Kabul regime: From promises to practice

By: Muhammad Jalal

Nineteen years ago, the US and its allies made the historical mistake of invading Afghanistan. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed, injured and displaced. If only from day one the solutions were sought through talks it would have saved all these losses which occurred. The then government of Afghanistan (The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan) offered talks from all stages, but the opposing side only chose the path of war and aggression.

In fact, the invaders were assured for strong support and friendship by some selfish and local xenophiles. It was not the first time in our history that circles of Afghans were in the service of foreign invaders and encouraging foreigners to kill our own people. The situation has been the same after 2001. Today, as significant progress has been made in the peace process, these circles are afraid that if the foreigners leave, they will not be able to face accountability, as they have shuttered their own people with the support of foreigners in the last nineteen years.

Foreigners have been always told by their local puppets that “help us for a short time until we can stand on our feet and then your interests will be better protected.” But that time has never come for them to stand on their feet. Because neither Afghans consider these foreigners as their own nor these foreigners consider Afghans as their own.

Apparently, three issues in the governance of Afghanistan are important for the international community.

Those three issues are security, fighting corruption and countering narcotics.

Puppets of the foreigners in Kabul had given false assurances to the international community that they will carry out the above important missions, and the international community also believed it. Since 2001, there has been flood of foreign aid for Kabul administration in various pretexts. We always hear anti-corruption promises. Not only the graph of corruption hasn’t dropped, it has risen day by day, and year after year to a shameful level.

Under the Taliban when Afghanistan was already destroyed by the civil war in Kabul, and the economy severely shaken, but despite all this, drug cultivation and trafficking had reached zero. There was no such thing called corruption. Kabul was experiencing an ideal period of peace and stability. Today, despite all resources, crime in Kabul are at its peak. For Kabul residents the ideal situation is the security and stability of the Taliban era. Despite fighting in three northern provinces, Kabul was exceptionally safe.

But with foreign invasion and the rule of their Afghan puppets, security deteriorated, narcotics continued to grow, and corruption in Afghanistan rose to second and third place in the world. This is not an unreasonable claim. But we have heard it repeatedly from Americans who would shake heads with regret. If you look at the media, every day there must be a report of theft and corruption involving a Kabul regime official.

A recent SIGAR report found that the Kabul administration had embezzled 19 billion dollars over the past 19 years under these Kabul regime officials, Afghanistan’s status has been eroded. Those outsiders who do not have accurate information about Afghanistan and the Kabul regime, may think that all Afghans are involved in such thefts.

In terms of security, up to 100,000 security forces have been killed in Ashraf Ghani’s six years alone. Ashraf Ghani is responsible for the deaths of the young men who are deceived and sent to the front lines. Young people who have been deceived on the battlefield come only on the basis of financial compulsions, otherwise their morale and will to fight is zero.

No village is spared from narcotics now. More than three million people in an estimated 30 million population are addicted to drugs. This is despite the fact that millions of dollars have been laundered in recent years under the pretext of counter-narcotics and treatment of addicts.

In short, this is the outcome of the so called state-building in Afghanistan for which invasion of Afghanistan occurred and it killed thousands of people. Now compare it with the era of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and judge which people and what era was better? Everyone will find out by themselves.

The world now know the Kabul ruling elites very well and has reached a point where (according to them) they have never seen such high level of thefts before. These nineteen years of repeated anti-corruption commitments and more widespread corruption and theft than in the past! During Ashraf Ghani’s administration, however, theft and corruption became more systematic. Each of Ghani’s ministers, after taking over the ministry, has taken all the assets of the administration with them to his country of their residence. Examples are widespread.

The robberies in last so called election and the aid money for Corona Virus have once again revealed their true colors.

Today Kabul’s ruling elites are already gnashing their teeth and shouting anti-corruption slogans and intensifying deceptive clarification. They are seeking to deceive the international donors once again, as they did in the past, and to rob the poor people of Afghanistan.

Despite all these obvious thefts and deceptions, if someone still believes in such people and calls them the representatives of Afghanistan, it would be the biggest mistake.

We have never in our history experienced such a system of theft and robbery. Never before in our history have there been such corrupted “rulers”. These people are not from Afghanistan, they are not committed to Afghanistan and they do not have a sense of ownership of this country. We see that many officials return to the countries for which they already have citizenship.