CORRUPTION IN CONFLICT

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emained on the embassy’s agenda, U.S. activities and goals in this area reflected low expectations of progress. Certainly, much of the blame for such little progress against corruption rests squarely with Afghan leaders who failed to meet benchmarks for reform or hold the most corrupt actors accountable. 485 At the same time, however, the U.S. government underestimated the leverage it had over the Afghan government and politically connected individuals. 486 While the lack of Afghan cooperation on anticorruption stymied many U.S. efforts, the United States could have more aggressively brought pressure to bear by conditioning security and development assistance on tangible progress. U.S. agencies might have developed a cohesive strategy for increasing the costs for Afghan political leaders to support a corrupt system, including pursuing revocation of visas against corrupt Afghan officials and their families; pursuing more robust U.S. law enforcement actions against corrupt Afghans with dual U.S. citizenship; and making seizures in the United States of the proceeds of Afghan corruption. The U.S. failure to fully employ these tools suggests U.S. officials believed that using them carried too high a risk of jeopardizing more direct security and counterterrorism objectives, such as ensuring a continued international troop presence and maintaining control of battlefield detainees. These judgment calls reflected the primary U.S. policy objective in Afghanistan: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qaeda and its safe havens in Pakistan, and to prevent their return to Pakistan or Afghanistan. The problem was that corruption continued to pose a security threat in its own right and threatened U.S. security and stability goals. If the United States had devoted more resources to studying and understanding the issue of corruption, it might have recognized the threat of systemic corruption to its core security goals before corrupt networks became entrenched and much harder to tackle. It was not until 2010 that U.S. agencies initiated systematic efforts to map corruption in, for example, Shafafiyat and to vet contractors through TF-2010 and vendor vetting units. Although these efforts prevented some U.S. contracts from going to malign actors, they proved too little, too late to dismantle corrupt networks. It is impossible to know how employing all available tools might have compromised U.S. goals for the SPA, BSA, the security transition process, and reconciliation. What we do know, however, is that the Taliban insurgency remains a serious threat to security and stability in Afghanistan. 487 During the 2014 presidential elections, Ashraf Ghani told the Guardian that “the Afghan public is sick and tired of corruption; we are not going to revive the economy without tackling corruption root, stock, and branch.” 488 Perception surveys continue to show corruption as a major source of frustration for the Afghan population. 489 The World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators show slight improvement in Afghanistan’s “control of corruption” as of 2014, but the country remains in the bottom six percent of all countries ranked. 490 While demonstrating 68 SIGAR I CORRUPTION IN CONFLICT I SEPTEMBER 2016
a desire to tackle corruption and achieving some successes, the National Unity Government has struggled to make headway against entrenched, corrupt networks. And, the United States is maintaining a sizeable troop presence in Afghanistan, in contrast to earlier plans for a near-complete withdrawal. “The Afghan public is sick and tired of corruption; we are not going to revive the economy without tackling corruption root, stock, and branch.” —President Ashraf Ghani SIGAR I CORRUPTION IN CONFLICT I SEPTEMBER 2016 69
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Special Inspector General for Afgha
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Special Inspector General for Afgha
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TABLE OF CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
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ILLUSTRATIONS FIGURES FIGURE 1: Sha
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In the early years of the reconstru
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Recommendations To address corrupti
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1. Corruption undermined the U.S. m
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large sums of money. For example, a
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Corruption Has Increased from Pre-2
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capacity, legislative and regulator
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dynamic we have to change if we wan
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in corruption. 58 Afghans also witn
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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 and 40: measurable benchmarks and target da
Page 41: While certain individuals and offic
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: These cancelled or forestalled cont
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
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368 SIGAR, Quarterly Report to the
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411 Torabi, email to SIGAR, March 5
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463 Congressional Research Service,
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525 U.S. Embassy Kabul, U.S. Govern
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586 U.S. Embassy Kabul, “Update o
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633 DOD, Report on Progress toward
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SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY Afghan Research
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Century Foundation. Afghanistan: Ne
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Federal Bureau of Investigation.
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Human Rights Watch. Blood-Stained H
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Koumans, Mark. Testimony before the
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Pritchett, Lant, Michael Woolcock,
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Schmeidl, Susanne. “The Man Who W
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Stanekzai, Mohammad M. “Afghanist
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U.S. Department of State, Office of
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United Nations Development Programm
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS SIGAR acknowledges
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SIGAR SPECIAL INSPECTOR GENERAL FOR
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