Corruption in Afghanistan has been a major crisis, pervading all state institutions and different sectors of the economy. The Independent Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Committee (MEC) estimates 26,000 hectares of public and private lands have been grabbed by the powerful elite.
America’s federal watchdog Special Inspector General for Afghanistan’s Reconstruction (SIGAR)reports half of customs revenue does not reach the Afghan government kitty due to widespread graft. The scale of corruption in Afghanistan is equal to the total revenue the government collects.
The Integrity Watch Afghanistan reckons the Afghans pay $2 billion in bribes annually. Graft in the form of embezzlement, nepotism, diversion of state funds and policies have become part of Afghanistan’s political economy. It is through massive corruption that the political elite maintain their patronage networks and prop up their enterprises.
Belonging to diverse interest groups — MPs, current and former ministers and high-ranking officials, police and army chiefs and former commanders — they are enabled by power and networks to coerce the bureaucracy into meeting their illegitimate demands.
As a corollary, they also force civil servants — having low salaries and nominal perks — into accepting bribes from the masses. More often than not, these officials are pressured by the so-called elite class to do their biddings.
Karzai’s deplorable legacy
Corruption was tolerated throughout its tenure by the Karzai administration. Government machinery had become insensitive to corrupt practices. Nepotism in appointments, tax evasion, stealing of customs revenue, occupation of public lands, award of government contracts to near and dear ones and impunity from prosecution were hallmarks of the Karzai presidency.
In a word, the ex-president allowed institutionalisation of graft and become part of the political economy. At the fag-end of the Karzai regime, corruption had to be tolerated to save the state and his clueless government.
However, for largely symbolic purposes, the Karzai administration prepared strategies, signed laws, established institutions and assigned people with fighting corruption. All of this happened but little political will to eradicate corruption was seen.
In 2004, Karzai signed the Law on the Campaign Against Bribery and Administrative Corruption, based on which the General Independent Administration Against Corruption (GIAAC) was established. Azizullah Ludin, who had authored law, was appointed to lead GIAAC. But he used GIAAC for promoting his own interest.
Under his leadership, GIAAC initiated and tracked around 80 cases. Most of them involved his opponents, including a notable case against former power minister Ismail Khan. At the end of 2004, Ludin resigned the slot to lead the National Assembly Secretariat.
Zabihullah Esmati became the acting director of GIAAC. Although Esmati was an honest man and popular with his staff, he was hated by close friends of Karzai and was subsequently replaced by Zabihullah Wasefi, who had spent around three years in jail for involvement in the drug commerce in the US.
Upon the appointment of Esmati, the international community immediately withdrew their support for GIAAC. According to Jeffrey Coonjhon, rather than bringing energy, dynamism and strong leadership to the anti-corruption effort, the GIAAC appears to have inadvertently muddied the institutional waters, giving rise to confusion and uncertainty.
In 2008, Karzai abolished GIAAC. A new round of preparation to fight corruption kicked off. But all organs that followed met the fate of GIAAC after seven years. Based on the National Anti-Corruption Strategy, Law on Supervision of Implementation of the National Anti-Corruption Strategy was singed. The High Officer of Oversight and Anti-Corruption (HOOAC) was established.
The strategy and the law were weak and problematic, but they could have been used as an institutional foundation against corruption. However, Karzai appointed an incompetent personality, namely Yasin Osmani, to lead HOOAC in August 2008. The achievements and effectiveness of the HOOAC was so little that at the London Conference in January 2010, donors pressed the Afghanistan delegation to do far more in the fight against corruption.
Karzai agreed with the international community, as he always did in his initial years in office, and established the Independent Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Committee (MEC) to meet the demand of the London Conference. However, his selection of people to lead MEC and HOOAC clearly signalled there was no change in his will.
Professor Osmani was transferred to the newly established MEC and Ludin reinstalled as the director general of HOOAC. It was acutely obvious there would not be any visible change in the fight against corruption.
Two years later, the international community met in Tokyo. The focus of the Tokyo Conference in 2012 was on good governance and the drive against corruption. The donors linked aid to improvement in governance and eradication of graft. This created what is famously known as the Tokyo Mutual Accountability Framework (TMAF).
Upon his return from Tokyo, Karzai issued Order No 61, tasking all state organs with certain duties to combat corruption. He also increased the power of HOOAC professional staff to judicial record officers, who could collect and document evidence in corruption-related cases.
As was clearly seen, Karzai’s decisions against corruption were essentially driven by pressure from the international community. However, he failed to eradicate the menace for lack of political will to support anti-corruption agencies to net the big fish.
From the establishment of GIAAC, the first anti-corruption agency, in 2004 to September 2014, when Karzai transferred power to the National Unity Government, not a single graft case was successfully prosecuted under the laws and institutions he created, or the high bureaucrats he appointed.
Transparency International listed Afghanistan as one of the most corrupt countries in the world — ninth in 2007, fifth in 2008, second in 2009, third in 2010, fourth in 2011, third in 2012, again third in 2013 and fourth in 2014.Throughout these years, Afghanistan has retained the dubious distinction of being ahead of North Korea, Somalia and Myanmar.
Ghani’s war on corruption
Unlike his predecessor, President Ghani has shown political will to squarely deal with the challenge. He reopened the Kabul Bank case one month after he took office. In another instance, former officials of the Ministry of Urban Development were arrested for involvement in massive corruption. And finally, an equally important case was the fuel contract awarded by the Ministry of Defence. According to SIGAR, an extra amount of $216 million was paid by the government of Afghanistan and the US.
They are but just a sample of hundreds of cases of bribes, embezzlement and anomalous contracts. Still NUG should be credited for processing such high-profile corruption cases — a noticeable shift from the culture of venality promoted by Karzai.
However, Ghani has done little to institutionalise the fight against corruption. Currently, Afghanistan neither has an anti-corruption law nor an agency. When he took over, Ghani curtailed the power of HOOAC to registration of assets and simplification of administrative procedures. In addition, the civil servants were stripped of the Attorney General Office’s supervisory role.
Ghani should be credited for cutting the authority of HOOAC and AGO because, by misusing their powers, they themselves had indulged in corruption. However, one year on, the National Unity Government has not come up with a viable strategy to fight corruption and plans for establishment of a national agency to lead the ‘holy war’ against corruption.
The NUG should establish an anti-corruption commission that is mandated to prepare, implement, coordinate and provide oversight to anti-corruption police. This meets the requirements of the United Nation Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC), to which Afghanistan is a signatory. In addition, prosecutors and police should be placed inside the commission to ensure it has a detective and prosecutorial role without infringing on the constitution.
View expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Pajhwok’s editorial policy.
