Kabul, Afghanistan -- Every morning, dozens of trucks laden with
diesel from Turkmenistan lumber out of the northern Afghan border
town of Hairaton on a two-day trek across the Hindu Kush down to
Afghanistan's capital, Kabul. Among the dozens of businesses
dispatching these trucks are two extremely well connected companies
-- Ghazanfar and Zahid Walid -- that helped to swell the election
coffers of President Hamid Karzai as well as the family business of
his running mate, the country's new vice president, warlord Mohammed
Qasim Fahim.
Some of the trucks are on their way to two power stations in the
northern part of the capital: a recently refurbished, if inefficient,
plant that has served Kabul for a little more than a quarter of a
century, and a brand new facility scheduled for completion next year
and built with money from the U.S. Agency for International
Development (USAID).
Afghan political analysts observe that Ghazanfar and Zahid Walid are
striking examples of the multimillion-dollar business conglomerates,
financed by American as well as Afghan tax dollars and connected to
powerful political figures, that have, since the fall of the Taliban
in 2001, emerged as part of a pervasive culture of corruption here.
Nasrullah Stanikzai, a professor of law and political science at
Kabul University, says of the companies in the pocket of the
vice-president: "Everybody knows who is Ghazanfar. Everybody knows
who is Zahid Walid. The [government elite] directly or indirectly
have companies, licenses, and sign contracts. But corruption is not
confined just to the Afghans. The international community bears a
share of this blame."
Indeed, the tale of the "reconstruction" of Kabul's electricity
supply is a classic story of how foreign aid has often served to line
the pockets of both international contractors from the donor
countries and the local political elite. Unfortunately, these
aid-financed projects also generally fail -- as the Kabul diesel
plants appear destined to -- because of a lack of planning and the
hard cash to keep them operating.
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175140/pratap_chatterjee_afghanistan_as_a_patronage_machine>Link
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Posted By johannes to
<http://www.monochrom.at/english/2009/11/paying-off-warlords-anatomy-of-afghan.htm>monochrom
at 11/20/2009 07:12:00 PM
