Afghanistan: Dollars Are on the Move!

Matthew Rosenberg, the Kabul correspondent of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), has led a formidable investigation on the way currencies are getting away from Afghanistan. It’s informative. But once more, it’s bad news in that prevailing ruin.

It’s surely one of the most “thought provoking” articles about Afghanistan I’ve read these recent days. Published during the staggering departure of General Stanley McChrystal, it tastes bad, with the feeling that all is going downhill in that country, at war for nearly nine years. Especially because it is coupled with contradictory rumors about presumed negotiations under way between President Karzai and the Taliban, or even commanders close to al-Qaida.

First, let’s come back to the WSJ article. “More than $3 billion in cash has been openly flown out of Kabul International Airport in the past three years, a sum so large that U.S. investigators believe top Afghan officials and their associates are sending billions of diverted U.S. aid and logistics dollars and drug money to financial safe havens abroad,” wrote Rosenberg.

Worse yet, the money is piled up in suitcases, stacked up on pallets and packed into planes. It’s therefore officially declared and authorized to leave the country… as if it were an ordinary good. “More declared cash flies out of Kabul each year than the Afghan government collects in tax and customs revenue nationwide,” the journalist goes on. Then, one of his interlocutors, an American investigating the corruption and funding of the Taliban, added, “It’s not like they grow money on trees here… A lot of this looks like our tax dollars being stolen. And opium, of course.”

Matthew Rosenberg also explains, in detail, the hawala system that permits large sum transfers without a trace. A system as old as the world, free from all suspicion, where banknotes pass from hand to hand. This practice, which is based on trust, is a lot less costly than bank transfers. Still as corrosive as ever, the article, while at it, writes that “The United Nations, NATO and international aid groups in Afghanistan have at times even used hawalas to move money and pay staff.” “Afghanistan is a country that is built on personal connections and trust,” the president of the hawala association in Kabul asserted, looking serious.

Regarding the maneuverings of President Hamid Karzai to win the Islamic militants’ friendship and his unexpected reconciliation with the Pakistani army, I’m referring you to my analysis published this morning in Le Figaro. I’ll get plenty of time to come back to the topic.

Finally, the icing on the cake — an American report published today writes that the Afghan army is far from being good enough to take over from the coalition forces. Nearly a year ago, a blog picked up the weaknesses of the Afghan army. Sorry, obviously Ann Jones knew what she was talking about.