In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan Read Online Free

many societies, several forms of corruption appear to have specifically contributed to the Afghan insurgency: drug trafficking, bribery among senior officials, and pervasive extortion among Afghan police and judges. While the central government in Afghanistan has historicallybeen weak, especially in rural areas, it needs to be viewed as legitimate by Afghans. At a bare minimum, Afghans should respect the central government enough that they don’t want to overthrow it.
    Ironically, corruption was a major undermining factor for Zahir Shah’s regime. In a private conversation with Zahir Shah in 1971, U.S. Ambassador Robert Neumann pleaded with the king to fix the “widespread corruption” that was angering the local population. “In my four and one-half years here,” Neumann acknowledged, asking forgiveness for his blunt tone, “I had never heard so many expressions at all levels of society about a feeling of hopelessness that [the] new government could accomplish anything.” 6
    While there are no universally applicable anticorruption strategies, there are a number of insightful lessons from successful cases in Singapore, Liberia, Botswana, and Estonia. Effective efforts have generally included the immediate firing of corrupt officials, bolstering of the justice system, professionalization of new staff, and incentive and performance assessment programs. Even then, broader reforms have frequently played an important role. In Uganda, for example, Yoweri Museveni’s government, which came to power in 1986, implemented a strategy that involved passing economic reforms and deregulation, reforming the civil service, strengthening the auditor general’s office, empowering a reputable inspector general to investigate and prosecute corruption, and implementing an anticorruption public-information campaign.
    Corrupt Afghan government officials, including those involved in the drug trade, need to be prosecuted and removed from office. Ambassador Thomas Schweich, who served as U.S. coordinator for counternarcotics and justice reform in Afghanistan, revealed that “a lot of intelligence…indicated that senior Afghan officials were deeply involved in the narcotics trade. Narco-traffickers were buying off hundreds of police chiefs, judges and other officials. Narco-corruption went to the top of the Afghan government.” 7 The United States and other NATO countries also have intelligence on who many of these officials are, though a substantial amount of information is kept at the classified level. Senior officials within the Afghan government havethus far been unwilling to target government officials involved in corruption, partly because they do not want to alienate powerful political figures in the midst of an insurgency. President Karzai’s efforts to establish a High Office of Oversight and Anti-Corruption and create special anticorruption units in the Office of the Attorney General and in the Judiciary were largely window dressing.
    The United States and others in the international community should encourage Afghan leaders to draft sweeping anticorruption legislation, arrest and prosecute corrupt officials at the national and local levels, create inspector general offices in key ministries, provide support to the justice system (including protecting judges, prosecutors, and witnesses involved in corruption trials), and conduct a robust public-information campaign. Undermining high-level corruption in Afghanistan is just as much about finding the political will to implement effective anticorruption programs as it is about developing them. And the strategic goal should be a sense of legitimacy among local Afghans.
    Bottom-Up Efforts
    A second step is for the United States and other countries to find a better balance between top-down efforts to build a viable central government and bottom-up efforts to support local actors. Both are critical for establishing security and providing public services. Governance in Afghanistan has