‘between the dragon and his wrath’, 1994–2017prime real estate in Dubai, building luxury houses in Kabul and funding
the directors’ lavish lifestyle. In all some 5 billion dollars of the bank’s funds
had been diverted into private, offshore bank accounts. Several of the bank’s
executives were eventually tried and a few imprisoned, but only 10 per cent
of the embezzled funds were ever recovered. Mahmud Karzai was never
prosecuted and President Karzai rejected international calls for independent
oversight of the bank and reform of the banking sector.
Corruption on such an industrial scale not only adversely affected the
nation’s parlous financial position but diverted funds designated for dev -
elopment projects into the pockets of Afghanistan’s power elites. According
to a recent un survey, Afghans pay $3.9 billion annually in bribes, back-
handers and sweeteners to government officials, with the average payment
in excess of $200, or roughly four months’ average wage. Such a level of
bribery has a major impact on attempts to reduce poverty and fuels disil-
lusionment with not only the government but its international backers,
for it seems to Afghans that foreign donors have turned a blind eye to the
blatant corruption. It is not surprising that Transparency International
ranks Afghanistan as one of the most corrupt nations on earth.
The cash bonanza had other unfortunate consequences, with some
ministers claiming Afghanistan was the next Dubai. This fantasy was
fuelled by a report by the United States Geological Survey, which valued
Afghanistan’s untapped mineral resources at between 1 and 3 trillion
dollars. Government officials were fond of musing about how they would
spend this treasure trove, but there was a distinct lack of realism about how
to transform this survey into hard cash. As early as 1888, Carl Griesbach
noted Afghanistan’s potential mineral wealth, an evaluation confirmed
by American and Soviet surveys in the twentieth century. By 2001 little
had been done to exploit these resources commercially, for Afghanistan
lacked the infrastructure and technical expertise, while the government
was hamstrung by its loyalty to the will of Amir ‘Abd al-Rahman Khan,
in which he told his heirs not to surrender the country’s mineral rights
or exploitation to foreign countries or companies. Furthermore, as one
usaid official noted, it would take the u.s. government ‘a hundred years
to build the necessary infrastructure and fulfil training requirements to
completely develop Afghanistan’s extractive industries’. 35 What mining
operations do take place are pick-and-shovel affairs and are controlled
by government ministers, commanders and other powerful individuals
who pocket the revenues. None of these individuals have any intention
of surrendering control of these lucrative revenue streams to the state, let
alone foreign multinationals.