Herat

So here is the uncensored report on Herat. It's relatively peaceful out there. The local guys told me that the Iranians keep things peaceful to protect their economic interests. So they have few IED's around town. And the ones they have are radio-controlled so they don't accidentally hit the local population. An IED hit a group of people earlier in the morning that I was out driving around. When I got to my meeting the Italian that got hit was in there meeting with the afghan (because he was late to his meeting). He said it wasn't a big deal. It was small and didn't hurt anyway.

Camp Stone is our American FOB out there. The Italians own the battlespace so the Americans have a relatively small presence. Almost all the Americans I met said the Italians don't do anything. They don't have any money and mostly stay on their base. I don't know how true that is, maybe it's only perception. However the perception in Kabul is pretty much the same regarding the foreign forces, except the brits. When I was at the airport the other day someone was making fun of the Germans there who are under strict orders to not do anything that would reach the German median back home (because they are afraid the publicity would trigger a pullout).

Anyway, the Americans say the afghans, both the police and the army, are openly criminal and corrupt. In Kabul we are used to dealing with the leadership being corrupt, but they said everyone is corrupt around Herat. The examples they gave revolve around all the afghans working on the base. We have lots of construction projects on base and they hire the locals to do almost everything from laying cement to constructing buildings. They said if the afghans workers have any money on them when they leave the base (for example from getting paid) the police/army will take a percentage (usually ~10%) as soon as they leave the base. Also, they said if the Americans give the workers anything, such as left-over supplies, the police/army just steal it and keep it for themselves. They had many stories like that. The perception from the Americans I spoke is that the ANA and ANP are equally corrupt.

I wouldn't be surprised if that kind of things happens all over the country based on the reports I read. The afghans accept much of it because that's the way things have been here for as long as anyone can remember. But one of the things the Taliban offer is a less corrupt system. That's a mechanism they use to win the support of the local population. I can't say that I'm particularly proud to help prop up a government that allows such open corruption. However, the police in Kabul aren't as openly corrupt like that. And I'm comfortable that the police that I work with in CID are good people in general. Hopefully it is a problem mostly with the average uniformed police.

It just goes to show how difficult this 'country-building' effort really is. We are pouring hundreds of billions of U.S. tax dollars into a country where the corruption starts at the president and extends all the way down the the beat cop on the street stealing form poor farmers. The U.S. military is essentially propping up a Tajik government in a country that is mostly Pashtun. I'm not privy to enough afghan politics to know if the efforts to better integrate the pashtuns into the government are succeeding. I can say that I'm not seeing it personally, which makes me nervous that when we pull out chaos might ensue.