Afghan, ISAF Officials Detail Corruption Fight

WASHINGTON, Jan. 19, 2012 — The bat­tle against cor­rup­tion in Afghanistan is as cru­cial to the nation’s future as the fight against the insur­gency, two lead­ers at the fore­front of that strug­gle said today.

Army Brig. Gen. H.R. McMas­ter com­mands the Inter­na­tion­al Secu­ri­ty Assis­tance Force’s counter-cor­rup­tion task force. He and Afghan for­eign min­istry spokesman Janan Mosazai briefed reporters at the Pen­ta­gon from Afghanistan’s cap­i­tal of Kab­ul on the polit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic, judi­cial and law enforce­ment effort to curb cor­rup­tion in that nation’s young government. 

Mosazai, a past can­di­date for the Afghan par­lia­ment, said his country’s cur­rent strug­gle is best under­stood in the con­text of its recent his­to­ry. From 2001 to now, Afghanistan has expe­ri­enced an “earth-and-sky” change, he said. 

“Afghanistan was a severe­ly iso­lat­ed coun­try, where the peo­ple lived at the mer­cy of a bru­tal regime sup­port­ed by inter­na­tion­al ter­ror­ists,” Mosazai said. In con­trast, he added, the nation now has a demo­c­ra­t­ic con­sti­tu­tion, a robust free press, more than 11,000 miles of paved roads and 8 mil­lion chil­dren in school, more than a third of whom are girls. In 2001, few­er than a mil­lion Afghan chil­dren went to school, and all of them were boys. 

“We have seen an expo­nen­tial expan­sion of … health ser­vices,” Mosazai said. “Today about 80 per­cent of the Afghan pop­u­la­tion up and down the coun­try has access to at least basic health services.” 

In 2001, an Afghan cit­i­zen would have trav­eled up to two days to make a phone call to a rel­a­tive or a friend out­side Afghanistan, while today more than 12 mil­lion Afghans own cell phones, and at least 1 mil­lion are online, the spokesman noted. 

Afghanistan has emerged from “the dark iso­la­tion that it lived under back in the 1990s dur­ing the civ­il war and the Tal­iban regime,” he said. 

“Today we have close to 70 mis­sions in the four cor­ners of the world — embassies, con­sulates and per­ma­nent mis­sions — main­tain­ing and advanc­ing our rela­tions with the region and with the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty,” Mosazai noted. 

Afghanistan’s peo­ple are deter­mined to pre­serve their nation’s gains, and they seek region­al and inter­na­tion­al part­ner­ship and assis­tance in their quest for peace and long-term sta­bil­i­ty and secu­ri­ty, he said. 

In Decem­ber, the Afghanistan inter­na­tion­al con­fer­ence in Bonn, Ger­many, drew rep­re­sen­ta­tives from more than 100 nations and orga­ni­za­tions. That con­fer­ence, Mosazai said, result­ed in “a strong polit­i­cal com­mit­ment to sup­port and [assist] Afghanistan” through the 2014 secu­ri­ty tran­si­tion peri­od, “and then for the decade … of trans­for­ma­tion in Afghanistan, all the way to 2025.” 

Dur­ing four con­fer­ences sched­uled for the next six months, he added, Afghan lead­ers hope to resolve region­al issues and flesh out inter­na­tion­al com­mit­ments “so that we get enough time in Afghanistan to devel­op our domes­tic rev­enue sources — our nat­ur­al wealth, our mines, our agri­cul­ture indus­try — and revive Afghanistan’s place, Afghanistan’s role as the region’s land bridge and hub.” 

Afghan lead­ers seek “a rec­i­p­ro­cal com­mit­ment between Afghanistan and the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, where we on the Afghan side con­tin­ue to imple­ment the reforms that we know are nec­es­sary,” Mosazai said. 

McMas­ter said bat­tling cor­rup­tion is “a crit­i­cal effort in this real­ly crit­i­cal phase in Afghanistan’s long strug­gle for peace and justice.” 

McMas­ter not­ed ISAF forces and their civil­ian coun­ter­parts have tak­en steps – reform­ing con­tract process­es, screen­ing peo­ple and com­pa­nies, and over­see­ing aid dona­tions – to ensure the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty isn’t cre­at­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for corruption. 

“We have [in the past] often deliv­ered much-need­ed inter­na­tion­al assis­tance to Afghan insti­tu­tions and to Afghanistan broad­ly with­out ade­quate over­sight,” he added. 

ISAF sup­ports the Afghan-led effort to build a polit­i­cal sys­tem resis­tant to cor­rup­tion, the gen­er­al said. 

The Afghan-ISAF goal, he added, is to “strength­en and hard­en” key Afghan insti­tu­tions, espe­cial­ly those involv­ing secu­ri­ty, law enforce­ment and the courts, and so reduce the threat of cor­rup­tion to the state. 

McMaster’s task force also is work­ing with Afghan law enforce­ment and intel­li­gence orga­ni­za­tions “to under­stand this over­lap­ping prob­lem of insur­gency and ter­ror­ism, cor­rup­tion, orga­nized crime and the nar­cotics trade,” he said. 

“We should acknowl­edge up front the biggest crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tion in Afghanistan is the Tal­iban,” he said. “Not just because they com­mit mass mur­der of inno­cent peo­ple as their prin­ci­pal tac­tic in the war, but also because they fund their efforts in large mea­sure through a broad range of illic­it activ­i­ty, espe­cial­ly the nar­cotics trade.” 

Peo­ple, mon­ey, nar­cotics and drug pre­cur­sor chem­i­cals flow through the net­works that link the Tal­iban and crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tions to the broad prob­lem of transna­tion­al orga­nized crime, McMas­ter said. 

That activ­i­ty vic­tim­izes the Afghan peo­ple and weak­ens gov­ern­ment insti­tu­tions “through the cor­ro­sive effects of the mon­ey that comes in and those who are put into posi­tions to facil­i­tate, pro­tect and prof­it from the nar­cotics trade,” the gen­er­al said. 

The U.S. depart­ments of State and Jus­tice work with the task force to under­stand the over­all prob­lem and sup­port Afghan-led law enforce­ment and judi­cial action against cor­rup­tion, he added. 

Mem­bers of the Afghan gov­ern­ment must gen­er­ate the polit­i­cal will to take on the prob­lems, McMas­ter said. 

“What Afghan lead­ers often see is the pow­er of these crim­i­nal net­works,” he said. “They often see polit­i­cal risks asso­ci­at­ed with tak­ing them on. But I think now, because we’ve worked on this prob­lem togeth­er, we can also see the long-term cost of inac­tion against these networks.” 

McMas­ter not­ed Afghan Pres­i­dent Hamid Karzai said last week the nation must “lift impuni­ty and pro­tec­tion” from key nar­cotics traffickers. 

“And you’ve had the arrest of four key traf­fick­ers just in the last week, which is a very encour­ag­ing sign,” the gen­er­al said. 

McMas­ter said anti-cor­rup­tion efforts in Afghanistan are achiev­ing “quan­tifi­able progress.” 

“How that progress relates to the over­all scale of the prob­lem, … I can’t tell you yet,” he said. “We’re work­ing on that as well.” 

Source:
U.S. Depart­ment of Defense
Office of the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense (Pub­lic Affairs) 

Team GlobDef

Seit 2001 ist GlobalDefence.net im Internet unterwegs, um mit eigenen Analysen, interessanten Kooperationen und umfassenden Informationen für einen spannenden Überblick der Weltlage zu sorgen. GlobalDefence.net war dabei die erste deutschsprachige Internetseite, die mit dem Schwerpunkt Sicherheitspolitik außerhalb von Hochschulen oder Instituten aufgetreten ist.

Alle Beiträge ansehen von Team GlobDef →