Afghanistan Analysis: My Oh My, What to Do About Corruption? (Kaplan)

Writing before yesterday's Parliamentary elections in Afghanistan, Fred Kaplan of Slate ponders, "What Can We Do About Corruption in Afghanistan?"

The analysis is not as notable for insight as it is for the utter resignation in the conclusion:

For now, Karzai seems to think that the United States has a bigger stake in the war's success than he does and, therefore, that he's the one with the leverage in this relationship. The Obama administration's challenge is to convince Karzai that if he doesn't clean up his act, he really will pay a price—we really might leave or, short of that, funnel arms, money, and other resources to provincial chiefs whose elevation would pose a challenge to Karzai's authority. This is easier said than done, and carries its own risks for Afghanistan's stability. But the alternative is to write "a blank check" and "blindly stay the course," as Obama once said he wouldn't do, and that way seems to lie a quagmire or worse.

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Afghanistan: From Bad to Worse in the North?

Anna Badkhen writes for Foreign Policy:

I returned to Northern Afghanistan in April to document for Foreign Policy the implacable spread of the Taliban in the region (the dispatches I wrote were recently published as an ebook, Waiting for the Taliban); I left the region in May. At the time, the Taliban were terrorizing travelers in Kunduz and Baghlan provinces, along the main route that NATO uses to bring in supplies from Tajikistan; launching swift attacks on government forces in Takhar Province; and flagging down traffic at impromptu checkpoints on the ancient roads of Balkh.

How to measure the progress of the war since my visit? Violence has been metastasizing across the north. A string of bombings in Kunduz killed at least 19 Afghan police officers in the last five weeks. Last month, 10 Western aid workers, members of a medical team, were slaughtered in Badakhshan -- the remote redoubt of the legendary Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Massoud, where the Taliban did not dare venture even when they were ruling most of the country from Kabul. It was the largest massacre of relief workers in Afghanistan in years. The United Nations, which last winter considered parts of the north volatile, now regards a large swath of the region as extremely dangerous for its personnel.

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