Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security by Sarah Chayes Read Free Book Online Page A

headquarters, where senior officials could take it up with President Karzai or launch law enforcement action.
    Eventually these suggestions were drafted into the official military language of a FRAGO—a fragmentary operations order, spelling out what units were commanded to do in the field. After some fancy footwork by the oversized Boering, who proved remarkably nimble in dealing with military bureaucracy, the order was issued.
    We illustrated the dry phraseology with a diagram based on an early ballpoint sketch by the command’s affable legal adviser, Rich Gross. “Soft COAs” were courses of action that could be implemented directly by subordinate commanders. “BN” stands for battalion, “TF” for a brigade-level task force, and “RC” for the five regional commands. At higher echelons, serious cases should be referred to the High Office of Oversight, for prosecution by the Anti-Corruption Unit in the attorney general’s office, or the ministry of interior.

    Many officers objected that the effort amounted to launching a two-front war. Not only were they engaged in a bloody standoff with the Taliban, they complained, now we were asking them to fight our allies in the Afghan government too. It would multiply the risks to their men.
    As we cataloged those risks at the time, we did not dwell on the probable countermoves by Afghan officials. What worried us most was ourselves.
    Some countries in the international coalition had historic relationships with criminal power brokers that they were reluctant to break. Concern for troops’ safety, we believed, led others to strike deals with corrupt officials or even insurgents. Most problematically, officials whose abusive behavior poisoned relations with the population were the favored “assets” of some Western intelligence agencies.
    Rigorous pursuit of an anticorruption approach would expose these conflicting agendas. Savage internal battles might result, or public embarrassment, or nonparticipation or even obstruction by some NATO organizations. And Afghan frustration would only rise.
    We suspected the profound and self-defeating internal contradictions that lurked beneath the awkward surface of this war. But we didn’t know the half of it.
    O N J ULY 5, 2009, McChrystal’s top brass and incoming U.S. embassy officials gathered for their first joint meeting. Acting Ambassador Tony Wayne ran down a list of priority action items. Number two, after opium, was corruption. The military, he conceded, had “been thinking about it, and we haven’t.” It was a candid observation on the lack of diplomatic attention paid to the issue, nearly eight years into the war.
    Wayne convened an anticorruption strategy group meeting, calling in officials from a handful of civilian agencies. U.S. embassy staff and the new ISAF Anti-Corruption Task Force began working together. I remember the moments of slightly dazed discovery. It was as though some people had made their separate ways to a park and, meeting there, had decided to spread out a single blanket and share a picnic. Baskets came open, and everyone craned for a glimpse of what the others had brought to the table.
    The State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs was sending rule-of-law advisers to Regional Commands East and South. U.S. attorneys had stood up a counternarcotics court, with its own state-of-the-art facility on the edge of town. Now they were mentoring anticorruption prosecutors too. The British government had developed a special Afghan criminal investigations unit, called the Major Crimes Task Force (MCTF), whose remit includedcorruption. The FBI was helping support it. A “Threat Finance Cell,” manned by DEA, Treasury, and FBI officers, whose job was to trace terrorist funding, was nurturing its own Afghan team, the Sensitive Investigations Unit (SIU). These officers’ third priority, the heavyset director informed us in a deceptively bored monotone, was public