From the Washington Post
"Afghan corruption: How to follow the money?"
By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 29, 2010
Hamed Wardak, the soft-spoken Georgetown University-educated son of an Afghan cabinet minister, has a Defense Department contract worth up to $360 million to transport U.S. military goods through some of the most insecure territory in Afghanistan. But his company has no trucks.
Instead, Wardak sits atop a murky pyramid of Afghan subcontractors who provide the vehicles and safeguard their passage. U.S. military officials say they are satisfied with the results, but they concede that they have little knowledge or control over where the money ends up.
According to senior Obama administration officials, some of it may be going to the Taliban, as part of a protection racket in which insurgents and local warlords are paid to allow the trucks unimpeded passage, often sending their own vehicles to accompany the convoys through their areas of control.
The essential question, said an American executive whose company does significant work in Afghanistan, is "whether you'd rather pay $1,000" for Afghans to safely deliver a truck, even if part of the money goes to the insurgents, or pay 10 times that much for security provided by the U.S. military or contractors.
The case of Gaius Verres. Roman governor of first century BC Sicily comes to mind as a case of notorious corruption. Gaius Verres was Roman governor of Sicily 73–71 BC. Gaius the son of a Roman Senator, used his family's contacts and position as well as bribery to become quaestor of Asia in 80 BC which permitted him to join the staff of Gnaeus Dolabella who had been appointed governor of Cilicia a Roman province. Verres avidly joined Dolabella in plundering the province. When Dolabella was recalled to Rome in 78 BC to face charges of embezzlement and mismanagement Verres turned against his former associate to gain a pardon for himself. With the aid of lavish bribes he secured the praetorship of Rome in 74 BC and used his position to advance the aims of his party and party leaders. As a reward he was offered the position of governor or Sicily where, recalling the methods he had practiced under Dolabella, he proceeded to plunder Sicily for his personal enrichment, in a way that was well beyond the typical self serving practices of many Roman governors of the time. His penchant for stealing art treasures from prominent Sicilians and Temples throughout the province led to a legal prosecution once his term was up. Back in Rome, Verres, faced with a contingent of angry Sicilians, used more chicanery and to attempt to avoid prosecution (charging his main accuosor as a fratricide) but in the he had to use some of his-ill gotten Sicilian assets to hire the top defense attorney of the day, one Quintus Hortensius, to defend him. The Sicilian victims of his brutal and corrupt practices turned to a youthful but brilliant Marcus Tullius Cicero to prosecute. Cicero’s first move was to suspend the case for over one-hundred days so as to offer opportunity to collect evidence on a trip to Sicily. After a successful trip and return voyage, Cicero, whose Verrine Orations have made Verres' crimes notorious, successfully prosecuted the tyrant. At the completion of Cicero’s early deposition Verres realized his lawyer would be unable to effectively counter the charges and fled before the end of the trail. He retired to Massilia where he kept much of his plundered treasures. These later attracted the greed of Mark Antony, and Verres was proscribed and murdered in 43)
Which brings to mind our sorry involment in Afghanistan. More than two-thousand years later we find that as the great Greek historian Thucydides who begins his history of the Peloponnesian War by stating that human nature is the basic cause of historical events and its study will be useful to those who wish to understand the way things happen, since events similar to those of the past will certainly recur in the future because human nature is unchanging. (Not that history repeats itself but that humans in similar circumstances will react in similar ways, even if separated over long periods of time.) Men and their behavior and thus history do not change.
All this to introduce a sorry tale. As our President prepares a massive buildup of military forces in Afghanistan..(January 2010) the a House Committee has launched an investigation into charges that the Defense Department (funded to the tune of nearly one trillion dollars annually) is paying off the Taliban (yes our stated enemy in Afghanistan) to protect American supply lines (See The Nation, January 11-18, 2010, pg 8). Did you read that right? Yes, US taxpayer dollars are going directly to the insurgents. The Defense Department pays out $2.2 billion dollars to trucking contractors who then use those funds to pay Taliban to protect out supply lines into and within Afghanistan. But worse than that, these contractors have hired Washington lobbyists—using those same DD funds to lobby the Congress to continue the war in Afghanistan. Hard to believe? Read it. See the Nation http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100111/roston.
From Politics Daily,David Wood, 12 21 09, (downloaded 4-28-10)
Separate from allegations about the Taliban and construction security, a House panel last week broadened its investigation into charges that private contractors paid off Taliban insurgents not to attack truck convoys carrying war materiel through Pakistan and into Afghanistan.
"Serious allegations have been brought to the subcommittee's attention that private security providers for U.S. transportation contractors in Afghanistan are regularly paying local warlords and the Taliban for security,'' said Rep. John F. Tierney, a Massachusetts Democrat and chairman of the National Security and Foreign Affairs Subcommittee of the House Government Reform Committee.
"If shown to be true, it would mean that the United States is unintentionally engaged in a vast protection racket and, as such, may be indirectly funding the very insurgents we are trying to fight,'' Tierney said.
Tierney's investigators have asked for Pentagon documents relating to a $2.2 billion contract with several trucking companies to carry goods into Afghanistan.
The Taliban-related allegation in eastern Afghanistan involves construction on a strategic road between Gardez and Khost, a route that runs over high mountains and directly through territory dominated by the Haqqani Taliban, one of the most ruthless of several Taliban subgroups.
The security contractor alleged that the Haqqani network, which provides foreign fighters from Pakistan for the security work on the roads, is paid tens of thousands of dollars in what amounts to a protection racket.
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