UN Afghanistan survey points to huge scale of bribery

[illuminatus]

Afghans paid $2.5bn (£1.5bn) in bribes over the past 12 months, or the equivalent of almost one quarter of legitimate GDP, a UN report suggests.

Surveying 7,600 people, it found nearly 60% more concerned about corruption than insecurity or unemployment.

More than half the population had to pay at least one bribe to a public official last year, the report adds.

The findings contrast sharply with a recent BBC survey in which the economy appeared to top Afghan concerns.

The survey commissioned by the BBC and other broadcasters in December suggested that fewer Afghans (14%) saw corruption as the biggest problem than the economy (34%) and security situation (32%).

According to the UN survey, bribes averaged $160 (£98) in contrast to an average Afghan annual income of $425.

Bribes were most often paid to police, judges and politicians but members of international organisations and NGOs were also seen as corrupt, the survey said.

Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), said corruption was contributing to drug-trafficking and terrorism in Afghanistan.

The UNODC said its report, Corruption in Afghanistan, was based on interviews with 7,600 people in 12 provincial capitals and more than 1,600 villages around Afghanistan.

The BBC survey, which was also nationwide, was based on a smaller number of people (1,534).

Explicit demands

According to the UN survey, 59% of Afghans said their daily experience of public dishonesty was a bigger concern than insecurity (54%) or unemployment (52%).

In 56% of cases, the request for illicit payment was an explicit demand by the bribe-taker, it said.

In three out of four cases, bribes were paid in cash.

Around one in four Afghans surveyed had to pay at least one bribe to police and local officials during the survey period while between 10 and 20% had to pay bribes either to judges, prosecutors or members of the government.

"The Afghans say that it is impossible to obtain a public service without paying a bribe," said Mr Costa.

"Bribery is a crippling tax on people who are already among the world's poorest," he added.

'Perverse and growing'

Another finding of the survey is that at least one in three Afghans believed that corruption was the norm.

Only 9% of the urban population ever reported an act of corruption to the authorities, the survey said.

There was also a perception among 54% of Afghans that international organisations and NGOs were corrupt and "in the country just to get rich", the survey added.

"This perception risks undermining aid effectiveness and discrediting those trying to help a country desperately in need of assistance," the UNODC said.

Mr Costa noted the emergence of a "new caste of rich and powerful individuals who operate outside the traditional power/tribal structures and bid the cost of favours and loyalty to levels not compatible with the under-developed nature of the country".

"Criminal graft has become similarly monumental, perverse and growing and is having political, economic and even security consequences," he said.

He expressed his concern that the lack of confidence in the Afghan authorities apparent in the survey was making the Taliban's advocacy of "more violent forms of retribution... treacherously appealing".

"It's time to drain the swamp of corruption in Afghanistan, to stop money and trust disappearing down a big black hole," the UNODC chief concludes.

"Corruption is the biggest impediment to improving security, development and governance in Afghanistan."

Source: BBC News - UN Afghanistan survey points to huge scale of bribery

 

[Ahmad]

Corruption and bribery is a very very big problem for Afghanistan. People are really frustrated because of this corruption. But it is not something new in the counntry. During the mujahideen time and taliban things were almost the same, in 2000 i wanted to get a passport but couldnt have it until i paid money as bribe to the officers. this corruption is disastor.

 

[waraich66]

Starving Afghans sell girls of eight as bridesVillagers whose crops have failed after a second devastating drought are giving their young daughters in marriage to raise money for food
Buzz up!
Digg it
Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor
The Observer, Sunday 7 January 2007
Article history
Azizgul is 10 years old, from the village of Houscha in western Afghanistan. This year the wheat crop failed again following a devastating drought. Her family was hungry. So, a little before Christmas, Azizgul's mother 'sold' her to be married to a 13-year-old boy.
'I need to sell my daughters because of the drought,' said her mother Sahatgul, 30. 'We don't have enough food and the bride price will enable us to buy food. Three months ago my 15-year-old daughter married.

'We were not so desperate before. Now I have to marry them younger. And all five of them will have to get married if the drought becomes worse. The bride price is 200,000 afghanis [£2,000]. His father came to our house to arrange it. The boy pays in instalments. First he paid us 5,000 afghanis, which I used to buy food.'

Azizgul is not unique. Hers is one of a number of interviews and case studies collected by the charity Christian Aid - all of them young girls sold by their families to cope with the second ruinous drought to hit Afghanistan within three years.

While the world has focused on the war against the Taliban, the suffering of the drought-stricken villagers, almost 2.5 million of them, has largely gone unnoticed. And where once droughts would afflict Afganistan once every couple of decades, this drought has come hard on the heels of the last one, from which the villagers were barely able to recover.
While prohibited by both Afghan civil and Islamic law, arranged marriages have long been a feature of Afghan life, particularly in rural areas. What is unusual is the age of some of the girls. And the reason: to buy food to survive.

'Many families are doing this because of the drought,' Sahatgul said. 'Our daughters are our only economic asset. We will have the marriage ceremony at puberty. The groom, Rahim, has gone to Iran with his brothers to earn the money. He is working on a building site. He will come back with the rest of the money that he has earned or borrowed. He calls us every month to make sure that Azizgul is still his.'

Najibullah, 39, is a farmer. He sold his eight-year-old daughter Somaya for $3,000 (£1,560). She is engaged to a 22-year-old man from the village, Mohammed, who has also gone to Iran to earn the money to pay the bride price.

'He has already paid a deposit of $600, which we used to buy warm clothes and food,' said Najibullah. For her part, Somaya knows she is getting married but does not know what that means.

The consequences of the first drought last year - which saw the wheat crop, on which more than 80 per cent of Afghans depend, cut by half - have gone beyond child brides. In some areas, according to the charity's survey, farmers lost between 80 and 100 per cent of their crops. According to Christian Aid, the children of the affected areas have been hit in other ways: by malnutrition, increased infant mortality, and by being sent on three-hour journeys to collect water and firewood to survive.

Now many of those villagers worst affected are caught in a double bind. Without their own food to survive, aid supplies have been hampered by the winter snows, which have cut off many of the villages, while the World Food Programme's aid pipeline to areas like the Herat province (where Houscha lies) has been hampered by attacks on food convoys coming from Quetta in Pakistan by the Taliban.

'We have advisers in Afghanistan monitoring the situation,' said a spokesman for Britain's Department for International Development, 'and we have already given £1m in aid. Our view is that it is not quite a humanitarian crisis yet, but it is very, very difficult. The biggest problem facing the aid effort is not security in the country but the fact that large areas have been cut off by snow and that food aid can only be delivered to regional centres.'

The grim picture is echoed by the UN and other international organisations working in Afghanistan. According to the World Food Programme's most recent food security monitoring bulletin, food consumption in the worst affected areas has markedly deteriorated as wheat prices, where wheat is available, have increased by up to 37 per cent. But the picture is most graphically painted by the suffering of the people on the ground, in particular the children.

Zarigul is 40 and also from Houscha. 'Our children are very weak from lack of food and we are worried that they will die. We feed them boiled water and sugar. We have no vegetables for them, just potatoes. Last year we had vegetables. We need help - food for ourselves and our animals.'

Children are already dying. In a graveyard on a hill overlooking the village of Sya Kamarak in western Afghanistan, villagers gathered for the funerals of three young children who died on the same day, from malnutrition caused by the drought in western, northern and southern Afghanistan. There were no doctors' reports to confirm the cause of death - the parents were too poor to take them to the clinic, one day's walk away.

Jan Bibi, 40, said she had been feeding her three-month-old daughter Nazia with just boiled water and sugar because she had nothing else. 'My baby died because of inadequate food. I wanted to breastfeed her, but I was not producing enough milk.'

Back in Houscha, Abdul Zahir, 58, head of the men's council, summed up the desperate situation confronting families. 'There is widespread poverty. We have to sell off our children to survive. We are not proud of it, but we have to do it.'

Corruption is not major issue of Afghanistan there are many other serious issues ,i.e, drought,poverty, higher child death rate ,high norcotic production, unjustice, US occupation .

UN should focus on these issues more.Corruption is resultant of above mentioned factors not the root cause.

 

[S-2]

Feel free to check the endemic nature of corruption at Transparency Int'l. for the entire central and south asian region. Appalling, to include Pakistan.

Global Corruption Index 2009-Transparency International

Pakistan checks in at 139. Afghanistan at 179. In-between? Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kryghzistan. Afghanistan is in the midst of absolute chaos. What's everybody else's comparable excuse?

Rocks...glass houses.

Thanks.

 

[RobbieS]

India at 84...! I thought we'd be lower down. But nothing to be glad about I guess.

 

[S-2]

"India at 84...! I thought we'd be lower down. But nothing to be glad about I guess."

I think that's superb given its size and continuing poverty with so many. Check the trends from the previous years to determine direction.

It's a continuous process. America isn't perfect at 18. I was surprised how many of the eastern European countries are doing reasonably well. Canada is great.

There's a lot that factors into it. Poverty, size, and war all create problems. So too, it seems, mineral wealth. Look where Venezuela ranks, as example.

Thanks.

 

[RobbieS]

It's a continuous process. America isn't perfect at 18. I was surprised how many of the eastern European countries are doing reasonably well. Canada is great.

Canada was expected. No wonder their cities top the "The world's best places to live rankings"

But frankly I was surprised by US's ranking at 18. I expected it to be higher. Though I have spent sometime in the US I didnt see corruption as evident and visible as in India or other South Asian countries. What are your thoughts on that? Are there specific areas/sectors more prone to corruption but naked to the public eye that have lowered its ranking? Corporates perhaps?

 

[S-2]

Read the Transparency International report. Much of it stems with our on-going legislative processes to monitor lobbys.

We always have some level of corruption in our police forces and other public sector bureaucracies. Very modest but it can be there. Human nature where the country is sufficiently large for the potential to arise of the left hand not knowing the right hand.

We parallel both Japan and the U.K. What the U.K's problems might be, I'm unsure nor did I check. Japan has long had issues of influence peddling by the major political parties. So much so that a very powerful anti-corruption task force arose to much Japanese applause.

Now it's being investigated and risks disbanding. Go figure.

One shouldn't ever be content and must always be on guard but I'm satisfied that the vast majority of our public servants are fair, honest, and work hard on behalf of their constituencies.

So too our police but where dope's involved nothing can be assumed.

Thanks.

 

[Patriot]

Feel free to check the endemic nature of corruption at Transparency Int'l. for the entire central and south asian region. Appalling, to include Pakistan.

Global Corruption Index 2009-Transparency International

Pakistan checks in at 139. Afghanistan at 179. In-between? Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kryghzistan. Afghanistan is in the midst of absolute chaos. What's everybody else's comparable excuse?

Rocks...glass houses.

Thanks.

Oh noez...the difference is at least according to you that Pakistan is controlled by immature corrupted people but Afghanistan is being run by holier then thou US so why is still corrupted?Maybe because is also taking part in corruption. and mind you 139 is not too bad considering the fact that even better countries like Russia is at 146.So what happened to Captain America?Why it cannot stop corruption in Afghanistan.Maybe American officials as well as US Army Soldiers are hooked on opium for good.