U.S. Project in Afghanistan: Going, Going, Soon to be Gone

The jaw-dropping absurdity that is the Western project in Afghanistan is on display in two stories published yesterday and today in The New York Times. 

Yesterday, Alissa Rubin, in "Life Pulls Back in Afghan Capital, as Danger Rises and Troops Recede," tours a greatly changed Kabul from "the surge" days of yesteryear. Gone are most of the Westerners, as well as the restaurants and nightspots that served them. Helicopters shuttle U.S. embassy staff to and from the airport; driving is considered too dangerous. Afghans stand in line at the Interior Ministry office to get papers stamped in order to exit the the country:

KABUL, Afghanistan — If there had been grumbling before about the deafening intrusion of low-flying American helicopters in the Afghan capital, the discontent has surely multiplied along with the number of flights: packs of them now, coming two, four, six at a time, starting around 7 a.m., then again at midday and at dusk. 

Why so many? 

“The American Embassy’s not allowed to move by road anymore,” a senior Western official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the news media. 

“If you’re at the airport and you have work at the embassy or at R.S.,” he said, referring to the international coalition’s mission, known as Resolute Support, “they fly you over in the morning and back at night.” 

After 14 years of war, of training the Afghan Army and the police, it has become too dangerous to drive the mile and a half from the airport to the embassy.

If that doesn't conjure up the Saigon of 1975, read on. It is fascinating story, the kind of "reporter's notebook" I wish the Gray Lady would indulge in more often:

One favored spot over the years was the Design Cafe, a place with what might be called Kabul chic: sconces on the walls and low Afghan-style seats with cushions indoors and rattan furniture in its leafy courtyard. The cafe made an amazing mint lemonade in the summers, with icy, barely sweet, shredded mint whipped in until the drink turned a frothy green. 

Now, on a hot day in August, the corrugated metal door was locked, and no amount of banging on it brought an answer. Through the small square grate, all that was visible was a dusty courtyard, a couple of plastic bags blowing across it in the late afternoon wind. 

The cafe had a second outpost in a more secure neighborhood, and that one appeared to be open — at least someone answered the door. 

But walking inside was like entering an attic. The upholstered chairs were covered in dust, and a couple of them no longer had cushions, as if this were the last lot for sale at an auction, when all that was left was the furniture nobody bid on. 

Was it possible to get a coffee? The two guards conferred. Then one said, “Yes.” 

He would go look for the cook, he said doubtfully, then appeared relieved when he was told not to worry about it. 

It was not just the expatriates leaving; the Afghans were going, too, and in droves.

But the story that takes the cake is today's. In "Afghan Businessman Convicted in Kabul Bank Fraud Is Still Free to Make Money," Mujib Mashal describes how Khalilullah Frozi, the guy convicted of bilking the Kabul Bank of close to $1 billion, is actually partnering with Ashraf Ghani's government to develop real estate. Ghani endeared himself to his Western backers last year upon assuming the presidency by promising that he would go hard after the people responsible for defrauding Kabul Bank. Brokering deals with the convicted fraudster and allowing him to serve out his 15-year sentence at night by sleeping in a posh cell stuffed with floor cushions and Persian rugs doesn't really conjure up the sobriquet "The Ralph Nader of Afghanistan."

KABUL, Afghanistan — In a big day for development here, a notable Afghan businessman stood with top government officials on Wednesday as he signed the contract for a new township: 8,800 homes across 33 acres of prime real estate in the heart of the capital, with an initial investment of at least $95 million.

There was just one problem: The businessman, Khalilullah Frozi, is supposed to be serving a 15-year prison sentence for his role in defrauding Kabul Bank of nearly $1 billion of depositors’ money. The scheme broughtAfghanistan’s biggest bank, where Mr. Frozi was listed as chief executive, near collapse in 2010, and it deeply shook trust in the Western-backed financial system here. 

But Mr. Frozi, it seems, will be spending his days making money while he serves his sentence at night.

Five years after the banking scandal, the apparent unwillingness of the Afghan authorities to deal firmly with the perpetrators is perhaps one of the most glaring examples of Western impotence in the fight to clean up a system that the United States, chiefly, built and paid for.

But wait. It gets worse:

Mr. Ghani’s coalition government depends on many of the same players [that Mr. Frozi bought when he headed Kabul Bank], and could do little more now than to reach a compromise with Mr. Frozi, the analysts say. 

Mr. Frozi’s enduring influence ensured him luxury even in jail, from where he was reportedly released regularly to watch his soccer team, Ferozi F.C. 

On a daily basis, Mr. Frozi posted photographs and poems on his Facebook page from his cell, which was specially furnished with cushions and maroon Persian rugs, its walls painted a pale yellow. 

Among the images is one of him with his children lounging on the cushions during family visit day. There is even a photograph of Mr. Frozi in the prison yard, hanging out with Taliban prisoners. 

“In Pul-i-Charkhi prison, with the political opponents of the National Unity Government,” the caption reads, in reference to Mr. Ghani’s coalition that he just signed a partnership with.

Obama's decision to extend the presence of U.S. troops through the end of 2016 needs to be seen for what it is: a delaying tactic that dumps the mess on the lap of whomever succeeds him. The Taliban have already won. That's why there is a mass migration underway. In all those stories about refugees flocking to Europe, Afghans are the next nationality mentioned after Syrians.

The U.S. project in Afghanistan is an abject failure. Kingpins like Khalilullah Frozi, who stored the money looted from Kabul Bank in the U.A.E., will be fine, I would imagine, when the Taliban take control of Kabul.

Doctors Without Borders is still waiting after one month for an answer from the Pentagon why its hospital in Kunduz was blown apart and its staff killed. Was the reason for the attack really to assassinate an ISI agent?

U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, tracking all the way back to the days of Jimmy Carter, is inherently part of the global guy-wires of neoliberalism and neoconservatism. Its onrushing collapse portends a great change coming our way.

Coups and Assassinations Coming Shortly to Kabul

I'm sure the Gray Lady ran a biographical perspective piece on Ashraf Ghani at some point when he emerged out of the pack of presidential contenders to replace the increasingly recalcitrant U.S. quisling Hamid Karzai. I must have missed it. But I didn't miss the ringing endorsement of the newly -- one doesn't want to say "elected" because that doesn't really capture the process that led to Ghani assuming the title of president -- seated leader of Afghanistan by Ralph Nader.

I am familiar with Ralph Nader. I changed my life because of his Green Party candidacy for president in 2000. He doesn't give out pro forma recommendations; he does't play the usual kind of quid pro quo, "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine"-type of politics. He's an iconoclast with a lot of pride who does things his own way.

I remember being at a campaign event early on in the 2000 election, a fundraiser. Nader was speaking at a coffee house; he was talking about the legacy of legislature-backed stadium giveaways to professional sports teams. He mentioned the amount of money Seahawks owner Paul Allen had spent to win the initiative campaign to build what is currently named CenturyLink Field. I called from out of the small crowd surrounding him the correct figure, "Five million dollars in five weeks." Nader shot me the steely look -- even though I wrote a check (I can't remember how much) to be in attendance -- of a man who didn't like to be interrupted but one who appreciated another armed with the facts willing to raise his voice.

So Nader's recommendation of Ghani means something. And that is supported in a story today by Azam Ahmed and Declan Walsh, "New Afghan Leader, Putting Focus on Graft, Revives Bank Fraud Inquiry":

KABUL, Afghanistan — Signaling his intent to improve the Afghan government’s poor reputation on corruption, President Ashraf Ghani on Wednesday ordered a new examination of the stagnant Kabul Bank fraud prosecutions. 

The bank, likened to a roughly $800 million Ponzi scheme after powerful insiders pillaged it through fraudulent loans, has come to symbolize the legal impunity enjoyed by Afghanistan’s elite. And the case has become a major sticking point for donor nations and the International Monetary Fund, which at one point made prosecution of those responsible for the bank’s collapse a condition of any new loans to the government.

Just three days into Mr. Ghani’s presidency, his decree about the bank was clearly meant to reassure Western partners that aid to the country would not be a bad investment. The day before, as Afghanistan signed long-term security deals with the United States and NATO, Mr. Ghani had emphasized the importance of international aid in tackling “shared challenges.”

The Gray Lady, at times able to comport herself in stunning fashion, has an excellent unsigned editorial today, "Paying Afghanistan’s Bills," that I will quote in its entirety because it does such a fine job defining those "shared challenges":

By the end of the year, Congress will have appropriated more money for Afghanistan’s reconstruction, when adjusted for inflation, than the United States spent rebuilding 16 European nations after World War II under the Marshall Plan. 

A staggering portion of that money — $104 billion — has been mismanaged and stolen. Much of what was built is crumbling or will be unsustainable. Well-connected Afghans smuggled millions of stolen aid money in suitcases that were checked onto Dubai-bound flights. The Afghan government largely turned a blind eye to widespread malfeasance. Even as revelations of fraud and abuse stacked up, the United States continued shoveling money year after year because cutting off the financial spigot was seen as a sure way to doom the war effort. 

As the Pentagon winds down its combat mission there at the end of the year, it’s tempting to think of the Afghan war as a chapter that is coming to an end — at least for American taxpayers. But, as things stand, the United States and its allies will continue paying Afghanistan’s bills for the foreseeable future. That commitment was solidified Tuesday as the American ambassador in Kabul and Afghanistan’s security adviser signed a bilateral security agreement that will keep a small contingent of NATO troops there for at least two years. 

The United States and NATO partners recently agreed to spend $5.1 billion a year to pay for the army and police, until at least 2017. Western donors are expected to continue to give billions more for reconstruction and other initiatives, recognizing that Afghanistan won’t be weaned off international aid anytime soon. In fact, the government appears to be broke.

A few weeks ago, Afghanistan’s Finance Ministry made an urgent plea to the United States for a $537 million bailout, warning that it would otherwise not be able to make payroll. That’s part of a broader, worrisome trend. The International Monetary Fund estimates that Afghanistan will face a financial gap of roughly $7.7 billion annually between now and 2018. 

If the flow of money is to keep going, the Afghan government has to prove that it can be trusted. And, for its part, Congress should not hesitate to cut off the aid if corruption remains unabated. 

Afghanistan’s new president, Ashraf Ghani, who took office on Monday, has pledged to stamp out graft. “I am not corrupt, and I am not going to encourage corruption, tolerate it or become the instrument,” the president, a former World Bank executive, told the BBC in an interview. 

That will be easier said than done in a country where back-room deals are the norm. Mr. Ghani can show he is serious by appointing and empowering a new attorney general willing to take on unscrupulous officials. His proposal to lead a new procurement board is commendable because it would make him personally accountable. 

Of the $104 billion that American lawmakers have appropriated for Afghan reconstruction, nearly $16 billion remains unspent, according to John Sopko, the inspector general who is overseeing the reconstruction effort. As one of the poorest nations on earth, Afghanistan clearly has plenty of needs. But the American agencies tasked with spending the money must do a better job identifying priorities, setting realistic goals and adopting stronger safeguards. 

Delivering a speech at Georgetown University recently, Mr. Sopko marveled at the Marshall Plan comparison. “What have we gotten for the investment?” he asked.

My only problem with the editorial is the impression it casts that USG has somehow been a duped victim of all this fiscal mismanagement rather than its chief architect. The American way of doing things is just as corrupt as the Afghan way of doing things. What went on with the fleecing of Kabul Bank had a precedent in the American savings and loan scandals of the 1980s.

With the Taliban ascendant -- this year was the deadliest for the Afghan police since the U.S.-led occupation began 13-years ago -- the U.S. experience in Iraq is noteworthy. Once the U.S. military exited, the Iraqi Army became little more than an elaborate system of graft, a Ponzi scheme, where officers purchase their commissions to receive kickbacks from recruits, who may or may not actually be reporting for duty. This is not to say that this doesn't occur when the U.S. is in country maintaining a supervisory role; it is just that the corruption doesn't run so rampant the the entire system implodes as it did in Iraq. The ability of American military supervisors to call in airstrikes probably has something to do with it too.

A singular description of the corruption-fueled collapse of the Iraqi military can be found in an interview of Patrick Cockburn by Tariq Ali, "The Rise of ISIS and the Origins of the New Middle East War," that appeared earlier in the week on the Counterpunch web site:

Tariq Ali: And so, if we come down to the speed with which this particular organisation swept through parts of Iraq, which you yourself talk about in the book, how do you explain the total collapse of the Iraqi army, Patrick? Is it in that sense not too much different from the army created by the West in Afghanistan, the fact that they are not prepared to fight and die for the United States? At that time it was, al-Qaeda and Iraq was only one of a number of serious resistance movements to the occupation but it was very evident in Baghdad at the time when I went to American briefings that anything that happened was attributed by the spokesman, the military spokesman, to al-Qaeda. Of course this played well back in the US, but in Iraq it had quite the contrary effect which people who were against the occupation think, oh it’s al-Qaeda who’s doing all this resisting, let’s go an get a black flag and join them…

Patrick Cockburn: Yeah, and even more so. I mean I think this is, it’s difficult to think of another example in history, where there are 300 or 350 thousand men in the Iraqi army, they’d spent 41.6 billion dollars on this army over the last three years. But it disintegrated because of an attack by maybe a couple of thousand people in Mosul. Why did it happen? Well, the army was rather extraordinary. I mean one Iraqi general I was talking to who’d been forcibly retired said at the beginning of the disaster was the Americans, [who] when they set it up, insisted that supplies and things like that should be outsourced, privatised. 

So immediately a colonel of a battalion nominally of 600 men would get money for 600 men, [but] in fact there were only 200 men in it, and would pocket the difference, which was spread out among the officers. And this applied to fuel, it applied to ammunition… At the time of the fall of Mosul there are meant to be 30,000 troops there. In fact, it’s estimated that only one in three was there. Because what you did was: you joined the army, you got your full salary and then you kicked back half that salary to your officer, who spread it among the officers. So I remember about a year ago talking to a senior Iraqi politician, and who said look: the army’s going to collapse if it’s attacked. I said surely some will fight, he said: no no no, you don’t understand. These officers are not soldiers, they’re investors! 

They have no interest in fighting anybody; they have interest in making money out of their investment. Of course you had to buy your position. So in 2009, you want to be a colonel in the Iraqi army, it’ll cost you about 20,000 dollars, more recently it cost you about $200,000. You want to be divisional commander, and there are 15 divisions, it will cost you about 2 million. Of course, there are other ways of making money. Checkpoints on the roads act as sort of customs barriers and a tariff on each truck going through would be paid. So that’s why they ran away, led by their commanding officer, the three commanding generals got into a helicopter in civilian clothes and fled to Erbil, the Kurdish capital. And that led to the final dissolution of the army. 

Tariq Ali: It is one of the most astonishing events in recent history, Patrick. I mean can you think of any other equivalent, even in the last century?

Patrick Cockburn: I can’t think of any of such a large well-equipped army disintegrating. You could say that Saddam’s army disintegrated in ’91 when attacked by the Americans, and again in 2003. But then it was attacked by the largest military force in the world and was being bombed. So it’s not a parallel. It of course shows that ISIS was quite effective in spreading terror through social media, by films of it decapitating Shia captives. So the soldiers were terrified of ISIS.

Nader's ringing endorsement of Ghani makes me thinks that he is different. If he is, we'll know soon enough. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Working Group on Bribery "will release its report, 'Unfinished Business,' which names every beneficiary of the Kabul Bank scandal" today according to Ahmed and Walsh. If Ghani goes after those named, even if they are the elite, the palace intrigue will grow thick. Coups and assassinations can't be far off.