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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
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Results for corruption (afghanistan)
3 results foundAuthor: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Statistics and Surveys Section Title: Corruption in Afghanistan: Bribery as Reported by the Victims Summary: Poverty and violence are usually portrayed as the biggest challenges confronting Afghanistan. This report, however, reveals that for an overwhelming 59% of the population the daily experience of public dishonesty is a bigger concern than insecurity and unemployment. Details: Geneva: UNODC, 2010. 42p. Source: Internet Resource Year: 2010 Country: Afghanistan URL: Shelf Number: 110825 Keywords: BriberyCorruption (Afghanistan) |
Author: U.S. Congress. House of Representatives. Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Title: Warlord, Inc.: Extortion and Corruption Along the U.S. Supply Chain in Afghanistan Summary: In Afghanistan, the U.S. military faces one of the most complicated and difficult supply chains in the history of warfare. The task of feeding, fueling, and arming American troops at over 200 forward operating bases and combat outposts sprinkled across a difficult and hostile terrain with only minimal road infrastructure is nothing short of herculean. In order to accomplish this mission, the Department of Defense employs a hitherto unprecedented logistics model: responsibility for the supply chain is almost entirely outsourced to local truckers and Afghan private security providers. The principal contract supporting the U.S. supply chain in Afghanistan is called Host Nation Trucking, a $2.16 billion contract split among eight Afghan, American, and Middle Eastern companies. Although there are other supply chain contracts, the HNT contract provides trucking for over 70 percent of the total goods and materiel distributed to U.S. troops in the field, roughly 6,000 to 8,000 truck missions per month. The trucks carry food, supplies, fuel, ammunition, and even Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles (MRAPs). The crucial component of the HNT contract is that the prime contractors are responsible for the security of the cargo that they carry. Most of the prime contractors and their trucking subcontractors hire local Afghan security providers for armed protection of the trucking convoys. Transporting valuable and sensitive supplies in highly remote and insecure locations requires extraordinary levels of security. A typical convoy of 300 supply trucks going from Kabul to Kandahar, for example, will travel with 400 to 500 guards in dozens of trucks armed with heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs). The private security companies that protect the convoys are frequently involved in armed conflict with alleged insurgents, rival security providers, and other criminal elements. The security providers report having lost hundreds of men over the course of the last year alone, though the veracity of these reports is difficult to judge. Many of the firefights purportedly last for hours and involve significant firepower and frequent civilian casualties. Indeed, in an interview with the Subcommittee staff, the leading convoy security commander in Afghanistan said that he spent $1.5 million on ammunition per month. From one perspective, the HNT contract works quite well: the HNT providers supply almost all U.S. forward operating bases and combat outposts across a difficult and hostile terrain while only rarely needing the assistance of U.S. troops. Nearly all of the risk on the supply chain is borne by contractors, their local Afghan truck drivers, and the private security companies that defend them. During the Soviet Union’s occupation of Afghanistan (1979-1989), by contrast, its army devoted a substantial portion of its total force structure to defending its supply chain. The HNT contract allows the United States to dedicate a greater proportion of its troops to other counterinsurgency priorities instead of logistics. But outsourcing the supply chain in Afghanistan to contractors has also had significant unintended consequences. The HNT contract fuels warlordism, extortion, and corruption, and it may be a significant source of funding for insurgents. In other words, the logistics contract has an outsized strategic impact on U.S. objectives in Afghanistan. The Department of Defense has been largely blind to the potential strategic consequences of its supply chain contingency contracting. U.S. military logisticians have little visibility into what happens to their trucks on the road and virtually no understanding of how security is actually provided. When HNT contractors self-reported to the military that they were being extorted by warlords for protection payments for safe passage and that these payments were “funding the insurgency,” they were largely met with indifference and inaction. Specifically, the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs Majority staff makes the following findings: Security for the U.S. Supply Chain Is Principally Provided by Warlords; The Highway Warlords Run a Protection Racket; Protection Payments for Safe Passage Are a Significant Potential Source of Funding for the Taliban; Unaccountable Supply Chain Security Contractors Fuel Corruption; Unaccountable Supply Chain Security Contractors Undermine U.S. Counterinsurgency Strategy; The Department of Defense Lacks Effective Oversight of Its Supply Chain and Private Security Contractors in Afghanistan; HNT Contractors Warned the Department of Defense About Protection Payments for Safe Passage to No Avail. There are numerous constructive changes that could be made to the U.S. military trucking effort in Afghanistan that would improve contracting integrity while mitigating corrupting influences. As the Department of Defense absorbs the findings in this report and considers its course of action, the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs Majority staff makes the following recommendations: Assume Direct Contractual Responsibility for Supply Chain Security Providers; Review Counterinsurgency Consequences of the HNT Contract; Consider the Role of Afghan National Security Forces in Highway Security; Inventory Actual Trucking Capacity Available to the Department of Defense; Draft Contracts to Ensure Transparency of Subcontractors; Oversee Contracts to Ensure Contract Transparency and Performance; and Analyze Effect of Coalition Contracting on Afghan Corruption. Details: Washington, DC: The Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives, 2010. 85p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 18, 2012 at http://democrats.oversight.house.gov/images/stories/subcommittees/NS_Subcommittee/6.22.10_HNT_HEARING/Warlord_Inc_compress.pdf Year: 2010 Country: Afghanistan URL: http://democrats.oversight.house.gov/images/stories/subcommittees/NS_Subcommittee/6.22.10_HNT_HEARING/Warlord_Inc_compress.pdf Shelf Number: 124583 Keywords: ConflictCorruption (Afghanistan)Extortion (Afghanistan)PeacekeepingSupply Chains (Afghanistan) |
Author: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime Title: Corruption in Afghanistan: Recent Patterns and Trends Summary: Corruption is widely understood to be the improper use of a public or official position for private gain. To strengthen the fight against corruption, the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC), which Afghanistan ratified in 2008, criminalizes various types of corrupt acts committed by public officials or by individuals working for private-sector entities. Quite apart from specific legal definitions, this includes offences such as bribery, embezzlement, abuse of power and nepotism. A further distinction can be made between political or “grand” corruption on the one hand and administrative or “petty” corruption on the other. While the former refers to acts of corruption perpetrated by high-ranking politicians and decision-makers, the latter concerns offences committed by mid- and lower-level public officials who are responsible for administrative procedures and services provided to the public. Political corruption often receives the greatest attention due to its visible impact on political decision-making and good governance, but the pervasive and devastating impact of administrative corruption on the everyday lives of ordinary Afghan citizens receives far less publicity. Yet for the vast majority of the Afghan population, by limiting and distorting their right to access essential public services, hindering their chances of economic development and eroding their trust in government, justice and the rule of law, it is administrative corruption that is most keenly felt. Taking all these different aspects into account, in 2012, as in 2009, the population of Afghanistan considered corruption, together with insecurity and unemployment, to be one of the principal challenges facing their country, ahead even of poverty, external influence and the performance of the Government. If during the last three years there have been slight changes in the rating of these issues by the Afghan population, its perceptions of corruption have not improved significantly. This summary report highlights the major findings of a large-scale survey in 2012 on the extent of bribery and other forms of corruption in Afghanistan. The research follows up on a previous UNODC corruption survey in 2009 and, using a structurally similar research design, provides comparative results of the extent and patterns of bribery in Afghanistan. As in 2009, the survey focuses on the respondents’ personal experience of bribery, on the modalities, mechanisms and socio-economic patterns of corruption, as well as on perceptions of corruption. In addition to the general population survey, four sector-specific integrity surveys of civil servants were carried out from 2011 to 2012 in the judiciary, police, local government and education sectors,1 with the purpose of identifying particular integrity challenges in public service and shedding light on sector-specific patterns of corruption. Details: Vienna: UNODC, 2012. 40p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 15, 2013 at: http://www.unodc.org/documents/frontpage/Corruption_in_Afghanistan_FINAL.pdf Year: 2012 Country: Afghanistan URL: http://www.unodc.org/documents/frontpage/Corruption_in_Afghanistan_FINAL.pdf Shelf Number: 127629 Keywords: BriberyCorruption (Afghanistan) |