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December 14, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Billings Gazette: It appears that millions of dollars paid by international forces to rent a piece of land in Logar province for use as an airstrip went to six well-connected individuals, and possibly the Taliban, rather than the land’s rightful owner, the Afghan government. That so much money could easily go astray should come as no surprise, given that corruption is rife from the highest to lowest levels of government. Full news...
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December 5, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: An international anti-graft watchdog on Wednesday ranked Afghanistan, North Korea and Somalia as world’s top most corrupt countries in the world. The Berlin-based Transparency International in its 2012 Corruption Perceptions Index report, covering 174 countries, revealed that Afghanistan scored eight marks out of 100 -- similar to North Korea and Somalia. Full news...
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November 28, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The New York Times: Persistent political interference has hampered efforts to unravel the colossal fraud at Kabul Bank, with President Hamid Karzai and a small panel of his top aides actually dictating to prosecutors who should be charged and who should not, according to Afghan and Western officials and the results of a public inquiry into the scandal. Full news...
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November 26, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Three warlords accused of grabbing and selling state-owned land by using fake documents in the Paghman district of Kabul have fled the country to evade arrests, an official said on Monday. More than 50 acres of land, allocated for the Qargha Park, was occupied before being sold, Deputy Attorney General Noor Habib Jalal told a news conference in Kabul. Full news...
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November 18, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Los Angeles Times: The bank robbers were men who were often seen around town in uniform – police uniforms. They were, in fact, police. Three Afghan National Police officers fled a bank in Afghanistan’s Nuristan province after breaking in after hours and stealing more than 29 million Afghanis (about USD 550,000) late Friday night, according to Gen. Ghulamullah Nuristani, the provincial police chief. Full news...
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November 14, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IWPR: Uruzgan province in central Afghanistan is fast becoming a major source of opium, and local informal powerbrokers are making millions of dollars from the trade. The authorities appear powerless to act against major figures in the trade, who have occupied large swathes of land that in theory belongs to the state and are reaping huge rewards from the poppy trade, backed by small private armies. Full news...
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November 14, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The National: Passengers flying out of Kabul carried with them more than USD 4.5 billion (Dh16.52bn) in cash last year, leading to new rules restricting the amount of foreign currency that travellers can take out of the country to 20,000 USD at a time. “I am very concerned about cash leaving Kabul Airport in dollars,” said the central bank governor Noorullah Delawari. Full news...
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November 13, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Guardian: Senior Afghan officials are said to have discovered large-scale theft of fuel in Helmand and halted all deliveries to police in the province, compromising the ability of the force to operate in one of the Taliban’s major strongholds. The cost of stolen or “misallocated” fuel in the province is thought to run into hundreds of millions of dollars. One official estimated its worth at 600m USD (380m GBP)... Full news...
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November 9, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
TOLOnews.com: The Jihadi Council led by Afghanistan’s Energy and Water Minister Mohammad Ismail Khan has started distributing weapons to its members in western Herat province, the provincial spokesman Mahiuddin Noori said Wednesday. Noori warned that armed groups apart from the Afghan security forces are against the law and the distribution of weapons is a criminal offence. Full news...
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November 8, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Washington Post: When it comes to corruption in Afghanistan, the time may be now for the United States to look in the mirror and see what lessons can be learned from contracting out parts of that war. On Sept. 30, Afghan President Hamid Karzai told CBS’s “60 Minutes” that the corruption wracking his government and its people has been at a level “not ever before seen in Afghanistan.” Full news...
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November 6, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
RFE/RL: Saudi Arabia’s support for Afghanistan has been steady but inconspicuous over the years. But that is about to change. The powerful Sunni-majority kingdom is embarking on a very public effort to carve out a bigger role in Afghanistan, pitting the oil-rich Gulf state directly against Shi’ite rival Iran in the race for influence as foreign forces leave. Full news...
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November 5, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Wall Street Journal: One of Afghanistan’s top power brokers has been freeing suspected insurgents, running an open extortion scheme and traveling with suitcases of undeclared cash earned from criminal activity, according to internal U.S. documents. A few years ago, the U.S. military described Gov. Gul Agha Shirzai as the best hope for securing Nangarhar province, a critical gateway to Pakistan. Full news...
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October 28, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Wall Street Journal: Iran is funding aid projects and expanding intelligence networks across Afghanistan, moving to fill the void to be left by the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, according to U.S. and Afghan officials. While Iran’s spending here is nowhere near the billions the U.S. spends, Tehran’s ability to run grass-roots programs and work directly with Afghans is giving its efforts disproportionate clout... Full news...
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October 19, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
CNN: The amateur video shows men, shirtless and seeming dangerously drunk, rolling on the ground or staggering near a counter top covered with booze bottles. Another part of the video shows a man babbling incoherently with a syringe nearby. This is not a scene at a college frat house. It is a video of employees of an American security contractor working in Kabul, Afghanistan. Full news...
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October 13, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: An anti-corruption official in the northern zone on Saturday alleged the menace of administrative graft was widespread in Balkh province. In an exclusive interview with Pajhwok Afghan News, the High Office of Oversight and Anti-Corruption (HOOAC) head for the northern zone identified land-grab incidents as one of the worst manifestations of graft. Full news...
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September 29, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IWPR: The mayor of Mazar-e Sharif was outlining how the Afghan authorities were tackling corruption, when an elderly man stopped him in his tracks. “If you want to fight corruption, the greatest corruption exists in your own administration, the municipality,” said the man, Nek Baba. “You should reform yourself first.” Full news...
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September 27, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: A lawmaker and tribal elders on Thursday claimed Pakistani army had threatened residents in various villages of the Goshta district in eastern Nangarhar province to vacate their homes and move elsewhere. The claim was echoed during a huge gathering of Momand tribesmen in the district. Wolesi Jirga member Faridon Momand told the gathering that Pakistani army officials had warned residents of Mamakhel, Khugyani and Dawarkhel villages to leave the area. Full news...
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September 25, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IWPR: Local officials in Afghanistan’s Laghman province are taking tens of thousands of US dollars a month in fees and taxes from drivers using the Kabul-Jalalabad highway, and the way the money is collected indicates that it is being pocketed. An investigation by IWPR contributors over a three-month period reveals that various forms of irregular fees are being imposed on the road. Full news...
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September 22, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
TOLOnews.com: The police commander of western Badghis province Abdul Jabar Salah was accused in the Afghan parliament session on Saturday of raping three policewomen under his command. Badghis MP Mohammad Musa Janab made the accussation in parliament, saying that President Hamid Karzai had been informed. Full news...
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September 11, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Daily Times: “Afghanistan will remain a fragile, unstable and corrupt state long after British troops have departed,” former British ambassador to Afghanistan (2010-2012) Sir William Patey told BBC on September 1, 2012. In August 2012, the nomination of war criminals and corrupt officials for key posts in Afghanistan enraged the whole population. Full news...
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September 10, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: Investigators are probing reports of record-shredding by officials in the U.S.-led NATO command that trains the Afghan army after learning that records of fuel purchases for the Afghans totaling nearly 475 million USD are gone. The training command has also not been tracking whether the fuel it delivers to the Afghan army is actually used or stored... Full news...
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September 6, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
TOLOnews.com: High ranking government officials and personnel at President Hamid Karzai’s office are receiving substantial “incentive payments” of up to 7000 USD a month, a TOLOnews investigation can reveal. The investigation has documents showing that 11 million Afghanis (USD 220,000) was spent in two months for 80 employees at the Presidential Palace. Full news...
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September 3, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Stars and Stripes: The words returned to Lt. Col. Daniel Mouton months later, freighted with a new and troubling connotation. “Good people come to Muqur, but good people don’t leave,” Afghan Col. Mohammad Wasil told him this past spring, during one of their earliest conversations. “It is impossible to stay clean in Muqur.” Full news...
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September 2, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The New York Times: On the bed of this village’s only pickup truck, three bullet-riddled bodies were laid out on Sunday, hastily wrapped in sheets. Behind the truck, several cars, their hatchbacks propped open as they bounced down the dirt roads, carried one or two bodies each. All 15 of the village’s vehicles, most of them shabby and old, joined the grim convoy, stuffed with 200 distraught relatives and 11 of their dead. Full news...
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August 31, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
McClatchy Newspapers: An Afghan Cabinet minister dogged by torture allegations is slated to become the new chief of Afghanistan’s notorious intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security. The appointment of Asadullah Khalid, the minister of border and tribal affairs, will be announced within days by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, said a man who knows Khalid. Full news...
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August 15, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
RFE/RL: Provincial officials in northern Afghanistan have asked the central government in Kabul to decide whether a street in Mazar-e Sharif should be named after a group of Iranian diplomats killed there in 1998. The move, announced in a statement by the Administrative Council of Balkh Province, comes after a scandal erupted over reports that the street with Iran’s former... Full news...
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August 9, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IWPR: A decree by Afghan president Hamid Karzai ordering government to improve the quality of the country’s media has created fears that the government will try to censor the press and broadcasters. Karzai gave the information and culture ministry two months to come up with an action plan to impose “minimum quality standards” on both state-run and private media outlets. Full news...
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August 3, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
NBC News: Afghanistan seems as fragile as ever. There is a sense that with the U.S.-led NATO draw-down expected in 2014 the country could slip back into some of its darkest most socially-restrictive and violent days. Most Afghans you speak to in Kabul or outside of the capital fear that their country will once again be overrun by the Taliban or be engulfed by a civil war. Full news...
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August 1, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
TOLOnews.com: A recent TOLO News investigation revealed that more than USD 1 million USD was deposited into the bank accounts of Afghanistan’s Finance Minister, Hazarat Omar Zakhilwal, over the past five years. While some funds were deposited into Zakhilwal’s accounts at Standard Chartered Bank and Alfalah Bank in Kabul, most of the money was transferred to other bank accounts outside of Afghanistan. Full news...
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July 28, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: An independent media group on Friday accused the information ministry of seeking to censor its news report about a recent clash between the supporters of two lawmakers in Kabul. One person was injured and a health clinic damaged during the gunbattle in the Pul-i-Charkhi locality of the capital between the gunmen of lawmakers Mullah Tarakhel Mohammadi and Haji Allah Gul Mujahid on July 23. Full news...
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