Kathy Kelly: Planting the Seeds

Planting the Seeds
Kathy Kelly
Co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence
Posted: October 30, 2010 11:33 AM

Nur Agha Akbari and his family live in Kabul, on an unpaved, pitted street lined by mud brick homes. When we visited him this week, his oldest son, age 13, led us to a sitting room inside their rented two-story apartment, furnished with simple mats and pillows. The youngster smiled shyly as he served us tea. Then his father entered the room.

Mr. Akbari is a robust, energetic, well educated man from a respected, academic Afghan family. In the late 1970s, Nur had gone to study agriculture in the UK and remained there, becoming an organic farmer. His four brothers had instead remained in Afghanistan, or else returned there after studies abroad. His two eldest brothers had trained in the Soviet Union -- one as an engineer, one as a nuclear scientist -- and had received early warning of the likelihood of what came to be the 1979 Soviet invasion. They spoke out publicly about their fears as the invasion grew more and more imminent.

~snip~

Our delegation has heard a lot about rising and pervasive corruption over the past two weeks traveling in Afghanistan. Following the election of Mr. Karzai, people we've spoken with were stung by the congratulatory calls from heads of state around the world, including that of President Obama. Already outraged over what they (and international observers) consider an extremely fraudulent election, they feel bewildered by other world governments' legitimization of corruption in their capital. By supporting the current government, the U.S. exacerbates the life-choking corruption here. Afghan Member of Parliament, Ramazan Bashar Dost, urged us to ask the U.S. government to realize this, and desist. A young woman running her own company in Kandahar province spoke to us with contempt about corrupt officials. And others -- an Afghan human rights lawyer, the co-founder of a large media company, three fellows working for a smaller news agency, along with almost every Bamiyan villager we met during a week there -- all spoke of how the corruption had negatively, in cases disastrously, impacted their efforts to make a living and contribute toward their country's resurrection from its current, dreadful state.

One of the most egregious examples has been set by the United States. According to a McClatchy report released on October 27, 2010, the U.S. government knows it has awarded nearly $18 billion in contracts for rebuilding Afghanistan over the past three years, but it can't account for any of the billions spent before 2007. What's more, a crucial agency of government investigators and auditors -- those responsible for the SIGAR, the "Special Inspector General in Afghanistan Report," on waste, fraud, and abuse of American taxpayer dollars -- has now received a failing grade in a new government investigation of corruption in their own activities.

Nur wonders where all the money has gone. "If we spent one quarter of one quarter of one quarter of the billions that they've spent, we could fund this process of community development," he assures us. "Billions have been spent and we have nothing for it. If we had followed a process marked by transparency, fairness and involvement of local communities, we could have turned this country around in five years."