However, it is not surprising that the Amir was chary of putting too much authority in the hands of his officials, for those who had the authority to judge minor cases invariably abused the authority given them, and the people who suffered through such abuse of authority, feared the enmity of the official too much to appeal to the Amir, and generally they were given cause to do so.
—Frank A. Martin, Under the Absolute Amir, 1907
This year corruption is again the second most often cited reason the country is seen to be moving in the wrong direction.
Asia Foundation, Afghanistan in 2011, 2011
Two roads stretch like ebony ribbons from Kandahar City into the heart of Dand, past copses of green trees and wheatfields of brilliant gold. Every hour Toyota taxis, large trucks, and horse-drawn carts passed by, plying their trade.
These recently laid strips of asphalt were the arteries along which life in Dand pulsed. No longer did travelers from the southern areas of the district bump over rutted tracks to reach the bazaars of the city. Shoppers could purchase their weekly staples and farmers could sell their produce by making a quick and cheap day trip up to the city, moving most of the way on smooth macadam.
Roads generate commerce, and commerce sharply improves the lives of the people. Most farmers eking out a living on thin and sandy soil cared little about the government, except when it came to roads. Then they took notice, because their lives improved almost immediately when roads went in and taxi fares and travel times dropped dramatically.
The Americans and Canadians paid tens of millions of dollars for roads, because they translated into immediate support for the Afghan government. Better roads also allowed the security forces easier access into the remote villages. And roads of asphalt or hard-packed gravel were much safer than a rudimentary dirt track. Insurgents found it much more difficult to dig up hardened surfaces, and the villagers were more likely to inform on insurgents who tried to blow up “their” road. While critics contended that roads were both expensive and hard to maintain, the positive effects of a new road usually drastically outweighed the downside.
Over several days in early fall as we looked onto the roads running past the Dand District Center, we saw early-morning convoys of trucks hired by ISAF to carry cargo. They lined up cab to tail, always pointed south into Dand. Because the American battalion was shifting its bases, with some soldiers moving out of Dand and toward the fighting in Panjwai, the trucks had been hired from local contractors to carry equipment meant for new bases.
The trucks carried pallets of supplies, generators, and gravel used to keep down the dust on ISAF bases. Huge concrete T-walls, shaped like thick concrete slabs with a wide base, leaned drunkenly on the flatbeds; these T-walls would be lined up shoulder to shoulder like defensive linemen to protect camps from rocket attacks. The T-walls each cost $800 or more, and they were stacked six or seven to a truck.
The convoys of trucks followed a set pattern. They drove down from Kandahar City, reached the intersection, and stopped. They waited there for half an hour and then trundled off to the bases deeper inside the district or on to Panjwai.
No obvious reason existed for the trucks to halt in front of the DDC. There were no police checkpoints there, and the district center’s gate guards expressed no interest in them because they never entered the district center. Yet there they were, morning after morning, lined up like school kids at recess, waiting for their morning milk. Stop. Wait a bit. Inexplicably drive on.
Several shops clustered around the junction. Our team was at the time administering microgrants to some of these small businesses. One day we went out for a short walk to talk to the business owners about these microgrants. That morning the trucks were lined up again.
We left the ISAF base and walked toward the bazaar, noticing a private security guard who carried an AK-47 rifle and stood about thirty meters from the district center’s gate. He was thin, young, wore soiled khaki clothing, and had an open, friendly look. We asked him what he was doing. He matter-of-factly replied that his job was to check the toll receipts for the supply trucks hired by the Americans.
He said he worked for a private security company that ran checkpoints on three roads that led into Dand. Trucks carrying material bound for ISAF bases were required to pay a toll when they entered the district. The toll: $125 per load for large trucks and $75 for small trucks. The tolls were paid nearer to Kandahar City, and the drivers received a receipt. This guard checked the receipts when they reached the junction. This applied only to ISAF-hired trucks, he assured us, because they could afford to pay.
We walked back to the base, shaking our heads. The tolls were completely illegal. ISAF had become a milk cow for some well-connected resident of Dand!
Further investigation revealed the security company that extorted these illegal tolls was owned by Fatay Khan, the brother of District Governor Nazak. That connection made this corruption official, because it had to be government sanctioned.
Even worse, Fatay Khan’s men were actually paid-up members of the Afghan National Police and counted as part of the official police force, although they did no work for the Dand police chief. This arrangement had been sanctioned by ISAF for some time, which made it transparent if not ideal. But the tolls were a new wrinkle on the problem.
In Afghanistan district governors were a mixed breed. Problem DGs could be categorized into three types. The first type were the absentee DGs, who rarely visited their districts because security was so bad. They preferred to spend their time in the provincial capitals and only visited their offices occasionally. It was hard to fault them when security was so poor and their salary so low, coming to only $400 to $800 per month.
Another type of governor tried to make as much money as quickly as possible from his position. He probably paid tens of thousands of dollars for the appointment and had little interest in improving the district. For him governance represented a money-making venture. Governors of this type were widely distrusted and generally ineffective. They might try to improve the district, but only if it didn’t impede them from making money off the residents.
The last category included DG Nazak. Leaders of this type ran a moderately clean office but allowed members of their extended family and clan to profit without too much fuss. President Hamid Karzai adopted this model. These men were rich, with enough money for them to survive without resorting to obvious extortion. They personally refused bribes and asked little or nothing from contractors. They were dedicated practitioners of crony capitalism, and they were the best type of governors for the reality of Afghanistan. Their wealth allowed them to forgo much in the way of personal profit, and their administrations were often less dirty than the other types. That was why Nazak bragged about turning down a bribe from a contractor and using the money to refinish walls in the district center instead. This did not imply perfection; Nazak routinely overcharged residents receiving official government IDs and used the excess money for his own purposes.
In Hamid Karzai’s case his brothers ran Kandahar Province. Extremely rich and powerful men, they grew steadily richer and more powerful. In turn they protected and assisted their brother in Kabul. Sadly, what was good for the Karzais was generally bad for the local people. When Ahmed Wali Karzai was killed in the summer of 2011, many Americans and Afghans figured it might be a chance to start over. Widely believed to be connected to the opium trade, to have Taliban links, and to have made millions of dollars off U.S. government contracts, Ahmed Wali Karzai was a key source of intelligence for the Americans and the man many Afghans turned to when they needed to get things done.1 The wait to see him at his home was generally several hours long as scores of Afghan elders took their turn to see him.
This kind of corruption might have been useful for the Karzai regime, but the Afghan people resented it. The situation was worse in Kandahar, because many people considered the provincial governor to be corrupt as well. Earlier, in 2007, Governor Tooryalai Wesa had been fired from his job with a USAID contractor over allegations of mismanaging contracts and corruption.2 In Kandahar corruption flowed through his administration. A nationwide survey in 2011 reported that when people thought the country was headed in the wrong direction, corruption was their second-biggest concern, after security.3
Another national survey in 2012 found that half of Afghans had paid a bribe to a government official that year. This figure was down slightly from previous years but still alarmingly high. Even worse for our fight to sway hearts and minds against the Taliban, 42 percent of the Afghans had paid off a police officer in 2012.4
This type of corruption alienated the people from their government. A 2009 study done for the British parliament found that only 6 percent of Afghans supported the government, noting, “Government corruption and partisanship at provincial and district level was consistently cited as a major reason for supporting opposition groups.”5
A U.S. government report confirmed that corruption was undermining the government, stating that “limited progress toward improved governance at the ministerial, provincial, and district levels” was being countered by rampant corruption, unqualified civil servants, and the assassination of government officials.6
Corruption took many forms, from bribing sentries at checkpoints, paying off judges to dismiss cases or release prisoners, and bribing officials or guards to allow drug convoys to pass, all the way to more sophisticated methods such as skimming contracts. All of this activity caused Afghans to become cynical about their government.
But outright corruption was not the same as nepotism, often seen when leaders handed out offices or channeled contracts to relations or fellow tribe members and favored their businesses. Afghans elders were expected to assist members of their own tribes, and though Afghans grumbled when aid disbursements or contract awards were influenced by favoritism, they generally understood that it was outside the control of the office holder, who had a social debt to discharge. For instance, it might cost $5,000 or $6,000 for outsiders to buy their way into a government job. But connected people often appointed their sons or daughters to offices. The former practice was arguably seen as more insidious than the latter.
This nuance was important in dealing with Nazak’s brother, Fatay Khan, who made money from a number of ISAF contracts, which made Americans uncomfortable but was permitted because it worked and because the arrangement was a recognized part of Afghan life.
But now Nazak’s brother had moved into pure highway robbery, which crossed accepted lines—both Afghan and American.
Money that Nazak made with Fatay Khan almost certainly helped pay Nazak’s bills. Nazak had his own businesses, such as a land dealing company, but he jointly owned a car-import business with Fatay Khan, and it was highly likely that their commercial dealings were mixed together in a variety of ways. He might even have profited indirectly from the illegal tolls. And Nazak needed some of the money earned by Fatay Khan to survive because his monthly expenditure was vastly larger than his salary. While we seldom had direct proof of any arrangements between the two brothers, the circumstantial evidence of crony capitalism was overwhelming.
Normally projects went to Dand contractors who were connected to Nazak’s family. To receive most ISAF contracts potential contractors had to be on a list approved by the DDC staff, and it was fairly easy for Nazak to rig the conditions to favor his extended family. At various times Fatay Khan ended up building a new school, adding classrooms, and digging wells, all of which were funded by ISAF. Other relations were awarded other contracts.
There was little we could do about it. Nepotism, hardly unknown in America, was the expected style of doing business in Afghanistan. Afghan society is based upon clans and families; favoring one’s clan or family was ingrained into the very fabric of society, and it was impossible to stop favoritism when it happened.
However, the illegal tolls clearly crossed the line of what was acceptable, regardless of the cultural reference points. We nevertheless found ourselves hard-pressed to figure out how to stop the practice. The Afghan district chief of police and the district intelligence chief did not care, and ISAF had other things to worry about than policing roads for illegal toll stations.
Usually the companies paid and we heard nothing of it, which was why it took us so long to discover the problem. While we pondered the issue, it finally came out in the open one day when a convoy ran the tolls and Fatay Khan’s men fired at the vehicles.
That day Fatay Khan’s private security guards had stopped several trucks. One group of drivers refused the shakedown and drove off. In a rage Fatay Khan’s men fired their rifles at the trucks, punching several holes in one of the vehicles. Luckily no one was hurt. The truck drivers drove directly to the DDC and complained to the Afghan police chief. Of course the police did nothing.
Mohammad Zahir and I were present in the DG’s office when Fatay Khan came to talk to Nazak about incident.
Hearing the details, Nazak complained to Fatay Khan about the shooting.
“Don’t take money from the ISAF trucks,” Nazak urged his brother in rapid Pashtu he knew I could not understand. He said it looked bad when ISAF vehicles were extorted.
Fatay Khan just laughed. “But it’s our district!” he exclaimed.
Mohammad related this later with a chuckle. Nazak probably assumed he would not tell me the full details.
Nazak’s influence over his brother had limits. Fatay Khan was young and cocky. The illegal tolls continued even though it was politically embarrassing. As Hamid Karzai had also discovered, family can be an embarrassment when shady practices become entrenched.
Ultimately we could do very little to stop the illegal tolls. Our power was limited when we tried to award contracts to companies other than Nazak’s clan, though we tried to get bids from all comers. Fatay Khan’s companies multiplied faster than we could blacklist them.
We ended up writing several reports that detailed the stopping of the trucks. Sergeant Brian Hull distributed them to the military, while we pushed the story to the civilian side of KAF. Our reports dropped into a black hole. No one really cared.
To stop this type of extortion, pressure needed to come from the Americans. But the Americans also needed a governor who ran a smooth-functioning district, hence the need for Nazak. No one was about to rock the boat.
In coming years corruption would continue to plague the country. In a survey conducted in 2014 Afghans still labeled security, unemployment, and corruption as the largest problems in the country.7 In 2015 the new governor of Kandahar Province admitted that for thirteen years the government had served the interests of the powerful rather than the people. He pledged to clean things up.8
In the end we were glad when the American military finally stopped realigning its bases and the convoys ceased. As the convoys of trucks carrying ISAF gear dwindled, the problem of illegal tolls dropped out of sight, though not entirely out of mind.