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In Afghanistan Everything Carries A Cost

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The New York Times

Published: January 2, 2009

KABUL, Afghanistan - When it comes to governing this violent, fractious land, everything, it seems, has its price.

Want to be a provincial police chief? It will cost you $100,000.

Want to drive a convoy of trucks loaded with fuel across the country? Be prepared to pay $6,000 per truck so the police will not tip off the Taliban.

Need to settle a lawsuit over the ownership of your house? About $25,000, depending on the judge.

"It is very shameful, but probably I will pay the bribe," Mohammed Naim, a young English teacher, said as he stood in front of the Secondary Courthouse in Kabul. His brother had been arrested a week before, and the police were demanding $4,000 for his release. "Everything is possible in this country now. Everything."

Kept afloat by billions of dollars in American and other foreign aid, the government of Afghanistan is shot through with corruption and graft.

From the lowliest traffic policeman to the family of President Hamid Karzai, the state built on the ruins of the Taliban government seven years ago now often seems to exist for little more than the enrichment of those who run it.

A raft of investigations has concluded that people at the highest levels of the Karzai administration, including Karzai's brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, are cooperating in the country's opium trade, now the world's largest.

In the streets and government offices, hardly a public transaction seems to unfold that does not carry with it the requirement of a bribe, a gift or, in case you are a beggar, "harchee" - whatever you have in your pocket.

The corruption, publicly acknowledged by Karzai, is contributing to the collapse of public confidence in his government and to the resurgence of the Taliban, whose fighters have moved to the outskirts of Kabul, the capital.

"All the politicians in this country have acquired everything - money, lots of money," Karzai said in a speech in November. "God knows, it is beyond the limit. The banks of the world are full of the money of our statesmen."

Ashraf Ghani, a former Afghan finance minister, says that the "government has lost the capacity to govern because a shadow government has taken over."

"The narco-mafia state is now completely consolidated," he said.

Everything seems to be for sale.

The examples mentioned above - $25,000 to settle a lawsuit, $6,000 to bribe the police, $100,000 to secure a job as a provincial police chief - were offered by people who experienced them directly or witnessed the transaction.

People pay bribes for large things and for small things: to get electricity for their homes, even to enter the airport.

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