The military’s intelligence network in Afghanistan, designed for identifying and tracking terrorists and insurgents, is increasingly focused on uncovering corruption that is rampant across Afghanistan’s government, security forces and contractors, according to senior American officials.
Military intelligence officers in Afghanistan are scouring seized documents and interrogating captured fighters and facilitators — but not just to learn about insurgent networks that plan attacks, plant roadside explosives and send out suicide bombers.
They are also looking for insights on how to combat a widespread perversion of authority by Afghan power brokers, which senior officials describe as “a plague” on the American-backed effort to build an effective and competent government and win the support of the Afghan people.
It is a remarkable but perilous military undertaking in a sovereign country, particularly in a place of conspiracy theories and constantly shifting alliances, where it is hard to know who can be trusted and where many people are historically skeptical of what they see as intrusiveness by outsiders, this time by the Americans.
The United States and its NATO allies may find themselves following leads that point to the top levels of government, because even close family members of President Hamid Karzai have been accused of engaging in the drug trade and enriching themselves with lucrative business deals. American contractors are among those accused of wrongdoing, and some in the United States government have been known to look the other way rather than upset Mr. Karzai.
The new military anti-corruption effort is a joint operation with Afghan law enforcement and judicial authorities. But on Saturday, The New York Times reported that some in Afghanistan, including one of Mr. Karzai’s former top intelligence aides, complained that the Afghan president himself was increasingly mistrustful of the United States and had talked of cutting his own agreement with the Taliban.
A central goal in the Obama administration’s counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan, which is commanded by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, is to win over the country’s population. That goal requires persuading the Afghan people to support the central government in Kabul and not shadow Taliban governments that exist in many provinces. To that end, anti-corruption efforts are every bit as important as killing or capturing militants, if not more so, according to senior officers involved in the effort.
“Where once our whole network was to capture and kill Al Qaeda and the Taliban, now the information we’re trying to get is the information for the networks of corruption and government and influence,” said a senior American military officer in Afghanistan.
“The intelligence we were focused on before was just to drive the next target we were going to get,” he said. “Now our targeting is much more focused on the government: How do you control for corruption? How does the process work for security contracts?”
They are also looking for insights on how to combat a widespread perversion of authority by Afghan power brokers, which senior officials describe as “a plague” on the American-backed effort to build an effective and competent government and win the support of the Afghan people.
It is a remarkable but perilous military undertaking in a sovereign country, particularly in a place of conspiracy theories and constantly shifting alliances, where it is hard to know who can be trusted and where many people are historically skeptical of what they see as intrusiveness by outsiders, this time by the Americans.
The United States and its NATO allies may find themselves following leads that point to the top levels of government, because even close family members of President Hamid Karzai have been accused of engaging in the drug trade and enriching themselves with lucrative business deals. American contractors are among those accused of wrongdoing, and some in the United States government have been known to look the other way rather than upset Mr. Karzai.
The new military anti-corruption effort is a joint operation with Afghan law enforcement and judicial authorities. But on Saturday, The New York Times reported that some in Afghanistan, including one of Mr. Karzai’s former top intelligence aides, complained that the Afghan president himself was increasingly mistrustful of the United States and had talked of cutting his own agreement with the Taliban.
A central goal in the Obama administration’s counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan, which is commanded by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, is to win over the country’s population. That goal requires persuading the Afghan people to support the central government in Kabul and not shadow Taliban governments that exist in many provinces. To that end, anti-corruption efforts are every bit as important as killing or capturing militants, if not more so, according to senior officers involved in the effort.
“Where once our whole network was to capture and kill Al Qaeda and the Taliban, now the information we’re trying to get is the information for the networks of corruption and government and influence,” said a senior American military officer in Afghanistan.
“The intelligence we were focused on before was just to drive the next target we were going to get,” he said. “Now our targeting is much more focused on the government: How do you control for corruption? How does the process work for security contracts?”
Source: TheNation.com.pk
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