HOW CORRUPT IS THE AFGHAN GOVERNMENT OUR SOLDIERS ARE DYING FOR?

Almost every story about Afghanistan you read nowadays mentions how "corrupt" the Afghan government in Kabul is – and then moves on, rarely citing any real specifics.

So let’s get granular with the gory details of just how corrupt, crooked, and criminal the Karzai regime is for which tens of thousands of American soldiers are risking their lives to keep in power.

The regime is led by Hamid Karzai and three of his six brothers, Mahmoud, Qayum, and Ahmad Wali (known by his initials, AWK).  The Karzai family are tribal leaders of the Popalzai clan of Pushtuns, which is centered in Kandahar.  AWK runs Kandahar for the regime, while the other three are in Kabul.

The Karzais are the beneficial owners of a number of private banks in Kabul through which they launder money from bribes, extortion, protection rackets, aid money theft, and heroin smuggling.

The Afghan United Bank, managed by Abdullah Barakzai, handles AWK’s payments from Iran for heroin smuggling.  The bank uses a front company called Ansari to take the large Iranian cash payments and put it into shares of stock in various overseas corporations for AWK.

The Kabul Bank, managed by Shir Khan who has deep connections with Russian mafias, is used by Mahmoud Karzai, to buy privatized companies like Pul-e-Khumri Cement and the Tala Barfak coal mine for a tiny fraction of their worth.

The Ghazanfar Bank, run by Mohammed Yusif Ghazanfar, is used to launder money for Hamid Karzai, with Ghazanfar Petroleum as the front company cutout.  A $5,000 bribe per truck carrying imported petroleum into the country is deposited in Hamid’s account, then transferred to banks in Dubai.  There are many thousands of such trucks.

Hamid Karzai’s senior security advisor, Shaida Mohammed, handles much of the bribery and "commissions" for heroin smuggling for Hamid.  In the process he has become wealthy himself.  Shaida got his financial start stealing from the $25 million poppy eradication program set up in 2002.  In Helmand province capital Lashkar Gah for example, he was given $2 million in cash to distribute to poppy farmers for not growing their crop.  He gave out $450,000 and pocketed the rest.

Shaida Mohammed has now been named by Hamid as the new Director of the Afghan National Security Service or NDS.

The Karzai brothers have diversified from rake-offs on heroin smuggling to a wide range of semi-legitimate businesses established mafia-style via extortion and thuggery using police as enforcers. 

A key example is the Karzai-owned Watan Risk Management security company based in Kabul which specializes in paying the Taliban to attack targets competing with the Karzais, and to conduct phony attacks on targets under Watan protection.  When Gen. McChrystal broke the ISAF (International Security Assistance Force – the NATO coalition) contract with Watan for "fraud and abuse," the Zero White House ordered Watan rehired just after Hamid Karzai met with Zero in the Oval Office last March.

Most corrupt and thuggish of the Karzai brothers is AWK – Ahmad Wali Karzai – the Emir of Kandahar.  He is a straightforward thug.  When a deal with a business partner, Najib Farahi, went sour, AWK went himself to Farahi’s home and had his bodyguards beat him to a pulp.  Farahi is still in the hospital today.

A Taliban commander, Chamani Nur Mohammed, is in charge of protecting AWK’s heroin smuggling routes to Iran.  Chamani also conducts kidnappings and assassinations of AWK’s enemies on request.  AWK’s support of heroin smuggling is such that no one in Kandahar is allowed to arrest a dealer or confiscate a single kilo of drugs.

AWK – remember, this is the brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai – is so deep in bed with the Taliban that he directly coordinates activities with Taliban de facto leader Mullah Aktar Mohammed Mansour who resides in Pakistan.  Mansour is executive assistant to Mullah Omar, the Taliban founder who engineered 9/11 with Osama Bin Laden.  Omar is currently in protective custody of the ISI (Pakistan intelligence) in Islamabad.

One notorious murder ordered by AWK was that of Haji Abdul Jabbar, governor of Kandahar’s Arghandab district, last month (6/15).  The $50 million Dahla Dam reconstruction project was in Jabbar’s district, and Jabbar complained once too often of AWK’s redirecting money from the Canadian contractor, SNC Lavalin, into his pocket.

Jabbar was killed by a car bomb by one of AWK’s favorite hitmen, Anwar Shah Agha, a Taliban who specializes in such "VBIEDs" (vehicle-borne improvised explosive device).

These examples could be multiplied endlessly.  Yet they should suffice to shame anyone in the US government or military responsible for getting our soldiers killed to keep the Karzai scum in power.

Initially when they took office, the Karzai brothers seemed rather ineffective and a bit greedy.  They are now a serious menace, completely immersed in Mafia-style activities.

Rather than being satisfied with huge bank accounts in Dubai from the proceeds of simple corruption, the theft of aid monies and narcotics smuggling, the Karzai family now is determined to use governmental power and physical force to create a regime of absolute power for themselves – and in cooperation with the Taliban who are killing our soldiers.

It is criminal – as in deserving of imprisonment – for our political and military leaders to have our soldiers die for the Karzais.  Yet the replacement of the Karzais with some other gang of Pushtun goons will solve totally nothing.  As you learned in Why Should There Be An Afghanistan?, the only solution to this corrupt, terrorist, drug smuggling mess is not to get rid of the current rulers of Afghanistan but to get rid of Afghanistan itself as an intact nation-state.

Just to give you one example of how Afghanistan is not a real country, but more like Somalia, so anarchic that clans within tribes are at each other’s throats, not just the tribes themselves.

AWK may be the self-styled Emir of Kandahar, immensely rich and powerful, but he is Popalzai Pushtun, a clan or sub-tribe despised by a rival Pushtun sub-tribe, the Ghilzai Pushtun.  Ghilzais and Popalzais have been feuding for generations.  Lots of Taliban are Ghilzai – and if any AWK man is captured in Ghilzai territory, such as Maiwand district in Kandahar province, he is instantly killed.

Afghanistan is not a real country, folks.  It’s time to stop pretending it is.  There is an argument for the pretense:  that the real reason we’re in the place is because of the Pakistan nukes.

Say what?  Yes, it is argued that Pakistan is the true danger, that if it disintegrates, then its nukes will fall into Al Qaeda/Taliban/Moslem crazies hands.  To prevent this, India will invade.  That invasion, coming from the east, will cause the crazies with the nukes to flee west – into Afghanistan.  We’ve got to be there to block, stop, and capture them.

This is a serious argument addressing a serious danger – Pak nukes in the hands of Moslem crazies.  Does it justify our soldiers dying for the Karzais?  No.

In fact, breaking Afghanistan apart – the Tajik (and most likely the Hazara) area to Tajikistan, the Uzbek to Uzbekistan, the small Turkmen to Turmenistan – could be the way to keep Pakistan intact.

The Dissolution Solution outlined in Why Should There Be An Afghanistan? forces the Paks to choose between the creation of an independent Pushtunistan carved out of their geographical hide, or expanding their borders to include it.  They will have to choose the latter – then call on their Chicom buddies in Beijing to help them consolidate it.

China desperately wants to grab the vast mineral (and geostrategic) wealth in Pushtunistan.  The Dissolution Solution passes the baton to them – the Chicoms get to pacify Pushtunistan.  Their soldiers get to die there, not ours.  Which means no ROEs for the Chicoms and the Taliban slaughtered en masse, no holds barred. 

And which also means the Chicoms ensure Pakistan stays intact.  Should they fail and the need arise, we’re close by in Greater Tajikistan, ready to roll to seize any loose Pak nukes the Indian Army let slip away.

For this is not a solution of Pat Buchanan/Ron Paul left-wing libertarian isolationism.  The Dissolution Solution is a recognition of the indispensable role America must play, that only America can play, to prevent true Moslem nuclear nightmares in this part of the world.

So we’ll still be there – but a lot safer and secure in Greater Tajikistan.  Which is why I’m headed there next month.  There is always another adventure.