CORRUPTION IN CONFLICT

Recommendations

Info

At the same time, Karzai formed a high-level government committee chaired by Chief Justice Abdul Salam Azimi and tasked it with identifying the root causes of corruption and providing recommendations. 179 The committee’s final report, released in mid-2008, provided detailed administrative steps each ministry could take to reduce its vulnerability to corruption. 180 However, an Afghan anticorruption expert said that the recommendations were seen as an antiquated, bureaucratic response to a problem of a different nature and scale. 181 Despite increasing donor attention to corruption issues, poor coordination and competing political priorities of donor countries hampered efforts. The lead nation approach devised in 2002 provided a division of labor for donor countries, but also fractured the reconstruction effort and enabled donors to pursue their own, sometimes divergent, priorities. 182 The 2009 OECD report assessed that anticorruption efforts to date had succeeded in establishing some consensus around the corruption problem and setting specific benchmarks, but in terms of concrete impact, had amounted to little more than window-dressing. 183 Donor responses to corruption were also constrained by poor message unity and the challenge of the sheer number of international players. 184 Donors’ calls for anticorruption commitments by the Afghans were not always “communicated with clear expectations of concrete actions.” 185 Summary: Obstacles to Advancing an Anticorruption Agenda In the first seven years of the reconstruction effort, the U.S. government did not view anticorruption as a top priority; rather, counterterrorism, political stability, and reconstruction objectives took precedence. By virtue of its military alliances and political support, the United States inadvertently helped to empower malign powerbrokers. Once in government, these individuals strengthened and expanded their patronage networks. In an environment of weak rule of law, they could engage in the drug trade and other criminal enterprises. Meanwhile, surveys indicated that the Afghan population was alienated by an increasingly corrupt government, which in turn undermined popular support for the state, as well as for the international actors backing the state. There was an inherent tension between ambitious plans for a technocratic, capable state governed by the rule of law, and the approach the U.S. government and President Karzai pursued of a “messy mix” of “unsteady formal institutions, influenced if not dominated by powerful informal rules and organizations.” 186 This mix stemmed from the lack of a national monopoly on the use of force and the resources to impose one. The international donor community’s inability to impose and enforce the rule of law made the fight against corruption a steep climb. By 2006, the international donor community was trying to chart a path forward for preventing and combatting corruption. Though donors acknowledged a few signs of progress by GIROA, many people thought that progress paled in the face of Afghanistan’s corruption challenge and the lack of meaningful Afghan political commitment to tackle the issue. 187 28 SIGAR I CORRUPTION IN CONFLICT I SEPTEMBER 2016
While certain individuals and offices within the U.S. government took an interest in corruption, U.S. agencies did not pursue anticorruption as a top priority in Afghanistan. In later years, as greater resources were devoted to the mission overall, U.S. officials would develop a more sophisticated understanding of the links among corrupt government officials, the drug trade, criminals, and insurgent groups—and come to appreciate corruption as a strategic threat. Together, the increase in resources and deeper understanding of corrupt networks would prompt greater U.S. efforts to combat corruption in Afghanistan. SIGAR I CORRUPTION IN CONFLICT I SEPTEMBER 2016 29
Page 1 and 2: Special Inspector General for Afgha
Page 3 and 4: Special Inspector General for Afgha
Page 5 and 6: TABLE OF CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Page 7 and 8: ILLUSTRATIONS FIGURES FIGURE 1: Sha
Page 9 and 10: In the early years of the reconstru
Page 11: Recommendations To address corrupti
Page 14 and 15: 1. Corruption undermined the U.S. m
Page 16 and 17: large sums of money. For example, a
Page 18 and 19: Corruption Has Increased from Pre-2
Page 20 and 21: capacity, legislative and regulator
Page 22 and 23: dynamic we have to change if we wan
Page 24 and 25: in corruption. 58 Afghans also witn
Page 27 and 28: ISAF Public Affairs photo PART ONE
Page 29 and 30: checkpoints, activities which they
Page 31 and 32: usinesses that served the internati
Page 33 and 34: for the long-term threat that corru
Page 35 and 36: combat corruption globally, which i
Page 37 and 38: opium when they raided the governor
Page 39: measurable benchmarks and target da
Page 44 and 45: that Afghan leaders were not commit
Page 46 and 47: U.S. government documents increasin
Page 48 and 49: the state’s legitimacy and capabi
Page 50 and 51: and helping to fund the enemy. The
Page 52 and 53: would benefit from an approved stra
Page 54 and 55: fundamental flaw: The Afghan govern
Page 56 and 57: By the time of Salehi’s arrest an
Page 59 and 60: U.S. Marine Corps photo PART THREE
Page 61 and 62: and partners, other countries in th
Page 63 and 64: BOX 2: ABSORPTIVE CAPACITY In the d
Page 65 and 66: Capacity-building efforts would be
Page 67 and 68: “The international community held
Page 69 and 70: success, due in part to unwillingne
Page 71 and 72: ability to conduct robust oversight
Page 73 and 74: The story elicited a sharp congress
Page 75 and 76: London, Kabul, and Tokyo Conference
Page 77 and 78: officials. The task force member no
Page 79 and 80: These cancelled or forestalled cont
Page 81: a desire to tackle corruption and a
Page 84 and 85: These findings underscore that the
Page 87 and 88: LESSONS USAID/Afghanistan photo Bas
Page 89 and 90: eport, international assistance acc
Page 91:
in Afghanistan failed to address th
Page 94 and 95:
This legislation should: • Requir
Page 96 and 97:
Intelligence agencies should: • C
Page 98 and 99:
10. The State Department should pla
Page 100 and 101:
the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, which wa
Page 102 and 103:
APPENDIX B ABBREVIATIONS 4A Assista
Page 104 and 105:
ODA OECD OEF OSD-P OTI PACC PRT PSC
Page 106 and 107:
APPENDIX D Strategy or Plan Assessm
Page 108 and 109:
Organization Lead Agency Mandate Hi
Page 110 and 111:
APPENDIX F U.S. Support to Afghan G
Page 112 and 113:
ENDNOTES 1 Ryan Crocker, SIGAR inte
Page 114 and 115:
34 OECD Development Assistance Coun
Page 116 and 117:
65 Fishstein and Wilder, Winning He
Page 118 and 119:
101 Joint Staff, Joint and Coalitio
Page 120 and 121:
148 Dressler, Counterinsurgency in
Page 122 and 123:
192 NSC, White Paper on the Interag
Page 124 and 125:
235 U.S. Embassy Kabul, “Afghanis
Page 126 and 127:
284 Department of the Treasury, “
Page 128 and 129:
Transition to Transformation, July
Page 130 and 131:
368 SIGAR, Quarterly Report to the
Page 132 and 133:
411 Torabi, email to SIGAR, March 5
Page 134 and 135:
463 Congressional Research Service,
Page 136 and 137:
525 U.S. Embassy Kabul, U.S. Govern
Page 138 and 139:
586 U.S. Embassy Kabul, “Update o
Page 140 and 141:
633 DOD, Report on Progress toward
Page 142 and 143:
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY Afghan Research
Page 144 and 145:
Century Foundation. Afghanistan: Ne
Page 146 and 147:
Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Page 148 and 149:
Human Rights Watch. Blood-Stained H
Page 150 and 151:
Koumans, Mark. Testimony before the
Page 152 and 153:
Pritchett, Lant, Michael Woolcock,
Page 154 and 155:
Schmeidl, Susanne. “The Man Who W
Page 156 and 157:
Stanekzai, Mohammad M. “Afghanist
Page 158 and 159:
U.S. Department of State, Office of
Page 160 and 161:
United Nations Development Programm
Page 162 and 163:
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS SIGAR acknowledges
Page 164:
SIGAR SPECIAL INSPECTOR GENERAL FOR
show all

CORRUPTION IN CONFLICT

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?