’t received their salaries for three months. Canadian General David Fraser, who believes that the governor is exactly the kind of administrator the international community needs to support, faithfully relayed Arman’s request up the chain of command.

Then the politicians and bureaucrats got involved, both Western and Afghan. One year later, Zabul’s police salaries are four months in arrears.

How could this happen, given the willingness of Gov. Arman and his police to confront the Taliban, and the resolve that Canadian and other NATO forces have shown in backing him with military might?

Well, let’s follow the money.

A U.N.-administered program called the Law and Order Trust Fund for Afghanistan, or LOTFA, was launched four years ago to distribute policemen’s pay. Canada is one of 15 nations bankrolling the fund – this year Canadian taxpayers will donate $30 million to the effort.

Trouble is, LOTFA has yet to put in place a system for placing international aid cash directly into the hands of individual policemen. First it must cross the palms of individuals like Interior Minister Zarar Ahmad Muqbul.

Minister Zarar is described as “painfully indecisive” by foreign advisors posted within his department. A number of his Afghan subordinates offer more colourful portrayals. Zarar and his cronies, according to one police general, are directly responsible for the estimated 30% of ministry finances that go awry.

As well, Zarar’s confederates in his hometown of Charikar, north of the capital, are said to operate a system of forced bribery at police checkpoints. This practice is known as “mushkil tarashi” by hard-pressed Afghan truckers, who called a strike in April over the rampant criminality of police posts monitoring Afghanistan’s road networks.

How could a ministry wracked by top-level corruption be entrusted with hundreds of millions of foreign aid dollars each year? Good question, given that officials from our donor nations know exactly what’s going on.

Canada has military and police officers stationed within the Interior Ministry, as does the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. INL officials boast that “the initiative has the added benefit of reducing corruption among the senior leadership” of the Interior Ministry, “since applicants for positions in the new structure must undergo a competitive process including testing, background checks, and oral board interviews.”

Testing? Background checks? Fine, in any sane administrative setting. But this is the Kabul regime. Where Minister Zarar’s predecessor, Ali Jalali, resigned in 2005 over President Karzai’s refusal to support him in his own anti-corruption drive.

Jalali had insisted that the notorious figure granted the governorship of Kanadahar province, Gul Agha Sherzai, be dismissed. Karzai responded by airlifting Gul Agha to Jalalabad, where he became governor of Nangahar province – thus spreading the mantle of corruption, rather than containing it.

For the Karzai family, however, the move was good business. Hamid’s younger brother Wali came to enjoy unrestrained access to Kandahar's regional marketplace. So much so that journalists have begun to publicly question Wali Karzai’s much-rumoured links with the heroin trade.

Meantime, the Presidential Palace's gesture towards anti-corruption has only accentuated the regime's aura of black comedy. The General Independent Administration of Anti Corruption and Bribery has a staff of more than one hundred - who have toiled for 18 months without a single substantial conviction.

It's chief, Izzatullah Wasifi, appointed by Hamid Karzai, was recently revealed to have spent four years in Nevada State Prison in the 1980's. His crime? He had tried to sell heroin to an undercover agent in Caesar's Palace. Prior to being appointed to the anti-corruption post, Wasifi served an abortive spell as governor of Farah province, again at Karzai's behest. Elders in the provincial capital demanded his recall, objecting, sources say, to their new governor's drunken and debauched behaviour.

In this context, Canadians and other foreign sponsors of the Karzai regime need not wonder where so many of their tax dollars are winding up. The cash is in the hands of criminals in high office, whose wrongdoing and anti-democratic practices now constitute arguably a graver threat to the long term stability of Afghanistan than anything the Taliban can currently muster on the battlefield.