Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has vowed to remove the “stigma” of corruption, a day after winning a new five-year term. In his first remarks since being declared winner of August’s fraud-marred poll, he also pledged to lead an inclusive government. President Barack Obama has asked Karzai to intensify efforts to eradicate corruption, but are the two leaders on the same page? The World’s Matthew Bell reports. Download MP3

• BBC coverage
• Profile: Hamid Karzai

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World. Hamid Karzai is about to begin another five-year term as president of Afghanistan. And today Karzai responded to calls for his government to do more about corruption. In a moment an Afghan lawmaker tells what the president’s first steps should be and who might well stand in his way. But first The World’s Matthew Bell reports on just how big a problem corruption has become for Afghans and for Washington.

MATTHEW BELL: President Karzai today described corruption as a stain on Afghanistan. He vowed to launch an anti-corruption campaign but he gave few specifics about what that means.

HAMID KARZAI: We are aware of the difficulties of our governance and the environment in which we live. We’ll keep trying our best to address the questions that we have facing Afghanistan and to make sure that the wishes of Afghan people come true towards an effective, clean government.

BELL: The truth of the matter is that Karzai’s government is far from effective or clean. In fact doing almost any official business in Afghanistan means dealing with corruption.

SARAH CHAYES: Getting a death certificate. A friend of mine whose father was actually blown up in a suicide bombing and he had to pay bribes in order to get an official death certificate.

BELL: Sarah Chayes is an American advisor to the NATO command in Afghanistan. She’s lived in Kandahar for most of the last eight years. Chayes says Afghan corruption is an entrenched system that runs up to the highest level of government.

CHAYES: It’s organized so that what we might call petty corruption on the kind of street level like the police officers who stop your vehicle and just ask for a couple of dollars. That, it’s systematized because they will pay some of that up the chain and it keeps up going up the chain until you get to the point where you know you get to the chief of police of a province and he’s actually purchased his position. So he owes a certain amount of money every month or every six months or something like that up the chain.

BELL: Chayes says people in Kandahar feel stuck. They’re threatened by the Taliban on one hand and they’re victims of government corruption on the other.

CHAYES: There’s almost no punishment for this because that’s part of the deal. The summit of the government provides protection. And it will only punish those people who actually go against the system – kind of go against the criminal enterprise. It’s really … . How to put it. It’s kind intolerable to live under because it’s just everywhere you turn and there’s no recourse against it. That’s the real problem.

BELL: To make matters worse Afghan officials are notoriously ineffective even once the bribes have been paid. South Asia expert Daniel Markey of the Council on Foreign Relations says it would be one thing if the government were corrupt but competent.

DANIEL MARKEY: Then it wouldn’t be so bad. The problem is that you have this combination of corruption and lack of capacity or lack of delivery and that’s what’s really getting people angry and alienated from their government. It’s that two-fold combination that really hollows out the legitimacy of the current Afghan state.

BELL: Markey says the Obama Administration has started to play hardball on the issue of corruption. But he says that approach toward Hamid Karzai hasn’t worked very well.

MARKEY: What that tough line has often done is pushed him away; made him feel uncomfortable, alienated, and thrown him into the arms or the laps of a variety of really unsavory characters who he feels he needs to help him get his job done in Afghanistan. And so I see a two-fold problem. He’s not a particularly strong character in the presidency and the United States’ leverage, at least its coercive leverage, has often backfired.

BELL: The administration is reported to be working on a new anti-corruption compact for the Afghan government. It would include measures such as arresting or at least cutting off some corrupt officials and local strongmen. One of them is thought to be Karzai’s brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, who’s suspected of being involved in the drug trade. James Dobbins is a former US special envoy for Afghanistan. He says when trying to assist in ridding Afghanistan of its insurgency it’s important to keep a little history in mind.

JAMES DOBBINS: All of the countries that the United States has supported in similar circumstances since say 1950 have been to one degree or another corrupt and incompetent. If they weren’t corrupt and incompetent they wouldn’t have insurgencies to start with.

BELL: Dobbins says it’s also key to maintain realistic expectations for Afghanistan. It’s no Switzerland he says. In other words Afghanistan probably won’t be a model of clean, efficient government by western standards any time soon. For The World I’m Matthew Bell.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

See also

• November 3, 2009 -- Interview with Afghan parliamentarian
• December 14, 2009 -- Fighting the Afghan insurgency
• December 8, 2009 -- General McChrystal in Afghanistan hearing
• December 3, 2009 -- President Obama’s Afghanistan plan