Editor in Chief: Moh. Reza Huwaida Friday, March 29th, 2024

Corruption Hinders Stability

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Corruption Hinders Stability

Perhaps, many articles are being published daily on corruption, which analyze its unlikely consequences on our country's political stability and progress. Writers are intensively complaining about the root causes of corruption which has taken a very rooting position in the country currently on the basis of acquiring some personal interest by corrupting the government system, rule of law, the reputation and value of the government inside and outside the country.

They are the ones who only develop frustration with their current crimes and corruption and plague the country. People are falling prey to any corrupted man sitting on government chair and this is a very hurting feeling for the people. It has been said so correctly that "Crime Lords" are untouchable as most of them have control over a lot of the big and famous organizations, "Companies" in financing the current party in power.

However, we still bear extra burden and we still tolerate those who implement their desire to build empires and collect more profits with false notion of spreading wealth to all that is depriving today's farmers from their fertile land, tribesmen from their homes in rich mineral deposit areas, the rural poor from their meager sustaining income and creating a super-divide between themselves. Indeed this is the actual corruption which we are reluctant to face and call a spade a spade.

Perhaps, with the uncontrolled corruption today in the country, the Afghan government is jeopardizing international and U.S efforts in reestablishing the government, alienating the people and making the Taliban look like good government reformers than the current government. The stories argue that the U.S cash of $450 billion in ten years being poured in Afghanistan are all intended to build the country and stabilize our political system while struggling to knock down corruption and injustice.

With more foreign money than the capacity to absorb it, corruption in Afghanistan became the real internal system of national politics. The warlords are always protected by the powerful and higher authorities while their repeated injustice and corruption are badly hurting the people, particularly the poor class people who can't raise their voices.

Today the run of money has increased in direct proportion to the significance of fighting, the growth of Taliban control, and a steady decline in Afghanistan's security. Above and beyond, the lack of effective and presence of honest governance means that no one could count on keeping a government job or the security of a business.

By now, the Afghan government and people must triple their efforts to survive and this is because all have seen a steady rise in corruption and the role of powerbrokers at every level in the country. Actually, it indicates that corruption has become an existential necessity for those who could earn the money while other Afghans fell into deeper poverty and a steadily less secure life and their lives are day by day getting worse and fragile. The very current situation circulating in the country is promising a very dismal future if injustice and corruption persist at this rate.

Looking at the current presence of corruption, several factors do not promise well for the current government of President Karazi's fragile hold on power. The current government growingly seems unpopular throughout the country, despite its attempts to build support with various giveaway programs. It is widely seen as unhealthy and having embraced the very warlords who pillaged the country in the lawless years preceding the Taliban and impotent in the face of rising terrorist violence.

Being steeped in lawlessness, we still accept extra burden, we are still not awake of the continuous frustrations and helplessness among the middle class and people at large in the country in this demon of corruption. Yet there appears no one who could provide a leadership which must seek to finish corruption and injustice. Such leadership will also help to improve a better system to stabilizing the political process.

Definitely, there is tremendous anger against corruption and many complain and request from the government to root out it within the government itself. The public outrage has come out on the streets many times and will further come on the streets to vent their frustration.

People are fed up and are willing to follow any path that promises to root out corruption from their daily lives. If President Karzai takes a forward step in the direction of rooting out corruption, the harassed population of this country will provide a willing platform for confronting the ongoing injustice and corruption and other illegal activities.

Indeed, if today the country is backward and disvalued among other societies, disloyalty, corruption, dishonesty and injustice can be the main reasons. We snatch the rights of each others, widowed women and orphaned children and poor people to fulfill our own desires.

In other words, we gain our desires at the cost of others' lives, even at the cost of our homeland, therefore the poor becomes poorer and the rich becomes richer and the country is turning into a corruption ground.

Corruption begins from the desire to have more than you have rightfully earned. We always seem to need more money to buy or acquire more things and this is an insatiable hunger for increasing consumption pushes us to seek illicit avenues for making bucks.

Be it an average man, or a businessman or a politician or a minister, all seem to be on this enticing path to get more and more and go ahead of the time. Competing the time, by snatching the rights of poor and helpless people to say how civilized they are.

The government clerk sitting on a file wants speedy money to take any action, the policeman on the street has to be given money for the truck to move forward, the politicians and their henchmen earn fabulous amounts from transfers and postings, the minister in league with corporate houses generate enormous black money for favors that will result in greater and greater profits to the recipient and so on.

For the sack of our own lives and our deprived and frustrated country, we must not let corruption become a more normal way of our lives and get into the vital organs of our war-torn society. There is a misery and unwilling acceptance by all that this is now the normal way of life.

What we all have witnessed in the last more than nine years of U.S and its allies presence in the country, the people's movement against corruption is a path that people will readily follow, since there seems to be no other way for them to fight corruption.

By now, any action that promises a fast result in removing corruption is acceptable as panacea, whether it will work or not is another matter of talks and argument. In today's fast results of telecommunication, where information travels faster than ever through internet and SMS, attractive slogans and simple solutions attract the youths.

The time is yours, and it running so fast to get to the root of the problem, no patience with formalities and procedures, no rules of the game, no need for any dialogue, all we need is to root out corruption.

Abdul Samad Haidari is the permanent writer of the Daily outlook Afghanistan. He can be reached at outlookafg hanistan@gmail.com

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