When you mention Afghanistan and Kabul in the last few years everybody thinks only about two things: the war and the Talibans. Every day we read about new victims, explosions and attacks of suicide killers…No one would ever imagine that in these kind of circumstances someone could think about other things – like anticorruption fight.
When I told my family that I was one of only three foreigners elected to participate in the work of a panel that was designated to oversee the anticorruption activity of the government and foreign organizations in Afghanistan, everybody thought I was joking.
Of course there was fear, and I must admit that even I wasn’t feeling so good. The trip to uncertainty is always the most difficult one.
The arrival to the airport of the capital of Afghanistan is a little bit of a paradox: the passengers are welcomed with a huge sign “Welcome to the land of the brave”. Though, it isn’t far from the truth because the war in this country has been going on for three decades, more precisely since the beginning of the Russian occupation in 1979, which was succeeded by the civil war in 1991 and the war with the Talibans after the American and NATO invasion in 2001.
Three decades of war, the death of tens of thousands of innocent people and an unseen decline of the standard of living can honestly be survived only by the bravest.
The trip from the airport in an armored car tell the passenger right away that there is no kidding around – even in all the war movies I saw (and that is not a small number) I haven’t seen that amount of bunkers, antipersonnel and antitank hurdles, barb wires and machine guns. A specific method of war, the attacks of vehicles full of explosives, needs a specific way of defense.
The is no street, square or intersection that are not covered by at least two machine guns that , in case of an attack, should stop the suicide killer. I say “should”, because the way of dressing of men in Afghanistan, and especially women, allows one to wear even tens of kilos of explosives without someone even noticing it.
Lately, things have gotten worse because the indigenous have started using children age 8 to 12, telling them stories that the detonations will only kill the nonbelievers, and that they won’t get hurt…And being at gunpoint all the time, if nothing else, means a big possibility that at some point one of those many marksmen will accidentally pull the trigger. And you can complaint as much as you want after that…
Besides all the other equipment, I also took a helmet, a bullet-proof vest, all in UN colors and of a pretty good quality, but again unable to stop a high caliber bullet that most of the machine guns in the city use. We were forbidden to go on individual trips to the city, we had daily inspections and they gave us a radio, just like in the old Yugoslavian army.
I felt the same, except that during a couple of official walks through the town I regretted, for the first time after the end of my career in the police, that because of the strict UN policy I didn’t get a personal firearm to defend myself from the criminals. It turned out that Kabul, in comparison to other towns, was peaceful when it comes to military actions, and that the biggest threat were the criminal gangs which try to get a life premium in a form of the ransom by kidnapping mainly of foreigners.
A first few days it was difficult to concentrate on our task – the anticorruption fight. We gathered evidence, asked for reports, talked to the most influential people and slowly realized that it will be the most difficult task of our careers.
Personally, I have never seen a country with so much corruption problems. It is a miracle that president Karzai still has authority and even makes well thought out moves in order to secure a lasting peace and prosperity of the country.
Economically, it could be one of the richest countries in the world because it literary lays on the biggest amounts of uranium, lithium, cobalt, diamonds, copper and oil…There is everything and it is waiting for the beginning of the excavation.
In our talks I, of course, couldn’t and didn’t want to avoid the question if there is a connection between the amount of the foreign troops present in Afghanistan and its mineral resources. The answer I got was “ we will see”.
Everyone is mostly afraid of the return of the Talibans because no one wants to relive what they did when they were in power till 2001. Men weren’t allowed to shave their beards, women weren’t allowed to leave the house, and they threw out all the television sets…The biggest problem could be the realistic danger that after the foreign troops leave everything could go on a trip with no return.
They will have to find a way to make all the Afgan poppy breeders start growing other cultures or to sell the poppy to legal traders. It is a paradox that Afghanistan could with its production could fill the world’s supplies of morphine based medicines, but the competition from the other countries that produce poppy doesn’t allow it.
The situation in the country is an unstable and explosive combination of all the imaginable threats and her absolute collapse can be avoided by a simultaneous maximum determination and sensibility. A few days in Kabul passed quickly, and now I need to sort out my impressions and prepare for the next mission in July.
And that is how it will be every three months. It will truly be a crazy and unforgettable experience.
No matter how much the trip to the airport is interesting, it still can’t compare with the procedures the passengers go through when boarding the plane. And I don’t mean the reasonable safety measures, like checking that could easily serve as an excellent training for the nerve stability of oxen let alone people.
People with weak nerves should never go to Kabul: even if they survive the Talibans, thieves, petty thefts in restaurants, the heat and the dust, for them the end of the road will be the queue for the checking at the end of the trip, when leaving Kabul. They will most certainly not survive the hustle, the yelling, line hoping and swearing in the languages of the world…
Autor of this text Drago Kos is a former police inspector, and until recently the president of the Slovenian Committee for the prevention of corruption, ex UEFA referee ( he was the referee for the 2006 game between SCG and Uruguay 1:1) and the president of GRECO, the Council of Europe body for the fight against corruption.