In Afghanistan, Waiting For The MAN

By Steve Hynd

Here's one from the NY Times, right out of the "Duh" files: "Loss of Faith in Afghan Leaders May Hurt Push Against Taliban."

First, the Western view:

Since 2001, one of the unquestioned premises of American and NATO policy has been that ordinary Afghans don�t view public corruption in quite the same way that Americans and others do in the West. Diplomats, military officers and senior officials flying in from Washington often say privately that while public graft is pernicious, there is no point in trying to abolish it � and that trying to do so could destroy the very government the West has helped to build.

The Central Intelligence Agency has carried that line of argument even further, putting on its payroll some of the most disputable members of Mr. Karzai�s government. The explanation, offered by agency officials, is that Mother Theresa can�t be found in Afghanistan.

�What is acceptable to the Afghans is different than what is acceptable to you or me or our people,� a Western official here said recently, discounting fears of fraud in the coming parliamentary elections. He spoke, as many prominent Western officials here do so often, on the condition of anonymity. �They have their own expectations, and they are slightly different than the ones we try to impose on them.�

But, as has so often proven to be the case, Afghans themselves refuse to live up to our stereotyping of them:

the rationalization offered by the Western official � that Afghans are happy to tolerate a certain level of bribery and theft � seems to have turned out terribly wrong. It now seems clear that public corruption is roundly despised by ordinary Afghans, and that it may constitute the single largest factor driving them into the arms of the Taliban.

You don�t have to look very hard to find an Afghan, whether in the government or out, who is repelled by the illegal doings of his leaders. Ahmed Shah Hakimi, who runs a currency exchange in Kabul, had just finished explaining some of the shadowy dealings of the business and political elite when he stopped in disgust.

�There are 50 of them,� Mr. Hakimi said. �The corrupt ones. All the Afghans know who they are.�

�Why do the Americans support them?� he asked.

Mr. Hakimi, a shrewd businessman, seemed genuinely perplexed.

�What the Americans need to do is take these Afghans and put them on a plane and fly them to America � and then crash the plane into a mountain,� Mr. Hakimi said. �Kill them all.�

You hear that a lot here � that the kleptocrats are few in number; that most Afghans know who they are; and that the country would be better off if this greedy cabal met a violent end. Why not get rid of them?

Why not indeed. After all, it seems that we know exactly who they are:

American officers and anti-corruption teams have drawn up intricate charts outlining the criminal syndicates that entwine the Afghan business and political elites. They�ve even given the charts a name: �Malign Actor Networks.� A k a MAN.

Looking at some of these charts�with their crisscrossed lines connecting politicians, drug traffickers and insurgents � it�s easy to conclude that this country is ruled neither by the government, nor NATO, nor the Taliban, but by the MAN.

It turns out, of course, that some of the same �malign actors� the diplomats and officers are railing against are on the payroll of the C.I.A. At least until recently, American officials say, one of them was Ahmed Wali Karzai, the president�s brother. Mr. Karzai has long been suspected of facilitating the country�s booming drug trade.

Ahmed Wali Karzai denies taking any money from the C.I.A. or helping any drug traffickers. But consider, for a second, the other brother: President Karzai. When he receives that stern lecture from the American diplomat about ridding his government of corruption � and he receives a lot of them � what must President Karzai be thinking?

One possibility: That the Americans aren�t really serious.

To paraphrase the old real estate adage for a COIN strategy: legitimacy, legitimacy, legitimacy. And the US seems determined to shoot itself in the foot just so that every agency involved can have as many "options", and as many fingers in as many pies, as possible.

If this were a nation of fringe strategic importance that we hadn't already spent a trillion occupying, we'd probably take the view that the locals were ready to revolt, understandably so, and were welcome to it.