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May 2, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Bloomberg: In the unforgiving Afghan landscape, we have learned that you can’t buy a warlord. You can only rent one. We owe this education to our man in Kabul, President Hamid Karzai. For more than a decade, it has been recently confirmed, U.S. dollars packed into suitcases, backpacks and plastic shopping bags have been delivered every month or so to Karzai’s office. Full news...
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April 28, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The New York Times: For more than a decade, wads of American dollars packed into suitcases, backpacks and, on occasion, plastic shopping bags have been dropped off every month or so at the offices of Afghanistan’s president — courtesy of the Central Intelligence Agency. All told, tens of millions of dollars have flowed from the C.I.A. to the office of President Hamid Karzai, according to current and former advisers to the Afghan leader. Full news...
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April 27, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Center for Public Integrity: The principal food supplier to US troops in Afghanistan is embroiled in a costly dispute with the Pentagon that has attracted congressional interest. The Pentagon allowed a private firm providing food and water to U.S. troops in Afghanistan to overbill taxpayers 757 million USD and awarded the company no-bid contract extensions worth more than 4 billion USD over three years... Full news...
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April 25, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Washington Guardian: Talk about burning taxpayer money! The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spent more than 5 million USD to have a contractor build two garbage incinerators at a forward-operating base in Afghanistan, but then the military never used the equipment because officials closed out the project and released the contractors before the machines actually worked. Full news...
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April 15, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: How do you collect a 200,000 USD electricity bill from an Afghan warlord? Try cutting him off from the grid. Then turn off your cell phone so he can’t yell at you. General Rashid Dostum - one of Afghanistan’s most powerful militia leaders - found someone else to reconnect him within hours, said Mirwais Alami, the chief commercial officer at Afghanistan’s national power company. Full news...
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April 2, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
TomDispatch.com: Washington has vociferously denounced Afghan corruption as a major obstacle to the U.S. mission in Afghanistan. This has been widely reported. Only one crucial element is missing from this routine censure: a credible explanation of why American nation-building failed there. No wonder. To do so, the U.S. would have to denounce itself. Full news...
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March 28, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: The governor of northern Faryab province on Thursday accused the local authorities of illegally distributing governmental land to people of his choice, leaving few plots for offices. Governor Mohammadullah Batash, addressing a foundation-laying ceremony for the justice department building, alleged: “Most of government-owned land has been gifted away to undeserving individuals.” Full news...
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March 6, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Fiscal Times: The decision by the United States Agency for International Development to scrap the completion of a dam project meant to supply electricity to Kandahar, the spiritual home of the Taliban in Afghanistan, is the latest and perhaps largest failure of the United States to use development dollars to create stability by building Afghan infrastructure. Full news...
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February 28, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Sunday Times: Handing over security operations in Afghanistan to the Afghans is “proceeding very well”, Philip Hammond, the defence secretary, said on a recent visit to Helmand. “The Afghans are developing capabilities faster than we expected.” He was echoing the unbridled optimism of many British and American officials. Having just returned from five weeks in Sangin — the most violent district in Afghanistan’s most violent province — I cannot see any reason for such optimism. Full news...
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February 22, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Pluto Press: As Obama proclaims that the US adventure in Afghanistan will draw to a close over the next couple years, we may look at the balance sheet with respect to one of the occupation’s alleged justifications: the fight against Afghan heroin. The outcome has been a total failure. Full news...
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February 7, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Associated Press: The cost of corruption in Afghanistan rose sharply last year to 3.9 billion USD, and half of all Afghans bribed public officials for services, the U.N. said Thursday. The findings came despite repeated promises by President Hamid Karzai to clean up his government. The international community has long expressed concern about the problem of corruption in Afghanistan because it reduces confidence in the Western-backed government. Full news...
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February 7, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Guardian: Living in the shadow of terror and the threat of assassination around the clock, Hamid Karzai could be forgiven for indulging in a bit of relaxing comfort whenever he gets the chance. But to touch down in London and check into Claridge’s, one of the most luxurious hotels in the world, the day he issued a decree back home to curtail government expenses is, at best, a sign that the Afghan president is prone to a touch of political frailty... Full news...
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February 1, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Washington Examiner: The unprecedented 100 billion USD program slated to rebuild war-torn Afghanistan has been ravaged by theft, cost overruns, bribes, unused facilities and “incalculable waste,” and now the federal auditor of the reconstruction effort is urging Congress to make sure taxpayers are getting their money’s worth before spending more. Full news...
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January 25, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Wall Street Journal: The U.S. military has blacklisted Afghanistan’s largest private airline, alleging it is smuggling “bulk” quantities of opium on civilian flights to Tajikistan, a corridor through which the drugs reach the rest of the world. Kam Air was barred this month from receiving U.S. military contracts by U.S. Central Command chief Marine Gen. James Mattis, according to U.S. military officials. Full news...
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January 21, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: A lawmaker and member of the National Front of Afghanistan, Mohammad Mohaqiq, denied involvement in seizing government-owned land and stealing the revenue of customs departments in northern provinces. Quoting sources in the Attorney General Office and the High Office of Oversight and Anti-Corruption, some media outlets on Sunday reported Mohaqiq and some other political figures had pocketed huge government funds Full news...
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January 11, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Christian Science Monitor: As two Afghan farmers tell it, they are part of the “good” militia in their northern province: unofficial armed men who protect schools, families, and farms, and have chased Taliban insurgents away. They are not part of the “bad” militia, they say, that since 2010 has especially traumatized parts of Kunduz Province by forcibly extracting “taxes” from villagers, and engaging in killings and rape – all in the name of fighting insurgents themselves. Full news...
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January 9, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Vanity Fair: “Just look at this view,” said my guide, as he waved his arm expansively from right to left. We had just emerged onto the sun-drenched roof terrace of a so-called narco-villa in Kabul’s Sherpur neighborhood. Sherpur is the epicenter of an eye-catching architectural style in a district where the gusher of money from drugs and corruption has found full expression. Full news...
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January 6, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Hundreds of thousands of dollars have been stolen from three branches of the Afghan Millie Bank, a senior official said on Sunday. Several people have been detained on suspicion of complicity in the theft. Mohibullah Safi, the bank’s chief, told Pajhwok Afghan News that a moneychanger had filched 200,000 USD from the bank’s branch in Kabul. But security forces had arrested the individuals who stood guarantee for the moneychanger. Full news...
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December 25, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Killid Group: There’s a cloud over the Afghan Local Police (ALP). The ALP is a militia set up two years ago by US forces in villages where the Afghan National Police (ANP) - trained by NATO - is weak. Esmatullah Mayar investigates in Kunduz, Paktia and Paktika. A spike in armed robberies, murder and sexual aggression in the three provinces has been blamed on the local police. Full news...
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December 24, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Center for Public Integrity: The multinational NATO force in Afghanistan has declared that it spent more than 200 million USD to buy fuel for the Afghan Army in 2010 and 2011, but cannot locate any documents to substantiate the expense or show precisely where the money went, according to a special report by a government watchdog on Dec. 20. Full news...
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December 22, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Trend.az: Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Saturday blamed foreign forces for “hundreds of millions of dollars” worth of corruption in the war-torn country, DPA reported. Speaking at a Kabul meeting marking the country’s anti-corruption day, Karzai said: “Part of this corruption that exists in our administration is small and (mostly) bribery. Other part of the corruption, which is huge and (worth) hundreds of millions of dollars, is not our corruption.” Full news...
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December 15, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The New York Times: Packed into hand luggage and tucked into jacket pockets, roughly hewed bars of gold are being flown out of Kabul with increasing regularity, confounding Afghan and American officials who fear money launderers have found a new way to spirit funds from the country. Most of the gold is being carried on commercial flights destined for Dubai, according to airport security reports and officials. Full news...
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December 14, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Billings Gazette: It appears that millions of dollars paid by international forces to rent a piece of land in Logar province for use as an airstrip went to six well-connected individuals, and possibly the Taliban, rather than the land’s rightful owner, the Afghan government. That so much money could easily go astray should come as no surprise, given that corruption is rife from the highest to lowest levels of government. Full news...
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December 5, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: An international anti-graft watchdog on Wednesday ranked Afghanistan, North Korea and Somalia as world’s top most corrupt countries in the world. The Berlin-based Transparency International in its 2012 Corruption Perceptions Index report, covering 174 countries, revealed that Afghanistan scored eight marks out of 100 -- similar to North Korea and Somalia. Full news...
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November 28, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The New York Times: Persistent political interference has hampered efforts to unravel the colossal fraud at Kabul Bank, with President Hamid Karzai and a small panel of his top aides actually dictating to prosecutors who should be charged and who should not, according to Afghan and Western officials and the results of a public inquiry into the scandal. Full news...
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November 26, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Three warlords accused of grabbing and selling state-owned land by using fake documents in the Paghman district of Kabul have fled the country to evade arrests, an official said on Monday. More than 50 acres of land, allocated for the Qargha Park, was occupied before being sold, Deputy Attorney General Noor Habib Jalal told a news conference in Kabul. Full news...
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November 18, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Los Angeles Times: The bank robbers were men who were often seen around town in uniform – police uniforms. They were, in fact, police. Three Afghan National Police officers fled a bank in Afghanistan’s Nuristan province after breaking in after hours and stealing more than 29 million Afghanis (about USD 550,000) late Friday night, according to Gen. Ghulamullah Nuristani, the provincial police chief. Full news...
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November 14, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IWPR: Uruzgan province in central Afghanistan is fast becoming a major source of opium, and local informal powerbrokers are making millions of dollars from the trade. The authorities appear powerless to act against major figures in the trade, who have occupied large swathes of land that in theory belongs to the state and are reaping huge rewards from the poppy trade, backed by small private armies. Full news...
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November 14, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The National: Passengers flying out of Kabul carried with them more than USD 4.5 billion (Dh16.52bn) in cash last year, leading to new rules restricting the amount of foreign currency that travellers can take out of the country to 20,000 USD at a time. “I am very concerned about cash leaving Kabul Airport in dollars,” said the central bank governor Noorullah Delawari. Full news...
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November 13, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Guardian: Senior Afghan officials are said to have discovered large-scale theft of fuel in Helmand and halted all deliveries to police in the province, compromising the ability of the force to operate in one of the Taliban’s major strongholds. The cost of stolen or “misallocated” fuel in the province is thought to run into hundreds of millions of dollars. One official estimated its worth at 600m USD (380m GBP)... Full news...
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