Only an American administration with a high tolerance of corruption (oh, the Bush administration, for example) would keep military in a country which fights to maintain an old corrupt system even when it costs lives and prolongs war. Right?
Dexter Filkins of the New York Times has been following the story from Kabul.
One of the country’s most senior prosecutors said Saturday that President Hamid Karzai fired him this week after he repeatedly refused to block corruption investigations at the highest levels of Mr. Karzai’s government.
Fazel Ahmed Faqiryar, the former deputy attorney general, said investigations of more than two dozen senior Afghan officials — including cabinet ministers, ambassadors and provincial governors — were being held up or blocked outright by Mr. Karzai, Attorney General Mohammed Ishaq Aloko and others.
Mr. Faqiryar’s account of the troubles plaguing the anticorruption investigations has been largely corroborated in interviews with five Western officials familiar with the cases. They say that Mr. Karzai and others in his government have repeatedly thwarted prosecutions against senior Afghan government figures...
... In a two-hour interview at his home, Mr. Faqiryar said he and the other prosecutors in his office were demoralized and exhausted by the repeated refusal of Mr. Karzai and Mr. Aloko to allow them to move against corrupt Afghan leaders.
If the Obama administration "goes along to get along" with Karzai, it will have to struggle to maintain any support at home, much less in the rest of the world. It's a tough decision but it has to be made now.
Karzai, by the way, has been kicking up a stink about the media's coverage of this story, issuing the usual platitudes about reports of this kind increasing terrorism. Obama's track record when it comes to backing the fight against corruption in Afghanistan -- even fighting for a clean election -- was already pretty bad, even before this issue arose.
Please: Karzai was the choice of the our previous, corrupt administration. He shouldn't become, in any way, a symbol of corruption either in the State Department or the current White House. Let's work with allies to makes sure real elections are held in Afghanistan soonest.
