The Afghanistan Papers by Craig Whitlock & The Washington Post

Author:Craig Whitlock & The Washington Post
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2021-08-30T00:00:00+00:00

I. The U.S. military kept the full investigative report a secret until USA Today sued the Defense Department in 2018 to obtain almost 1,000 pages of files. The newspaper published an exposé of the Azizabad attack in December 2019.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN Consumed by Corruption

Hamid Karzai’s fraudulent reelection worsened a deluge of corruption that engulfed Afghanistan in 2009 and 2010. Dark money cascaded over the country. Money launderers lugged suitcases loaded with $1 million, or more, on flights leaving Kabul so crooked businessmen and politicians could stash their ill-gotten fortunes offshore. Much of the money landed in the emirate of Dubai, where Afghans could pay cash for Persian Gulf luxury villas with few questions asked.

Back home, mansions known as “poppy palaces” rose from Kabul’s rubble to house opium kingpins and warlords. The garish estates featured pink granite, lime marble, rooftop fountains and heated indoor pools. Architects concealed wet bars in basements to avoid detection by judgmental mullahs. Some poppy palaces rented for $12,000 a month—an incomprehensible sum to impoverished Afghans who lived hand-to-mouth.

In August 2010, Afghanistan’s largest private bank liquefied into a cesspool of fraud. Nearly $1 billion in falsified loans—equivalent to one-twelfth of the country’s economic output that year—disappeared into the pockets of politically connected investors who had run the bank as a pyramid scheme. Panic ensued as ordinary Afghans mobbed bank branches to withdraw their savings.

Washington had worried for years about corruption’s hold on Afghanistan. But as the graft spread, Obama administration officials feared it would jeopardize their war strategy at the worst possible time—while American troops surged into Afghanistan. In public, U.S. officials promised to stamp out the affliction and hold Afghan leaders accountable.

“I want to be clear: We cannot turn a blind eye to the corruption that causes Afghans to lose faith in their own leaders,” Obama declared in March 2009 when he announced an expansion of the war. “We will seek a new compact with the Afghan government that cracks down on corrupt behavior.”

A few days later, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “Corruption is a cancer as dangerous to long-term success as the Taliban or al-Qaeda.”

In August 2009, Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal warned: “Malign actions of power brokers, widespread corruption and abuse of power… have given Afghans little reason to support their government.”

But the rhetoric proved hollow. U.S. officials backed off and looked away while the thievery became more entrenched than ever. They tolerated the worst offenders—politicians, warlords, drug traffickers, defense contractors—because they were allies of the United States. Ultimately, they judged that Afghanistan’s entire power structure was so dirty that cleaning it up was mission impossible.

Like the Bush White House, the Obama administration failed to confront a more distressing reality. Since the 2001 invasion, the United States had fueled the corruption by dispensing vast sums of money to protect and rebuild Afghanistan with no regard for the consequences. Limitless opportunities for bribery and fraud arose because U.S. spending on aid and defense contracts far exceeded what indigent Afghanistan could digest.

“The basic assumption was that corruption

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