Thread by @shobz

How Afghanistan was lost to Taliban: A Story of Corruption
I read that one of the factors why the Taliban was able to takeover districts with ease is because of the massive corruption in Afg. People are so tired of it that they have turned to the Taliban for support. [Thread]

“The government is weak because it really lost the connection with the people,” says Orzala Nemat, a veteran Kabul-based Afghan analyst.

“That’s why, as much as people hate the Taliban,” she says, “they got fed up with very corrupt officials, and did not much bother about or support the government.”
csmonitor.com/World/Middle-E…

Declan Walsh wrote about Afghanistan in November 2014 where he said “a picture emerges of such rampant bribery and extortion that corruption can no longer be described as a cancer on the system: It is the system, they say. And it is deeply enmeshed with Afghan politics.”

Senior bureaucrats and politicians involved with customs, made so much wealth that they were able to buy expensive properties in Kabul, Dubai, Europe, or Canada. nytimes.com/2014/11/12/wor…

USIP came up with a report detailing the collapse of Kabul Bank in 2010, where the bank’s leadership and a handful of political elites had embezzled close to $1 billion through fraudulent loan schemes usip.org/sites/default/…

Mahmood Karzai and cohorts of then-President Hamid Karzai were involved in the scandal. President Ghani ordered an investigation in the scandal when he was elected. However, hundreds of millions of dollars have not been reclaimed yet.
carnegieendowment.org/2020/07/07/kab…

Afghans blame Karzai for creating a system based on a mafia structure and patronage. Corruption is the norm there now. Instead of accepting responsibility, he accused foreigners of corruption in Afghanistan in his December 2012 speech.
aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/…

“The big corruption is in transactions and contracts involving outsiders in Afghanistan... these contracts are given to senior government officials or their relatives,” he said.
dawn.com/news/773322/ka…

Karzai had appointed Fazel Ahmad Faqiryar, to prosecute senior members of his govt, only to reverse course two weeks later and fire him. It should be noted that Karzai had also tried to thwart all prosecutions against them. nytimes.com/2010/08/29/wor…

There is the case of Afghan Army’s former surgeon general, Gen. Ahmad Zia Yaftali who stole $153 million worth of supplies. NATO investigators made the discovery that injured soldiers were dying of simple infections.

They were unable to bribe doctors and nurses to take care of them.
wsj.com/amp/articles/S…

The US added pressure and got Gen Yaftali suspended in December 2010, even though he continued to draw a salary. Karzai refused to prosecute him until the US provided evidence.

However, the US pulled back a statement backed with evidence as they did not see any gains in picking a fight with Karzai.
nytimes.com/2012/03/08/wor…

Gen Yaftali was sentenced to six months in prison by an anti-corruption court on May 12, 2019 but continued to attend parliament meetings as he had been elected as an MP from Badakhshan.
afghan-bios.info/index.php?opti…

The Washington Post published a damning investigative report on corruption in Afghanistan in 2019, where they revealed that the US had turned a blind eye to corruption there for years.

Forensic accounting showed that 40 percent of the $106 billion dollars doled out in defense contracts ended up in the pockets of insurgents, criminal syndicates, or corrupt Afghan officials.
washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/…

According to the Borgen Project, corruption is a factor when it comes to poverty in Afghanistan. Political corruption tends to aggravate the symptoms of poverty in countries with struggling economic growth and political transition. borgenproject.org/corruption-in-…

Transparency International, had published a report where they mentioned how corruption was a driver of conflict in Afghanistan. u4.no/publications/c…

Afghanistan went down in Transparency International’s Corruption rankings from 173 to 165 in 2020. tradingeconomics.com/afghanistan/co…

Another one about the threat of Corruption and Organized crime in Afghanistan. cco.ndu.edu/Portals/96/Doc…

A report by the Afghan Analysts network on how Corruption has bloomed in Afghanistan since 2001. afghanistan-analysts.org/en/reports/eco…

Coverage of corruption in Afghanistan:
1.NBC News: nbcnews.com/news/world/cor…
2.AP: apnews.com/article/europe…
3.Foreign Policy: foreignpolicy.com/2021/03/04/afg…
4.Stars and Stripes: stripes.com/theaters/middl…
5.Daily Sabah: dailysabah.com/business/econo…