Kabul: Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who is under pressure from the international community to do more to battle corruption, has issued an ambitious list of government reforms that orders his ministries, prosecutors and judiciary to fight bribery, nepotism and cronyism.
Karzai’s 23-page decree also instructs officials to clear the attorney general’s office and the courts of languishing corruption-related cases and do more than talk about bringing crooked figures to justice.
Donor nations have long expressed concern about corruption within the Afghan government and $16 billion (Dh58.77 billion) in aid pledged this month at a Tokyo conference is tied to a new monitoring process to assure that the money is not diverted by corrupt officials or mismanaged. Karzai has blamed international contracting procedures for some of the problem.
In the decree, Karzai also repeated his request that high-ranking government officials or their relatives do not get rebuilding contracts. He also demanded that ministries and other governmental departments write up a flurry of progress reports on a myriad of issues — including efforts to resolve traffic problems in the dusty, congested Afghan capital, Kabul.
Government cleansing
The decree, issued late yesterday, is similar to an executive order, but is ambiguous about what happens to those who don’t comply. It also does not spell out who will pay for the government cleansing that Karzai proposed.
Political analyst Jawid Kohistani said he did not think the decree would stave off corruption in the government.
“Karzai is acting late on corruption,” he said today. “We have anti-corruption laws, but it is very difficult to remove corruption. It is hard to just remove corruption by a decree. He should start to remove corruption from inside the palace.
“I’m not confident that this decree will bring good results because those people who are involved in corruption are high-ranking officials in the government. They have control of the economy and they also are grabbing the land. The low-ranking employees of the government — they are only getting small bribes.”
