Read Online Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security by Sarah Chayes - Free Book Online
Book: Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security by Sarah Chayes
Read Free Book Online
Authors: Sarah Chayes
Ads: Link
rung. It was Atmar’s deputy. “Get off the flight,” he had ordered. Angar’s appointment had been suspended. He should stand by for further instructions.
For the next three months, I worked that aborted appointment. ISAF intelligence chief Flynn told me he raised the issue with Atmar. The three-star operational commander confronted the chief of the Afghan Border Police. In January 2010 Angar’s appointment was on General McChrystal’s list of talking points for a meeting with President Karzai. But nothing moved. Angar remained in limbo.
Nor was this the only interference that plagued the Sayfullah case. A search warrant had been signed out for Sayfullah’s office. Who knew what would be revealed about the doings of the border police? But at the last minute, the interior ministry called the search operation off, Foster, the MCTF, and ISAF reluctantly acquiescing.
Atmar, the story went, had consulted President Karzai about the advisability of this search; Karzai had called Ahmed Wali in Kandahar to get his view. And Ahmed Wali had warned of potential “tribal unrest,” should the warrant be executed. Karzai had told Atmar to call off the search. With the safety of officers potentially at stake, international officials had opted not to fight the cancellation order.
I closed my eyes to quiet the boiling in my ears as I listened to this fairy tale. There was no threat of tribal unrest. Sayfullah had no tribal allies in Kandahar; he wasn’t even from Kandahar. And Karzai, a Kandahar native, didn’t need to make any calls to get the picture. The Afghan officials had shrewdly selected a pretext they knew would strike a chord with their untutored international counterparts.
The Sayfullah case, in other words, had proved to be a more instructive test than I had imagined. It had stressed the system, all right. And the system had responded with a lightning sequence of calibrated blocking maneuvers.
The question was, why deploy all that skill and effort on behalf of a mere Sayfullah? Why would Interior Minister Hanif Atmar, a man who basked in considerable international credibility, risk his luster by throwing himself across the tracks for some two-bit border police boffo like Sayfullah? Why not sacrifice a Sayfullah and retrench around people who mattered? It did not add up.
CHAPTER FIVE
Vertically Integrated Criminal Syndicates
Kabul, Garmisch, 2009–2010
“S arah, do you have a minute?” It was Colonel Chris Kolenda aiming toward me on a gravel path that simmered in the reflected heat from the prefab metal buildings around it. A former reconstruction team commander tangentially interested in corruption, Kolenda was one of McChrystal’s phalanx of colonels. “I want to show you something we’ve been working on.” I followed him up to his office, on the second floor of one of the steel boxes that posed as work space. Three factory-fresh black desks on spindly metal legs and some tables shoved together in the middle of the room did not yet convey an inhabited feel.
Kolenda clumped over to a whiteboard in a corner. He sketched a rough triangle in black marker, a circle at the top. “So here’s how traditional Afghan government used to work,” he launched. “Patronage flowed downward.” He drew an arrow pointing down from the circle.
“Wait a second, wait a second,” I cut in, already irritated. This was romantic bunk, constantly regurgitated by Westerners discussing Afghanistan. It discounted the sophistication achieved by the 1960s and 1970s. The country was a constitutional monarchy then—a national assembly and local elders gathered in traditional structures affording a further check on executive power. Citizens expected a decent education from their government, health care, even employment in state-owned industries. Afghanistan had been a favored tourist destination and theenvy of its neighbors. The Afghan government had not been a patronage system.
“Stop,” Kolenda interrupted in turn. “Let
For the next three months, I worked that aborted appointment. ISAF intelligence chief Flynn told me he raised the issue with Atmar. The three-star operational commander confronted the chief of the Afghan Border Police. In January 2010 Angar’s appointment was on General McChrystal’s list of talking points for a meeting with President Karzai. But nothing moved. Angar remained in limbo.
Nor was this the only interference that plagued the Sayfullah case. A search warrant had been signed out for Sayfullah’s office. Who knew what would be revealed about the doings of the border police? But at the last minute, the interior ministry called the search operation off, Foster, the MCTF, and ISAF reluctantly acquiescing.
Atmar, the story went, had consulted President Karzai about the advisability of this search; Karzai had called Ahmed Wali in Kandahar to get his view. And Ahmed Wali had warned of potential “tribal unrest,” should the warrant be executed. Karzai had told Atmar to call off the search. With the safety of officers potentially at stake, international officials had opted not to fight the cancellation order.
I closed my eyes to quiet the boiling in my ears as I listened to this fairy tale. There was no threat of tribal unrest. Sayfullah had no tribal allies in Kandahar; he wasn’t even from Kandahar. And Karzai, a Kandahar native, didn’t need to make any calls to get the picture. The Afghan officials had shrewdly selected a pretext they knew would strike a chord with their untutored international counterparts.
The Sayfullah case, in other words, had proved to be a more instructive test than I had imagined. It had stressed the system, all right. And the system had responded with a lightning sequence of calibrated blocking maneuvers.
The question was, why deploy all that skill and effort on behalf of a mere Sayfullah? Why would Interior Minister Hanif Atmar, a man who basked in considerable international credibility, risk his luster by throwing himself across the tracks for some two-bit border police boffo like Sayfullah? Why not sacrifice a Sayfullah and retrench around people who mattered? It did not add up.
CHAPTER FIVE
Vertically Integrated Criminal Syndicates
Kabul, Garmisch, 2009–2010
“S arah, do you have a minute?” It was Colonel Chris Kolenda aiming toward me on a gravel path that simmered in the reflected heat from the prefab metal buildings around it. A former reconstruction team commander tangentially interested in corruption, Kolenda was one of McChrystal’s phalanx of colonels. “I want to show you something we’ve been working on.” I followed him up to his office, on the second floor of one of the steel boxes that posed as work space. Three factory-fresh black desks on spindly metal legs and some tables shoved together in the middle of the room did not yet convey an inhabited feel.
Kolenda clumped over to a whiteboard in a corner. He sketched a rough triangle in black marker, a circle at the top. “So here’s how traditional Afghan government used to work,” he launched. “Patronage flowed downward.” He drew an arrow pointing down from the circle.
“Wait a second, wait a second,” I cut in, already irritated. This was romantic bunk, constantly regurgitated by Westerners discussing Afghanistan. It discounted the sophistication achieved by the 1960s and 1970s. The country was a constitutional monarchy then—a national assembly and local elders gathered in traditional structures affording a further check on executive power. Citizens expected a decent education from their government, health care, even employment in state-owned industries. Afghanistan had been a favored tourist destination and theenvy of its neighbors. The Afghan government had not been a patronage system.
“Stop,” Kolenda interrupted in turn. “Let
Similar Books
