Clean up Afghan corruption or lose aid, Clinton warns

[CHIMO]

Source: CBC News

Afghanistan won't get any more civilian aid from the United States unless it does more to tackle corruption and goes after those suspected of looting aid in the past, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Sunday.

"I have made it clear that we're not going to be providing any civilian aid to Afghanistan unless we have a certification that if it goes into the Afghan government in any form, that we're going to have ministries that we can hold accountable," Clinton said.

The Obama administration wants a tribunal to prosecute major corruption crimes and a new anti-corruption commission, she said in an interview on ABC Television.

"There does have to be actions by the government of Afghanistan against those who have taken advantage of the money that has poured into Afghanistan in the last eight years so that we can better track it and we can have actions taken that demonstrate there's no impunity for those who are corrupt," Clinton said.



Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/11/15/clinton-afghan...

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November 15, 2009 | 8:58 PM ET

[Arctic Dave]

1. BFD. I see we will stop "civilian" monies but not military.

[dotymed]

2. Will we still pay Afghan "contractors", who ,in turn

pay the Taliban, so we can truck our war supplies through
their land and then fight them?

[Bragi]

3. This is hopeless. Time to end this militaryt fiasco. /nt

[SandWalker1984]

4. Why we will never win in Afghanistan - if the Telegragh knows it, why not our Pentagon?

Why we will lose in Afghanistan

What we are hardly ever told about the country is that it has been for 300 years the scene of a bitter civil war, says Christopher Booker

By Christopher Booker
Published: 6:47PM Nov 2009

As both Britain and America are plunged into an orgy of tortured introspection over what we are doing in Afghanistan, a further very important factor needs to be fed into the discussion, because it helps to explain not only why we have got into such a tragic mess but also why our armed intervention in that unhappy country is doomed.

What we are hardly ever told about Afghanistan is that it has been for 300 years the scene of a bitter civil war, between two tribal groups of Pashtuns (formerly known as Pathans). On one side are the Durranis – most of the settled population, farmers, traders, the professional middle class. On the other are the Ghilzai, traditionally nomadic, fiercely fundamentalist in religion, whose tribal homelands stretch across into Pakistan as far as Kashmir.

Ever since Afghanistan emerged as an independent nation in 1709, when the Ghilzai kicked out the Persians, its history has been written in the ancient hatred between these two groups. During most of that time, the country has been ruled by Durrani, who in 1775 moved its capital from the Ghilzai stronghold of Kandahar up to Kabul in the north. Nothing has more fired Ghilzai enmity than the many occasions when the Durrani have attempted to impose their rule from Kabul with the aid of "foreigners", either Tajiks from the north or outsiders such as the British, who invaded Afghanistan three times between 1838 and 1919 in a bid to secure the North-west Frontier of their Indian empire against the rebellious Ghilzai.

When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979, after years of Durrani rule, it was to support a revolutionary Ghilzai government. But this new foreign presence inspired general Afghan resistance which was why, by the late 1980s, the Americans were supporting the almost entirely Ghilzai-run Taleban and their ally Osama bin Laden.

You can read the rest at:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christoph...