But Really, What IS Corruption?

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Afghanistan, corruption, culture, current-events, daily life, development, family, favoritism, GIRoA, government, government effectiveness, hamid karzai, kabul bank, nepotism, politics, president of afghanistan, services

As a “culture instructor,” one of my favorite techniques to get students to learn is to make them teach classes. You really learn something when you have to stand at the front of a room and try to make someone else understand it. And, frankly, that’s four fewer hours of lecturing for me–all I have to do is sit in the back of the room and think up smart-sounding questions. (Incidentally, kudos to the students who found this blog and some of my other work and directly quoted me in class…I’m a sucker for academic flattery.)

One of the topics I give to students in my Afghanistan class is “corruption.” That’s all the direction they get, one word, but they do a pretty good job of running with it. Many talk about corruption around the drug trade (which is a blog post or three in and of itself), and many talk about the bribery and extortion Afghans have to live with in their daily lives and as they try to get promoted in the military or police.

What many don’t bring up–because it’s ridiculously complicated–are nepotism and favoritism. When you run a private business here in the US, it’s no real surprise if you bring in your family and friends to be part of the senior leadership (it might not be smart, but it’s not uncommon). However, it’s generally frowned on if you do the same thing when you work for the government. Oh, you’re inner staff might be people you know, but public positions should go to people who are qualified, not people you’re related to. It’s not that it doesn’t happen, it just makes us a bit uncomfortable. (Think the Kennedy and Bush families.)

In other countries, though, that’s par for the course. When Hamid Karzai became president of Afghanistan, his brothers, cousins and close friends suddenly found themselves in charge of pretty significant public posts. Some even got into high-profile private sector institutes like, oh, say the Kabul Bank (which recently made headlines by squandering $900 million on a get-rich-quick scheme that benefited only a couple of choice individuals).  And it’s not just the president, but it happens all the way down to local politics. Having family in politics a pretty good gig. In fact, when I was out around election time asking people if they knew who the candidates were (for the Parliament), very few did, and those that did were excited about it:

One man said, “I know Nadr Khan Katawazi and am going to vote for him! He’s my cousin!” He said it with a pretty eager gleam in his eye and with good reason–if his cousin managed to win, it would be nothing but luxurious government positions for the rest of the family (or at least a leg up into the system for starters).

And corruption of the getting-cool-jobs-for-your-buddies variety isn’t the only thing that permeates the system. There’s also favoritism. Oh boy, oh boy.

I was visiting Khayr Kot District in Paktika Province, where the district governor was a pretty good guy. He was liberal and genuinely wanted to see the government become strong and more effective. He was from a village in the district and so, unlike many of his counterparts who valued the job for its upward mobility potential and not really taking care of the population, this guy was really invested in helping out the people of his district. Everyone in the district benefited from his commitment and he was one of the best governors I met.

It just turned out that some people benefited a little more than others. As I traveled around the district talking to people, everyone was decently happy that they had projects and development that the governor had initiated. But there was always a “…but” after they told me how happy they were.

“We’ve had a couple of projects out here and its really nice. Maybe one or two a year in the district…but, the governor’s home village gets a lot more than everyone else’s put together.” As in, his village got maybe four projects, while the entire rest of the district got one or two. They acknowledged that one or two was better than what most other districts got…but…well. It’s still not fair.

But why such rampant corruption? Well, some of it is good, old-fashioned human greed, but there’s a deeper answer than that. What is it, you ask? That’s a lesson for another day.

So stay tuned next time for the exciting conclusion to “Corruption! It’s How We Roll!”

They Stole the What?!

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Afghan police, Afghanistan, ambulances, counterinsurgency, daily life, development, government, government effectiveness, healthcare, hospitals, humor, security, services, vulnerability

The other day, a friend of mine wound up having to take a ride in an ambulance to a hospital, where he stayed for a couple of days. Happily, he’s alright now, just on strict doctor’s orders not to exercise for a few months (how often does a doctor get to say that?).

Admittedly it can be expensive, but being able to dial 911 and get an ambulance to take you to a hospital and care for you on the way is pretty fantastic. (I should probably admit here that I speak as a former EMT.) And they’re another one of those luxuries we take for granted.

Am American Platoon, some Afghan police, and I were on a visit to an out-of-the-way district in Afghanistan. The local government offices stood empty as it had proved too dangerous for officials to work there, but the insurgents tolerated government-run schools and clinics to stay open (or perhaps the people were okay having no officials but refused to allow the insurgents to bully them into closing health and education centers).

While we were in the area, we decided to walk by the clinic and see how they were doing. An administrator took us on a tour, and it was impressive, especially for how remote the area was. They had a small but competent staff and fairly new buildings and lab equipment. One of their techs was actually doing some bloodwork when we arrived. Unfortunately, their female doctor had been reassigned some time ago. They also had a chronic shortage of medicine, so could issue prescriptions without getting them filled. As much as bureaucracy could be a nightmare, with no local officials, they had no one to turn to help to fill these gaps.

All in all, though, they were doing pretty well for themselves and it was one of the nicest and most self-sufficient clinics I had seen. They didn’t ask us for help, aside from relaying their concerns to the right authorities (impressive in its own right), but did admit that one of their biggest worries was their lack of resources to deal with pregnancies or serious injuries or illnesses.

“We’re just a small community health center, not a hospital,” the administrator told me.

“What happens when people need urgent or intensive care?” I asked.

“They have to go to the city hospital. It takes hours to get there even with a car–there are no roads, just the wadi. And that’s assuming there are no bombs in it. People with serious problems sometimes die on the way.”

“Wow, that’s rough. And there’s nothing you can do?”

He shrugged, then chuckled. “We used to have an ambulance that we decided to organize and that helped, especially for people with no car. But it got stolen about a year and a half ago and we never found it.”

He smiled to show me it was no big deal, then waved us into the next room. No big deal? I’d never even heard the word ambulance in Afghanistan before. And then to have it stolen? Just when you think you’re getting to know a place…

Homecoming Nightmares

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Afghan police, Afghanistan, culture, daily life, development, gender relations, government effectiveness, refugees, vulnerability, widows

While I was in the district of Wazi Zadran over in Afghanistan, I met a women who had come to the local American/Afghan military base. She had escort, but came on her own initiative, which is pretty unheard of for a woman. But her situation was desperate.

She was not originally from the immediate area, but her husband had been and so she had lived in the district in the past. In the years of violence with the Soviet invasion and the later civil wars, she and her family had fled to Pakistan as refugees, as did millions of other people. Her husband died, leaving her a widow with two sons to raise. She got a job working as a midwife, but as she got into her 50s, her eyesight started to go, so she could no longer do that.

Though she had carved out a meager life for them there, she made the decision in 2011 to move back to her home country, specifically to her husband’s land since most of her own family was long gone. She left her sons in Pakistan because she wanted to get things started before bringing them over–especially since one was disabled. Her husband’s family grudgingly gave her a small bit of land with a field, but refused to help her with it. It wasn’t in a great location and direly needed some retaining walls before it all fell into the nearest riverbed.

When she showed up at the base, I came into the meeting so she wouldn’t be so uncomfortable only having men in the room. She sat quietly, with her shoulders slumped. When she spoke, it was with a deep sadness as if she really expected nothing from anyone. She had no family of her own, her husband’s family didn’t care, and to get help from the government, she would have to have “connections” to the local elite, which she didn’t have and couldn’t buy. Nor did she really expect anything from us. The only reason she’d come was because some local police had heard her story and been moved.

It was hard not to be. Talk about slipping through the cracks in a system with no safety nets. Women don’t have many options anyway, but traditions says that their family, even if its extended family, should provide for their basic necessities. When you’re an impoverished widow with no family who’s spent years living as a refugee, you pretty much have no way to survive. My rant about forcing women’s lib aside, widows are the one instance where I unconditionally agree with all these female engagement projects the international community keeps dreaming up. If anyone could use job training and a leg up, it’s these gals, and society isn’t as likely to frown on that as on programs for married or younger women, because they recognize that widows have to fend for themselves.

But nothing like that was in place in Wazi Zadran, which is sort of a backwater even for overeager humanitarians. But the local U.S. Commander was sympathetic and agreed to provide some materials to build retaining walls on the condition that the local police filled them for the woman. In a moment of rare and unadulterated partnership, they did. Her life still wasn’t going to be easy, but at least, for once, I felt like my tax dollars were going somewhere worthwhile.

Building bridges (Ooo, is it a metaphor or not?)

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Afghanistan, bridges, counterinsurgency, culture of dependency, development, GIRoA, government effectiveness, taxation, water

One last post on water, or more specifically, how Afghans go about getting over water.

(Note: You can click on the pictures to see larger versions of them.)

Floods are, of course, a problem everywhere, but can be catastrophic in drought-ridden areas due to their tendency to wash out all the overly-dry land alongside channels and riverbeds. This is especially problematic if said riverbeds (we called them wadis, which is actually an Arabic term) serve as one of your main forms of roads,

or if the few bridges over wadis and ravines are wiped out. In the fall of 2010, there were some pretty torrential downpours. The land was in no way able to absorb that much that water that quickly, so it ran down any available avenue and eventually on into Pakistan where it did a lot of damage.

But where we were, the floods had still ruined crops, changed the course of roads, and taken out bridges, bad news for those who had to cross one to get to basic services like a medical clinic or school. Sometimes we managed to rebuild them (yay for the Corps of Engineers!) in a few days.

(Admittedly, this job went so quickly mostly because it’s on a major highway that we use too, but the locals really appreciated it and were a lot friendlier afterward.)

Sometimes it took a little longer because we had to wait for the Afghan government to get their collective butts in gear and do it themselves. That’s tricky in and of itself since they don’t exactly collect taxes for public works. Or for anything. How do they pay for it, then? Foreign donor money! On the upside, this particular bridge was a footbridge so kids could get to school, which is kind of hard to argue with. And the day I took this, a local official and repair contractor came out with us to do a site survey. So the government was scoring points in the people’s eyes for actually being effective, which theoretically reduces popular support or tolerance for insurgents.

Of course, some people had never had a bridge in the first place and so just made do. The picture below, by the way, was taken in early March and it was pretty darn cold outside (note the snow-capped mountain in the back right). Suddenly I’m glad I pay taxes. I like my roads and bridges.

On the dangers of pouring money into a country willy-nilly

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Afghanistan, bazaar, corruption, culture of dependency, development, government, inflation

Sharana Bazaar, Paktika Province

It was my first week of real patrolling in Afghanistan and the second time I had the opportunity to stroll through this bazaar. A bazaar, for those who don’t know, is basically an outdoor mall with stands for everything you could think of. Sharana, as a city, had some really nice areas of their bazaar, with buildings and glass windows, and a not-so-posh side with tents where they sell more in the way of food and less in the way of motorcycles.

I was out with my partner/trainer, buying things and dodging crowds to find people interested in talking. While interviewing a fruit vendor, he told us that the biggest problem in his village was that they had no water supply, which was causing inflation (I wasn’t sure about the logic there since inflation is a national problem and local villages tended to only produce crops for personal use, not for sale, but I wasn’t trying to pick a fight. Yet). My partner asked why they had no water and the man explained that their karez system was clogged up.

A karez is, of course, a 3000 year-old irrigation technique that originated in Persia and spread rapidly from Morocco to China. They’re basically artificial, underground channels that bring water down from the mountains. Oddly enough, they don’t work very well if they’re not cleaned out pretty regularly.

When we asked why the village didn’t clean it themselves, the man replied in a huffy tone that they should get paid to do it. I took the lead by asking how it had been cleaned before the Americans had arrived and started handing out money.

The man frowned. “We cleaned it ourselves without getting paid. But you should pay us for it now!”

“Umm, why?”

“Because there’s so much inflation since the war! We don’t make enough to live and it’s your fault so you should help us.”

I’m no economist, but most of my instincts seemed to say that paying people to do what they normally do on their own seems like it would only contribute to inflation, and just helping his village probably wouldn’t affect regional prices all that much. But he sure wasn’t buying that.

“Well, it doesn’t matter, it’s your responsibility to help us. Isn’t that what you’re here for? Reconstruction?”

“Amongst other things, but your government is really responsible for projects like that—you have to apply to them if you want help. That’s how we give out money.”

“Well our government is nothing but corrupt officials!”

“How do you think we could fix that?”

“It’s in Allah’s hands,” he snapped.

Well that hit a nerve. I started firing back, and my interpreter jumped in translated a Quran verse to the tune of “God helps those who help themselves.” The vendor looked back and forth between us, grudginly conceded that was true, then threw up his hands anyway and stomped off, yelling that there was nothing he could do about it, thank you very much.

End of my first solo interview in Afghanistan. That went well, I thought.