Power is one of the key terms in changing the political and social destiny of the people within a specific territory. Different usage of power may clearly results in failure or success of the citizens in the society. Corruption has been recognized as one of the major hinders to the “good governance and rule of law and as an obstacle for sustainable, private-sector-led economic growth” (Basar, Eray. p. 4). According to the Transparency International one of the definitions used for corruption is the “abuse of entrusted power for private gain”, thus The Asian Development Bank describe the corruption as “behavior in which officials improperly and unlawfully enrich themselves and/or those close to them” (p.4).
With establishment of the new regime in the last 12 years, land-grabbing has become one of the major sources of saving vast wealth and construction of protected illegal trade for powerful social and political figures. According to a parliamentary commission survey 1,290,000 acres have been grabbed mostly for the aim of constructing 350 residential towns out of which 256 have been legally built. Governmental actors had played a key role in supporting the non-governmental and even officials for grabbing the lands by providing the political protection for receiving the gained benefits (Sultani, Mohammad Yasin).
By 2008 half brother of the highest authority in Afghanistan, the president’ brother was accused of series corruption chains around the country despite his continuous denials. According to The New York Times, Ahmad Wali Karzai worked for the CIA with a regular payment for eight years (Goodspeed, Peter). Moreover he has been leading the land grabbing and has been accused of opium trafficking by using his political conne...
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...ollowers of Wali Karzia’s? Will they by able to continue the trade and cooperate with the new government?
Works cited
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Tisdall, Simon. “Ahmed Wali Karzai, the corrupt and lawless face of modern Afghanistan”. News/World news/Ahmad Wali Karzai. 12 July, 2011. Web. 8 November, 2013.
Liiv, Mari-Liis. The Causes of Adminstrative Corruption. “Hyphotheses for Central and Eastern Europe”. Print.
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Corruption in Afghanistan, Recent patterns and trends. Vienna. 2012.
Vulnerabilities to Corruption Assessments. Fighting Corruption in Afghanistan. The World Bank. 2009
1. Immediately following the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001, American military power sought out and aggressively attacked Al Qaeda and Taliban strongholds in Afghanistan. Within weeks, the United States removed the Taliban from governing Afghanistan and worked with the international community to establish a new democratic government led by Afghan native Hamid Karzai, who would soon be elected president. However, by 2006, the Taliban significantly increased attacks on pro-Afghan government officials, Afghan security forces, and coalition military members. The United States and partner North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members responded with a surge of military might in 2010 to make one final push to drive the Taliban out. With major ground now gained for the Afghan government in 2014, Afghanistan faces a critical crossroads in its nation’s history. After recovering areas once held by the Taliban, Afghanistan must become self-sufficient in sustaining its first democratic government. With Company Grade Officers (CGOs) in the American military key to reaching strategic objectives, a secure and democratic Afghanistan is in the national interest of the United States in order to prevent a safe-haven for international terrorist activity.
Afghanistan since its beginning has been a place of conflict, despair, and at times lost hope. It has been taken advantage of and lost its sense of identity, which has had a direct effect on its people, and there own sense of what justice truly is.
...w President of Afghanistan . Hamid Karzai became the voted president as the election night was extremely successful. The ballot took polls from more than eight million voters which consisted of 80% of the casting age population . Rules regarding voter’s eligibility illustrate how a political system is truly democratic. Elections are possibly the most systematic method of altering political power and Bush is acknowledged for bringing forth this governmental change. The president’s actions reflected the previous actions of Ronald Reagan where he had fought off Soviet troops with U.S funding. George W. Bush, the first president of the 21st century will be vindicated for bringing democracy and removing autocratic governments in Afghanistan and Iraq as Saddam Hussein had killed a large sum of the population and the Taliban and al Qaeda’s savage killing of the innocent.
Life for Fariba Nawa after 18 years was an eye opener and a very tragic experience. Nawa coined a way to narrate a story of an Afghan society, she once knew. The multibillion drug trade now ruled her country. In 1999 they made between $25 million and $75 million just from taxing opium farmers and traffickers (106). It was surrounded with opium, crime, smugglers and opium brides. Opium brides were sold to traffickers to pay off a pervious opium debt. The opium have taken over and damaged the lives of many Afghanistan residents.
...n Afghanistan. Ed. Jann Einfeld. San Diego: Greenhaven, 2005. Current Controversies. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 29 Apr. 2014. .
Ali Ahmad Jalali is an interior minister of Afghanistan who has defeated warlords in the past and has a mission to keep them from rising to power and creating more chaos for citizens of Afghanistan. Defeating these warlords is no job for the weak. It takes carful planning and cannot be accomplished over night. By focusing on defeating the warlords at the top only, it is likely the warlords who don’t hold as much power will take their place and this will not solve anything. One thing in particular that Mr. Jalali is putting much focus into is the checkpoints created by the warlords. Jalali has several hundred Kabul policemen to man these points and ensure the safety of everyone. Hasan, a citizen of Afghanistan stresses the seriousness of these checkpoints when he shares a story about his own experience. When he was stopped at one of these checkpoints, a gunman beat him and took everything he owned. Hasan told the local media “They left me with just the clothes I was wearing. They took away whatever I had including money, and the old truck," (What Hasan Created 1). Although the progress is slow, it is the only hope Afghanistan has as of now for a better future. Ali Jalali is a glimmer of hope for Afghan citizens and they pray he will help to keep the warlords from inflicting further pain and fear into their
Endersby, A. (2011, February 20). Afghanistan, invasion of. Retrieved May 23, 2011, from International Debate Education Association: http://www.idebate.org/debatabase/topic_details.php?topicID=145
Mondloch, Chris. “Bacha Bazi: An Afghan Tragedy.” Foreign Policy. FP. Foreign Policy. 28 Oct 2013. Web. 28 Jan 2014.
Recently Afghanistan has grown significantly in terms of its ability to care for itself. A national army and a developing police force are becomi...
Corruption consists in the illegitimate agreement between a corruptor and a corrupted, in which they abuse of their public power in order to obtain personal benefit. Bribery and corruption is something that has been going on for years. According to Allen, “officials perceive themselves as immune to any penalties for demanding and receiving bribes” which she states that it is one of the main reasons for bribery and corruption in underdeveloped countries. According to Transparency International, an organization committed exclusively to end corruption, three of the most corrupt countries in the world are Somalia, North Korea and Afghanistan. This does not mean that corruption is only seen in underdeveloped countries. In international business, corporate employees often find themselves dealing with corruptors in foreign countries and, in most cases, they will give in.
In the past ten years the Afghan Government has been dealing with a number of issues that have caused problems for the country, problems such as illegal drug trade, terrorism and violence. But nowadays they are fighting a problem that has long existed between people, and quite recently has taken a whole new aspect to it. Ethnic conflict is the destructive factor that has caused problems between people for generations, often leading to fights, outbreak of violence and grudge between different ethnicities.
I The political instability in Afghanistan originating from the 1970s has caused changes in its zeitgeist, as seen through the change in the culture and lifestyle available to the Afghan people. Over the next three decades, there is a significant transition of civil liberties, and a change from a path to liberalism to a traditional conservative nature in the eyes of outsiders. The novel “A Thousand Splendid Suns” by Khaled Hosseini demonstrates the change by telling a realistic story based on the true events which took place in Afghanistan.
Council, H. P. (2012). Afghanistan's vision by 2015 . Kabul: High Peace Council law committee .
Over the last few years, the issue of corruption--the abuse of public office for private gain--has attracted renewed interest, both among academics and policymakers. There are a number of reasons why this topic has come under recent inspection. Corruption scandals have toppled governments in both major industrial countries and developing countries. In the transition countries, the shift from command economies to free market economies has created massive opportunities for the appropriation of rents, excessive profits, and has often been accompanied by a change from a well-organized system of corruption to a more chaotic and deleterious one. With the end of the cold war, donor countries have placed less emphasis on political considerations in allocating foreign aid among developing countries and have paid more attention to cases in which aid funds have been misused and have not reached the poor. And slow economic growth has persisted in many countries with malfunctioning institutions. This renewed interest has led to a new flurry of empirical research on the causes and consequences of corruption.
SANDU, A., & NIŢU, M. (2013). CORRUPTION AND ORGANIZED CRIME. Contemporary Readings In Law & Social Justice, 5(2), 454-460.