While U.S. Talks Withdrawal, Afghan Corruption Soars

While U.S. Talks Withdrawal, Afghan Corruption Soars

WASHINGTON — The farmer picking apples in the outskirts of Kabul must pay the Taliban $33 to ship out each truckload of fruit. The governor sends in armed men to chase workers off job sites if the official bribes aren’t paid. Poor neighborhoods never get their U.N.-provided wheat, long since sold on the black market.

These are some of the elements, large and small, that together form the elaborate organized crime environment Afghans contend with daily. And despite the hoped-for success of the U.S. military surge and President Obama’s claims of significant progress, Afghanistan’s resemblance to a mafia state that cannot serve its citizens may only be getting

The 46-page study, to be released next week, looks specifically at Afghanistan’s heartland: the rural areas of Ghazni, Wardak, Logar and other provinces just beyond the periphery of Kabul. Unemployment is high, government presence is low and the insurgency operates with impunity. Corruption and cooperation with the Taliban reach the highest levels of local governance.

“Nearly a decade after the U.S.-led military intervention little has been done to challenge the perverse incentives of continued conflict in Afghanistan,” the research group says. Rather, violence and the billions of dollars in international aid have brought wealthy officials and insurgents together. And “the economy as a result is increasingly dominated by a criminal oligarchy of politically connected businessmen,” the report concludes.

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While U.S. Talks Withdrawal, Afghan Corruption Soars

So, let me see if I have this straight…

Bribery and corruption run rampant in the Afghan government and all through the local infrastructure of Afghan business and commerce.

Farmers must pay the Taliban $33 to ship out each truckload of fruit, and other foodstuffs that were originally destined for the Afghan people seem to just disappear on the *black market*.

Sounds like a Teamsters operation to me, corrupt to the core. The people down the line get *shafted* while the guys at the top reap the benefits.

The corruption that IS Afghanistan is not what troubles me so much. The nation of Afghanistan has been corrupt for as long as I can remember, and I can remember the days of Charlie Wilson’s War pretty well.

It was MY understanding that after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 we weren’t going into Afghanistan to set up a new government, remake the nation in our image and instill a sense of democracy in the Afghan people, I was under the impression that we were going in there to find and kill the mastermind of the 9-11 attacks, Osama bin Laden, kill him and exact some serious PAYBACK on the Taliban for their attacks on us.

Oh well, what do I know? And in other news:

Dozens Dead as Car Bomb Detonates Outside Afghan Medical Clinic

KABUL, Afghanistan — A suicide attacker blew up his sport utility vehicle packed with explosives outside of a small medical clinic in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday, killing at least 25 people, Afghan authorities said. Some reports put the death toll as high as 60.

The widely varying estimates of the number of killed and wounded in the bombing in the mountainous Azra district of Logar province, some 25 miles east of Kabul, reflect the chaos that frequently follows such an attack.

The Afghan Health Ministry initially said in a statement that some 60 people were killed and 120 wounded. But at a later news conference, ministry official Abdullah Fahim told reporters those figures were wrong, and said new information put the toll at between 13 and 25 killed and 50 wounded.

Din Mohammad Darwesh, a spokesman for the provincial governor, said 25 people were killed and more than 40 wounded in the blast. The different tolls could not be immediately reconciled.

The bomber drove up to the medical clinic in an SUV, and clinic guards tried to prevent him from entering the center’s compound, said Mohammad Zaref Nayebkhail, the provincial health director. “The driver didn’t stop and he entered the compound and reached the main building of the health center, where the truck detonated,” Nayebkhail said.

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Dozens Dead as Car Bomb Detonates Outside Afghan Medical Clinic

It appears that someone in Afghanistan has come up with a new health plan for the Afghan people, ‘Never mind seeking medical care, we will blow you up and your medical problems will all be taken care of.’

Some might think that’s a silly notion or that I’m just being sarcastic, Let me assure you, I am not. There is a strain of insanity that runs through the Islamic people, the more primitive tribes, that still believes:

And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast [it] from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire.

In other words: ‘Never mind that cancerous growth on your face Hamid, we will blow you into a million pieces and you will be perfect in the eyes of Allah.’

That’s pretty reassuring huh? 😕

We have been in Afghanistan for almost 10 years and little has changed. We supported the Mujahideen in their battle against the Soviet Union. After the Russians were driven out of the nation of Afghanistan, other than the facts that the Russians were gone, the Afghan way of life was unchanged.

The Mujahideen went on to become the Taliban and have used the very weapons that WE provided them in their fight against the Russians, to fight against us.

Afghanistan will never change, not for the better, and we are foolish to believe it will.

America has a funny habit, we go to war against an enemy and after we defeat that enemy, sometimes even before the battle is done, think Iraq, and we begin to pour BILLIONS of American tax dollars into rebuilding the nation that we just made war upon.

I think this story fully illustrates the counterproductive waste of troops, money and resources that America has lost in an effort to *civilize* a land that time has forgotten.

Afghanistan is, and will most likely remain, a corrupt nation that will never emerge from its ancient beginnings.

Don’t for a minute think that I am against going to war, I’m not, but if we’re going to make war, then by God let it be WAR and lets get it over with as soon as possible, by any means necessary and bring our troops home victorious, with as little loss of American life as possible and as little expenditure of American dollars as possible. 

War is NOT for the meek nor the politically correct.

Let the WARRIORS lead and let the USA once again be a world power to be reckoned with!