Rampant corruption crippled Afghanistan. The international community did little to help.

For the past two decades, the U.S. and international community have engaged in a largely superficial approach to institution building in Afghanistan, particularly in the justice and security sectors. This included a failure to make combatting corruption and impunity a central and unyielding pillar of our efforts from the outset.

When I arrived in Bamyan province in April 2010 to serve as a justice adviser to the New Zealand Provincial Reconstruction Team (NZPRT), huge amounts of resources were being devoted to establishing “credible” justice institutions throughout Afghanistan. Unfortunately, little attention was paid to the impact of these efforts. Progress was often measured through superficial indicators, such as the number  of courtrooms built, the amount of equipment provided and the number of trainings conducted. 

The term “burn rate,” referring to how quickly funds were being spent, was often cited as a key indicator of progress. 

Rampant corruption excluded justice

It soon became clear that rampant corruption among judges and prosecutors constituted a serious threat to the effectiveness and credibility of justice institutions. Through close monitoring of individual cases, primarily women’s rights cases, we were able to identify how judges and prosecutors, many of whom had undergone continuing legal education training through State Department and other donor-funded programs, would invent laws or misinterpret existing ones to affect the outcome of cases. They would also prevent cases from being investigated or simply find someone guilty or innocent without any legal basis. 

Many of these corrupt activities constituted serious human rights violations. We saw cases where girls who had run away from abusive families were subjected to repeated “virginity examinations” to coerce them to return to their families. 

What was truly remarkable was how difficult it was to hold these individuals accountable. The reason for the delay was that despite our citing credible evidence of corruption and human rights abuses, having broad support of military and civilian personnel based at the NZPRT, as well as my supervisors and members of the Embassy Rule of Law Team, the military task force (based outside the province) that initiated the project insisted that it go forward based on counterinsurgency grounds. 

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In 2012, my colleagues at the U.S. Embassy arranged for a member of a Supreme Court investigation team to come to Bamyan to monitor a trial in which an innocent man was at risk of being convicted for raping and murdering a young girl. Credible evidence suggested that the crime had been committed by a provincial government official who had bribed the judge and whose brother, a member of parliament, had attempted to have the forensic exam of the victim altered.

When the investigator saw the judge, he immediately recognized him as someone he had removed 2 1/2 years earlier due to his corrupt activities in another province. The judge was, in fact, one of many who had been removed by the Supreme Court Investigation Team but due to interference from powerful Afghans, including MPs and members of the Supreme Court, reinstated. 

Just as it would be ridiculous for me to point to the time and resources spent training corrupt judges and prosecutors and conclude that we created a solid foundation for promoting justice, it would be equally ridiculous, if not unconscionable, for senior officials in the Trump and Biden administrations to claim that we established a solid security foundation for Afghanistan.

Esprit de corps, including cohesion and morale, among Afghan security forces in the field was significantly undermined by corruption. For years, front-line soldiers watched senior government officials, including officers in their chain of command, steal their food, fuel, equipment, salaries, disability payments, pensions, with impunity. Underequipped security personnel were sent to the front lines knowing that many senior officers bought their positions for the sole purpose of stealing resources, not fighting the Taliban. 

In some provinces, Afghan Local Police units were engaged almost exclusively in criminal activities. An ALP unit in Badakhshan province, for example, was created at the behest of an MP to facilitate illegal mineral extraction and by some credible accounts had entered a truce with Taliban members engaged in a similar endeavor. 

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Afghan security forces, unlike their international counterparts, also had to cope with the possibility that the Taliban would target their friends and family members. Despite all of this, they continued to fight, and 66,000 lost their lives doing so.

When the Trump administration facilitated the release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners and the Biden administration continued with the troop withdrawal, which effectively removed close air support needed to protect the military and deter large scale ground engagements, the Afghan security forces predictably gave up.  

There were numerous factors that led the United States and the international community to overlook the impact of corruption and its future consequences for the country.  Counterinsurgency constructs tended to value short-term stability gains, real or perceived, with little regard to long-term consequences. This included installing former warlords, many with extensive criminal networks, in key government positions, including the security services.

Corruption was also facilitated by a general unwillingness by the international community to risk harming relationships with senior Afghan officials. For example, I was once asked by a senior U.N. official to soften a short assessment I had written criticizing a report in which the Afghan government had grossly misrepresented its compliance with treaty obligations under the U.N. Convention Against Corruption. Many of my colleagues had similar experiences over the years. 

Failure to fix Afghanistan corruption

All of this led to programs and activities that relied far too much on presumed levels of institutional integrity/functionality or good faith of key actors that did not, in fact, exist. Justice efforts tended to focus on training, coordination mechanisms, cases management systems, etc., with little attention to the actual outcome of cases. Security sector efforts continued to be focused on equipping and training personnel, often ignoring numerous red flags that would have indicated the true capacity/capability of Afghan security forces and intelligence services.

Human rights and humanitarian efforts were also affected by this. The U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan’s mandated protection of civilians, while providing comprehensive information on casualty numbers and causes, did little, if anything, to prevent them. The failure of the human rights and humanitarian community to have more meaningful impact, despite the international military’s own evidence-based research demonstrating how civilian casualties undermine counterinsurgency efforts and their willingness at times to adopt rules of engagement that exceed international humanitarian law standards, was a lost opportunity to raise civilian casualty mitigation standards globally.

At the end of the day, the failure to address corruption and engage in more meaningful institutional building efforts in Afghanistan is a reflection of the international community’s true capacity or willingness to promote peace and security in the modern world. At minimum, the leaders of our national governments and international organizations should reflect on the role that institutionalized arrogance, insularity, risk aversion and disengagement from ground realities has played in the  horrific events that have unfolded over the past month  and what our true commitment to promoting democratic values, including human rights, truly is. 

Sunil Fraser Srivastava lived and worked in Afghanistan for 10 years in Bamyan, Wardak, Logar, Kunduz, Badakhshan and Kabul provinces. His postings included U.S. Senior Civilian Representative to Bamyan and Wardak provinces, Senior Policy Adviser to the Independent Joint Anti-Corruption Monitoring and Evaluation Committee, and Human Rights Team Lead for the United Nations Assistance Mission’s Northeast and Central Region offices. He holds a B.A. from Brandeis University, a M.I.A. from the Columbia University School for International and Public Affairs, and a J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center.​​​​​​​