An ‘Epidemic of Graft’ – Anti-Corruption Efforts in Afghanistan Fail Hard
Thursday October 20, 2016


The US spends spends $5 billion of your tax money a year in “aid” to Afghanistan, plus billions more for the cost of the thousands of American troops and Pentagon-sponsored military contractors there.
An “Epidemic of Graft”
One of the (many) reasons why all that money has accomplished close to jack squat in 15 years of war is corruption. Extraordinary amounts of US money simply disappears, siphoned off at high levels, passed on as bribes to suppliers and Taliban hustlers at the lower levels. It is, according to one study, an “epidemic of graft.”
Transparency International ranks Afghanistan as one of the top five most corrupt countries in the world (Iraq, another US project, is also in the top tier.) The UN says half of Afghans paid a bribe in 2012; that figure was as high as 70 percent in some areas of the country. The same survey found that corruption was roughly tied with security as the issue of greatest concern to Afghans.
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