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Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s rampaging top lawman, Attorney General Abdul Jabar Sabet, is not taking his imminent departure from high office lying down. Instead he’s throwing more paper around Kabul than there are kites in a summer sky. Specifically, paper in the form of letters threatening the arrest and prosecution of citizens targeted by his bizarre legal vendettas.
Skyreporter has learned that even as Karzai and his palace staff are trying to ease Sabet out the door, the Attorney General is being urged on by another old rogue, one far more driven and decisive than the president: Abdul Sayaaf. Warlord, accused human rights abuser (but also an MP and leader of the parliamentary minority) Sayaaf evidently shares Sabet's aversion to two institutions: Afghanistan's free press, and its anti-narcotics policing.
Since Monday, policemen instructed by the Attorney General have been attempting to arrest two broadcasters, who were among those journalists detained and beaten during the violent police raid ordered by Sabet on Tolo TV, the country’s most popular station, April 17th. However reporter Hamid Haidari and Tolo Director General Siddiq Ahmadzada have evaded capture, reportedly taking sanctuary in Tolo’s offices. As usual in Sabet’s cases, no charges have been filed or detailed.
The Attorney General’s staff is also issuing threatening letters to former Kabul Airport police chief General Aminullah Amerkhel. (See our MEDIA CRACKDOWN and AFGHAN HEROIN series of film reports and articles in Recent Stories.)
The famed drug-busting Gen. Amerkhel returned to Kabul to a hero’s welcome two weeks ago, determined to clear his name of unspecified charges used by Sabet to remove him from his post last autumn. Heroin smuggling arrests have plummeted in Amerkhel’s absence. Police sources tell skyreporter that from an average of four to six arrests per week last year, the airport detachment has apprehended only five smugglers in the past six months.
Sabet, meanwhile, has joined Sayaaf as a man of property – and the means to develop it. He’s building a large house on a valuable piece of land in Kabul’s pricey “Wazirpoor”, or “Bigshotville” neighbourhood. This on a civil servant’s salary, and after having collected welfare in his overseas refuge, Canada, as recently as 2003.
Hamid Karzai is said by sources close to the Presidential Palace to have grown tired of his mercurial legal Rasputin, whose raid on Tolo TV was immediately condemned by UNAMA, the United Nations mission to Afghanistan. However Karzai’s sponsoring governments, like that of Sabet’s adopted Canadian refuge, have been silent on the issue.
This lack of international criticism, according to parliamentary critics, has encouraged Karzai to wonder if he and Sabet might just ride out the controversy, and do so while achieving the widely-perceived goal of the Tolo incident: the intimidation of all of Afghanistan’s news outlets.
Karzai, like Sayaaf, has everything to gain by blocking the scrutiny of civic-minded journalists. His administration has become increasingly unpopular as security remains tenuous and the economy sluggish. Meantime, ministers and functionaries like Sabet grow wealthy.
One prominent lawyer tells skyreporter.com: “The internationals seem blind to the corruption here, but to Afghans the disease is clear to see. It’s everywhere. And because it begins at the top, it’s impossible for honest people to work through it.”
Coming on skyreporter, as the Karzai regime stagnates, the question is being asked openly, now, in the Afghan capital: will this patchwork assembly of patronage posts, criminal associations and rank incompetence crumble completely? And where will that leave the West's war against the Taliban and al Qaeda?
7 Comments
I believe that one of your articles states that heron is estimated to bring $6 billion / year to Afghanistan or $200 / person .
Apparently this can be cut at least 100 times . This would give every man , women and child in Canada $20,000 each if someone sold it at the Afghan price .( ha )White gold , where are the pipeline conspirator theorists ?
Why is everyone in the Canadian government so quiet regarding this issue ? Instead of sending foreign aid why don't we buy their seeds ? Manitoba is looking to compete with Alberta .
Keith, you're on to something here. There are dozens of practical solutions that our elected representatives are failing even to explore. In effect, our governments have become as hooked on the status quo as is Karzai's. We've at least got to try to break the cycle of corruption.
Arthur :
If my math is right is Afghanistan the root of the problem ? I think not the middle men and supplier's at our end are the problem we should be chasing . ( and the main corruption seems to be here ? )
I believe that you are right, and I am not denying what Arthur said. I may not know who can stop these trades from happening and how? But I would like to say that what ever is going on is not what the public of any land want.
just show me afghans mountain pictures
Arthur: Let's not forget, the rampant corruption in Afghanistan today is mainly a Western sown phenomenon that is now proving poisonous to both Afghans and the West. CIA injected billions of dollars during the Soviet invasion, American contractors paid huge lump sums of bribe to get their ill-devised projects underway, and so opportunist Afghans embraced the culture of bathing with easy cash. All this requires a revolution from within and outside- one that seems remote to me.
Wais, too true. And the compromises are still being made. For example, our western democracies looking the other way when Karzai's goon squads crack journalists' skulls. And you're right Keith and Safi - the demand side in the west is the big driver of the heroin trade.
Yet too many of our politicians, diplomats and generals would have us believe that harrassing Afghan farmers and pulling a few plants from the ground is the solution. We know better. And it's way past time to work for real results.
Jabar Sabet is a dog and Sayaf is also Dog
Complacency. And corruption. Recipe for disaster
According to at least one writer, whose name I forget, the CIA during the Cold War era came up with the idea of encouraging the then 'holy warriors' (Mujaheddin)- how shameless politicians can be! - to supply hashish to Russian soldiers in Afghanistan. So the interest on the part of the then 'holy warriors' now 'warlords' to grow poppy in Afghanistan and be a direct supplier of hashish and other drugs dates back to the late 70s and early 80s when the CIA wanted to addict Russian soldiers as part of the Cold War era strategy in Afghanistan against Soviet's occupation.
Aziz points out an interesting fact, how susceptible to self-destruction the Afghanis found Russians to be, and this phenomenon has in no way surfaced with ISAF, however, the drugs continue to flow in some strange way around and past the ISAF deployment. It's weird, but mainly, it's criminals having their way on under the old NEW WORLD ORDER (Geo HW Bush)
In the 1980’s the Mujahiddin were a gorilla force carrying out "hit & run" missions against Soviet and Afghan government posts and convoys and bases. They were incapable of farming and planning to run drug fields. Besides, the good Afghan hashish preceded the Soviet invasion and it was a well known thing in Europe, so naturally in an Islamic country with no bars and brothels for the Soviet soldiers, they turned to the next best thing, the drugs.
It is already bad that Afghans no longer get credit for bringing down the Soviet Empire. Ronald Reagan is credited for winning the Cold War and the defeat of Communism. That is total BS. The US pumped millions into the Contras and what did they win? Nothing and in the end the very Daniel Ortega that the US was fighting is now the President of Nicaragua.
And Cuba is still a communist country 90 miles away from Miami.
But what the Afghans brought to the table was the will to fight, and a long history of never been colonized or occupied. 2 million dead, over 6 million refugees, over 5000 villages destroyed and 10 years of war is what brought the Communists down. Not speeches from Reagan or CIA planned drug operations against Soviet soldiers.
200,000 freedom fighters lost their lives in the 10-year war against the Soviets. They fought, they didn’t die trying to supply hashish to Soviet soldiers for the CIA.
Just because some faction leaders are being greedy today and can’t seem to let go of their power base is not a license to denigrate or diminish the sacrifices of so many Afghans in the 1980’s.
Lets not give the CIA so much credit and make it seem as if they had all these major plans. After all CIA is the same place that had “slam dunk” evidence against Iraq.
Afghans did the fighting and endured the consequences; lets not take weekly books coming out by former CIA members as the truth for everything.
The BBC reports that Sabat was beaten up yesterday
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6734131.stm