The Afghan Ministry of Mines recently announced the discovery of an oilfield with an estimated 1.8 billion barrels in the north of Afghanistan. This announcement follows several other discoveries of untapped mineral resources, not only oil but of iron, ore, copper, lithium, gas and gems. These developments are raising hope among Afghan officials of greater autonomy for their government from the West, both in terms of security and economy. The potential revenue generated by the exploration of these resources could in fact be a decisive turn for the faith of Afghanistan. And yet, this news is not necessarily good news for the majority of the Afghan people.
To make good use of these natural resources several things are necessary. First of all, basic infrastructure like roads, as well as know-how, which, although the Afghans do not have it, will certainly not lack it as foreign companies “battle” for invaluable contracts. Security of course is a big concern, but the instability and constant fighting has not stopped, for example, the state owned China Metallurgical Group Corporation from doing business in Afghanistan over the last three years. The biggest obstacle to transforming the potentially big revenue from the exploration of these resources into jobs, schools and hospitals for the Afghans is corruption. Tackling it in Afghanistan seems to be mission impossible.
According to “Corruption in Afghanistan: Bribery as reported by the victims,” a report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Organized Crime (UNODC), 59 percent of Afghanistan citizens place corruption as the number one problem facing the country, above insecurity and unemployment. One of the most striking figures presented in the report is the $2.5 billion in bribes that Afghans paid in a 12-month period. The payment of bribes thus accounts for almost 25 percent of the country’s GDP. This has created an economy of bribery, and even those who do not incur in illegal activities are forced to pay bribes for having access to basic public services.
Although corruption does affect all countries, local cultural and social practices play a central role in determining how serious the issue is in each country. As Mohammed Aloko, Afghan’s general attorney often says to foreigners—as quoted in Der Spiegel newspaper—“The country was lawless for decades, which is why one can’t expect a law-based society to appear out of nowhere.”
An interesting study by two US-based researchers titled “Cultures of Corruption” does show that cultural and social norms become quite embedded and play an important role in peoples’ behavior. To assess the levels of corruption as influenced by social norms, the study focused on the parking tickets accumulated by international diplomats living in New York City from 1997 to 2005. All diplomats from 146 countries were on the same ground, given that, by benefiting from diplomatic immunity, they can avoid paying parking fines. The study found that, on the one hand, and contrary to the assumption that all diplomats would have high parking violations, those from low corruption countries like Norway behaved remarkably well. On the other hand, diplomats from Chad, Sudan or Angola, all countries that make it to the top of the world’s most corrupt, made it to the top 10 of the list of parking violations, with more than 100 violations per diplomat in that nine year period.
In a panel held this year chaired by Lakhdar Brahimi (former UN special representative for Afghanistan) about the future of Afghanistan, corruption was indicated by the several experts present as a crucial element in driving people away from what they see as the alien democracy in Kabul. The issue of the cultural factor influencing the high levels of corruption was also addressed. As one of the discussants put it, “If corruption is not a concept understood in Pashtun codes, how do you educate people for them to understand this?” This idea that corruption is not a concept understood in Pashtun codes can seem like an apologetic way of framing the issue, but it is still a plausible claim. According to the UNODC report, the south of Afghanistan (mainly Pashtun) is one of the two areas most affected by corruption. In this regard, it is interesting to note that the word Pashtuns use for “corruption” is not a word that comes from Pashto, but it’s actually a word imported from Dari (Persian): fesaad (فساد).
In Afghanistan, nowhere is corruption more visible than in the drug trade, which currently provides about 60 percent of the Taliban’s funding. The third episode of the documentary, Our Drugs War, by Angus Macqueen, starts with an account of General Aminullah’s war on drugs. Trained by the British and based in Kabul’s international airport, General Aminullah was making some serious apprehensions. A lady about to embark on a plane was caught on camera with several kilos of heroin. It is striking how calm the lady is, with a clear feeling of being untouchable, while she mentions repeatedly to General Aminnullah that she knows people higher up than him, and that she will be released and he will be sacked. When General Aminullah comes to the office the following day, he learns with dismay but little surprise that the lady had been freed that morning. When General Aminullah accused several government officials of being involved in the drug trade, he was sacked from his position following an investigation called by Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai.
General Aminullah’s account is not the only story in the documentary involving Karzai himself. A group of policemen were caught while transporting in their cars several hundred kilos of heroin with the purpose of doing business. Sentenced by an Afghan judge to the country’s maximum penalty for trafficking, the policemen were all released under a pre-election deal made with Karzai.
A recent article by journalist Iason Athanasiadis published in The Majalla reveals quite well the impossible task international forces face in tackling the drug trade. As a frustrated US soldier told Athanasiadis, “This isn’t America where the DEA wants to do a drug bust, they call the local precinct and get two officers in 15 minutes.” “When we call for the Afghan police, they’re usually hashed out of their brains so we have to go pick them up and escort them to the scene. It’s like nannying children,” he added.
Poverty does play a big role of course. It becomes harder to blame the average Afghan citizen, most of whom earn less than $2 a day, of incurring in illegal activities in the face of a starving family. As an Afghan said with despair to Our Drugs War, “if poverty drives us into the drug trade, we are called drug smugglers.” The main problem is that, as the UNODC report puts it, corruption in Afghanistan is a cancer that is metastatic, reaching the highest government ranks as extensively as it reaches low pay border guards. Corruption is, or has become, a way of life in Afghanistan.
In the heart of the problem seems to be also the lack of allegiance and support to the ideal of the Afghan state. Many other allegiances, including tribe, family, as well as one’s personal gains, supersede the state. To this it is not alien the fact that Afghanistan has never had a central government that effectively controlled its territory.
In this scenario, what seems most likely to happen to the revenue of Afghanistan’s natural resources is similar to what happened in Russia under Boris Yeltsin. A range of badly planned privatization programs benefited only a handful of oligarchs who became immensely rich while the country headed to economic collapse.
As Our Drugs War puts it, the “war on drugs” (and on corruption) is undermined by the priority being given to the “war on terror,” which prevents NATO allies from supporting the right people and from sanctioning wrong behavior from top Afghan officials. This stance misses the point that fighting corruption and creating an economy in Afghanistan would be crucial to stabilize the country and change public support from the insurgency to the government in Kabul.
Manuel Almeida – Contributing Editor
