Fahim, Karzai and Khalili: The Unholy Trinity of Afghan Corruption

You know what’s funny? Hamid Karzai, Electioneer-in-Chief, stood between these two guys, Mohammed Qasim Fahim and Karim Khalili to declare [h/t and photo credit, Wired's Danger Room blog]:

Those who spread corruption should be tried and prosecuted. Corruption is a very dangerous enemy of the state. …Afghan ministers should be professional and servants of the people. The government officials should register their earnings.

Just for the record, Hamid Karzai had roughly a million fraudulent votes thrown out in the election. You can learn all about Fahim and Khalili in a Human Rights Watch report titled (and I’m not even kidding) Blood-Stained Hands which details the war crimes for which they and their subordinates were responsible. So by all means, gentlemen, explain to us how you’re going to lead Afghanistan into a new era of peace, prosperity and transparency.

As Matthew Hoh noted in his resignation letter, the corruption at the very top in the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is only the most visible symptom of the rot that’s set in within the Afghan state from top to bottom, which includes:

Glaring corruption and unabashed graft;

A President whose confidants and chief advisors comprise drug lords and war crimes villians, who mock our own rule of law and counternarcotics efforts;

A system of provincial and district leaders constituted of local power brokers, opportunists and strongmen allied to the United States solely for, and limited by, the value of our USAID and CERP contracts and whose own political and economic interests stand nothing to gain from any positive or genuine attempts at reconciliation; and

The recent election process dominated by fraud and discredited by low voter turnout, which has created an enormous victory for our enemy who now claims a popular boycott and will call into question worldwide our government’s military, economic and diplomatic support for an invalid and illegitimate Afghan government.

The Afghan government is not worth one more American life or dollar. This cartel is a very large part of the problem, not the solution, in Afghanistan. We should be reducing, not increasing, or military commitment in that country, post haste.

Tomorrow I’ll be interview Matthew Hoh on the situation in Afghanistan. Until then, here’s another clip of his conversation with Daniel Ellsberg about the need for us to start the drawdown.

James Vega–writing for The Democratic Strategist, co-edited by William Galston, Stan Greenberg and Ruy Teixeira–just published a 2,600+ word memo arguing that “Obama’s final decision” to “approve a significant increase in the number of troops” would not be a “betrayal” of the Democratic base.

You know, that Democratic base that overwhelmingly opposes sending more troops. What utter garbage.

Democrats — Don’t be misled. The media is going to call Obama’s new Afghan strategy a “betrayal” of the Democratic base — but it’s not. It’s actually a decisive rejection of the Republican/Neo-Conservative strategy of the “Long War”

…Based on current reports, Obama’s final decision will approve a significant increase in the number of troops – the exact number depending on the number of major cities to be covered and the degree of protection to be provided for the major road highways. For the many critics who believe that sending large numbers of additional U.S. troops may actually be counterproductive, this is a clear disappointment. But it is also already clear that Obama’s strategy will do several other important things.

• It will establish specific criteria for success and failure.
• It will define the mission in a concrete and specific way that can be openly debated and revised.
• It will include an explicit “exit strategy” rather than an open-ended commitment.

Obama’s specific plan for Afghanistan may turn out to be right or wrong – there are entirely reasonable and cogent arguments that a smaller military “footprint” could actually enhance our ability to achieve our ultimate objectives more than a larger one. But, in any case, the method Obama has used to reach his decision is one that has profoundly undermined the basic foundations of the strategy neoconservatives have been following to embroil America in a perpetual “Long War” – an endless series of open-ended, military campaigns that drag on for decades, constantly requiring more and more troops to achieve hopelessly vague and unquantifiable objectives of fundamental social and cultural transformation across the Muslim world.

Again, total garbage. Decision-making processes are important, true. Asserting civilian control over the military is fundamental to the health of our democratic republic, true. But these issues are totally separate from the question of whether or not sending more troops is a betrayal of the president’s base.

Look, “strategists,” this is very simple. Decisive majorities of Democrats oppose sending more troops to Afghanistan: 60 percent want to actually start withdrawing troops, versus only 26 percent who favor adding any number of troops.

Memo to the memo-writers: you might want to refer to well-documented Democratic public opinion since your About Us section says you:

“seek to publish substantial articles that draw strategic conclusions from the latest public opinion and demographic research conducted by the academic community and commercial public opinion polling firms as well as from the leading think-tanks and policy institutes across America.”

If President Obama sends more troops, he “betrays” his base. The end. This is not complicated.

Writing 2,600+ words to take the long way around doesn’t change a “no” to a “yes.” The very least you could do to sell this attempted Jedi mind trick would have been to fabricate a poll. At least then you wouldn’t be patronizing the majority of Democrats whose names you use to get your analysis in the door in order to stab us in the back.

I’m convinced that when we look back on the key events on the road out of Afghanistan, we’ll mark Matthew Hoh’s resignation as one of the milestones. Hoh’s resignation letter is a devastating four-page indictment of the misguided U.S. policy in that country, and his experience in Anbar, Iraq gave his views heft in the debate about whether an Iraq-style “surge” provided a template for “success” in Afghanistan. Do yourself a favor: if you haven’t yet read the letter, do so.

Matthew Hoh recently sat down with Daniel Ellsberg for a Brave New Conversation, the trailer for which you can see above. I’ll interview Hoh later this week to get his thoughts on the way forward in Afghanistan and the reaction to his resignation. For now, though, enjoy the conversation.

Note: Derrick Crowe is the Afghanistan blog fellow for Brave New Foundation / The Seminal.

Steven Greenhouse reports in the New York Times that employers are routinely underreporting illnesses and injuries to their workers.

The report, by the G.A.O., the auditing arm of Congress, said many employers did not report workplace injuries and illnesses for fear of increasing their workers’ compensation costs or hurting their chances of winning contracts.

The report also said workers did not report job-related injuries because they feared being fired or disciplined and worried that their co-workers might lose rewards, like bonuses or steak dinners, as part of safety-based incentive programs.

“The widespread underreporting so clearly documented in this report is undermining the health and safety of American workers,” said Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa and chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. “If we don’t know the full extent of the workplace hazards workers face, we cannot fully address these risks.”

Mr. Harkin was one of the Congressional leaders who requested the report.

It’s hard to even determine the problems with workplace safety when employers are systematically undermining the data. And it’s impossible for industry to take credit for declines in workplace injuries and even fatalities if the official data cannot be trusted (that decline can also be attributed to the overall decline in the workforce due to the recession, too, as well as the decline in staffing at the agencies that keep the records). In fact, the GAO report concluded that OSHA may have failed to account for “up to two-thirds of all workplace injuries and illnesses.”

See, OSHA relies on data from employers for a bulk of its surveying about workplace safety. That’s right, the foxes write up the reports about the henhouse. When you start talking to people other than the site managers, some interesting statistics crop up:

The accountability office also found that more than a third of the occupational health practitioners it surveyed said that employers or workers had pressured them to provide insufficient medical treatment to hide or play down work-related injuries or illnesses.

The safety and health administration requires employers with more than 10 workers to record every work-related injury or illness that results in lost work time or medical treatment other than first aid. Some occupational health practitioners say that to avoid recording an injury, some employers will try to limit treatment for a serious injury to just first aid.

In other cases, the practitioners said, employers might seek alternative diagnoses if the initial diagnosis would result in a recordable injury or illness.

They want to avoid OSHA site inspections, which they know the agency is only equipped to perform on the most egregious violators. If you stay out of sight, you’ll be out of OSHA’s mind, in all likelihood.

When you read the independent reports, outside of OSHA, you begin to get the true picture of what American workplaces look like. In the low-wage market, there are all kinds of systematic violations, forcing employees to work longer hours for less pay – and these violations extend to health and safety. This stress and strain may account for the shocking rise in workplace suicides over the last year.

“This report confirms that when it comes to the documenting of workplace injuries, we can’t just take employers at their word,” said Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington and chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety. “The system, to this point, has been all too easy to game.”

Which is why we need real changes to the system like the Protect America’s Workers Act.

This new collection of articles breaks through the corporate media’s lies, sound-bites and silence. In place of the usual suspects, the “experts” who, in Goodman’s words, “know so little about so much, explain the world to us, and get it so wrong,” this accessible, lively collection allows the voices the corporate media exclude and ignore to be heard loud and clear – and you can hear all about straight from Amy herself.

And if you can’t join us, you can still check out Amy Goodman’s Conversation by joining BraveNewConversations.com. From Amy to Thom Hartmann and Tom Morello to Janeane Garofalo, you can experience every insider Conversation we have from the comfort of your home – join the Conversation today!

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RSVP: Please RSVP by emailing Cherita Smith at rsvp@bravenewfoundation.org
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The Progressive Caucus just sent a letter to President Obama asking for a meeting to discuss “a comprehensive rethinking of our military mission, a complete redesign of our reconstruction and stabilization strategy and a courageous reconciliation strategy for Afghanistan.”

Signed by Congresswomen Lee and Woosley and Congressmen Grijalva, Honda and McGovern, the letter lists several concerns about the ongoing mission in Afghanistan, including:

• the prospect of additional troop commitments without a clear mission and without criteria with which to evaluate success;
• the failure of foreign aid to rebuild Afghan “institutions, infrastructure, and individual capacity”;
• the lack of legitimacy of the Afghan government, demonstrated and worsened by the stolen election, corruption in aid distribution and “foreign intelligence and security alliances.”

The letter comes as the president prepares to announce his decision regarding the future of U.S. policy in Afghanistan. This is the latest of several high-profile attempts by current and former U.S. officials to push back against calls for another troop increase in Afghanistan:

• Matthew Hoh recently resigned his post as the top civilian official in Afghanistan’s Zabul province in a letter widely circulated by Ambassador Holbrooke;
• U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, recently sent a now-public set of cables to Washington, D.C., cautioning the president against sending more troops to support the corrupt Karzai regime;
• Congressmen Obey and Murtha recently expressed their discomfort about troop increases to the press;
• Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi repeatedly expressed her discomfort with sending more troops to Afghanistan.

There’s political space for the president to refuse to increase troops, and growing public support for bringing them home. If the president put his considerable public charisma behind a policy of de-escalation, he could relieve his presidency of a burden that threatens to sink it.

If you only read the first paragraph of this Jim Michaels’ USA TODAY story, you might walk away with a nice feeling about civic life in Afghanistan:

KABUL — U.S. and Afghan officials have agreed on a new nationwide strategy that will funnel millions of dollars in foreign aid to villages that organize “neighborhood watch”-like programs to help with security.

This past week’s news included the story of Specialist Alexis Hutchinson’s 11-month-old boy taken by the Army and given to Child Protective Services so she could be sent to Afghanistan.

On November 3rd, we heard about an Afghan named Guldubbin who killed five British soldiers. Guldubbin was claimed by the Taliban as one of their own, but as Christina Lamb explained in her Times UK piece [h/t Patrick Cockburn]:

Senior sources say local intelligence shows the [Taliban] claim is false, however. In addition, witnesses contacted by The Sunday Times say other factors lay behind the massacre.

According to two Afghans who knew him, Gulbuddin had complained of being brutally beaten, sodomised and sexually abused by a senior Afghan officer. A policeman named Ajmal, a friend of the gunman, said Gulbuddin had been constantly tortured. “He was being used for sexual purposes,” said Ajmal.

…

When Gulbuddin opened fire with a machine gun, his target was his alleged abuser. According to the Afghan sources, the five British soldiers were killed simply because they were present and considered to be the man’s protectors.

…

In sexually repressed Pashtun society, it is common for those in dominant positions to take young men as sexual partners — known as bacha bazi — even though the penalty for anyone caught engaging in a homosexual act is brutal.

Patrick Cockburn explains that many “Afghan villagers prefer to deal with the Taliban rather than the government security forces is that the latter have a habit of seizing their sons at checkpoints and sodomizing them.” What’s worse, coalition officials have been covering it up:

Western military officials eager to show success in training the Afghan army and police have reportedly suppressed for years accounts from Canadian troops that the newly trained security forces are raping young boys.

Specialist Hutchison’s child was placed with CPS, then, so she could go help shore up a regime heavily populated with predators that would love to get their hands on her little boy.

Supposedly, we’re in Afghanistan to protect women. What garbage. We’re not even in Afghanistan to protect little boys, much less the hapless women of that country. In fact, we’re there to protect the political power of what women’s rights groups call “The Rule of the Rapists.” And these are equal opportunity rapists, let me tell you: men, women, little girls and boys. With the budget of the government of Afghanistan totaling a pittance, and with 75 percent of that pittance being devoured by graft, these predators will stride around, leering at their next victims wearing clean, pressed new uniforms and shiny new sidearms paid for by the taxpayers of the United States.

In our fight against the Taliban and al-Qaida, our desired ends are justifying the most repulsive of means. We’re in bed with the rapists.

I have a question for the people of faith making policy for the U.S. government: If you died tomorrow, do you imagine that any of your complicated rationalizations for sending guns and young people and money to this horror show will suffice to explain yourself to your God?

Here’s the text of the petition, which you can sign at the Rethink Afghanistan website:

Dear President Obama,

News reports indicate that you plan to send between 34,000 and 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan.

We urge you to reconsider this decision.

Expanding the war in Afghanistan will make Americans less safe, not more so.

Less than 100 members of Al Qaeda remain in Afghanistan. The Karzai government we once supported is controlled by warlords and is riddled with corruption. Pakistan’s stability will be gravely imperiled by an expansion of the war. Hundreds if not thousands of troops will be killed, along with countless civilians. Anti-American sentiment throughout the Muslim world will be inflamed by civilian bloodshed, facilitating recruitment by terrorist organizations.

The war will cost billions of dollars when we can least afford it, and will stymie your domestic agenda.

The cost of sustaining a military force in Afghanistan is $1 million per soldier per year – that’s close to $100 billion dollars annually with the troop increase. With the economy in shambles, the deficits generated by these enormous costs will compromise your domestic legislative agenda both fiscally and politically.

The United States has no vital interest in Afghanistan. If you choose to further escalate troop levels in Afghanistan, you will be making the biggest mistake of your presidency.

Please reject General McChrystal’s troop requests and begin the process of exiting U.S. forces from Afghanistan.

I’ve signed it. Have you?

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