Afghanistan: Karzai’s Victory over the US

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In the week that the inauguration of President Hamid Karzai has confirmed his stay in office, Pratap Chatterjee, the author of an excellent exposé of Halliburton, has published the inside story of Afghanistan politics and “economics” for TomDispatch:

An Inside Look at Nepotism and Corruption in Karzai’s Afghanistan
Pratap Chatterjee

Kabul, Afghanistan — Every morning, dozens of trucks laden with diesel from Turkmenistan lumber out of the northern Afghan border town of Hairaton on a two-day trek across the Hindu Kush down to Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul. Among the dozens of businesses dispatching these trucks are two extremely well connected companies — Ghazanfar and Zahid Walid — that helped to swell the election coffers of President Hamid Karzai as well as the family business of his running mate, the country’s new vice president, warlord Mohammed Qasim Fahim.

Some of the trucks are on their way to two power stations in the northern part of the capital: a recently refurbished, if inefficient, plant that has served Kabul for a little more than a quarter of a century, and a brand new facility scheduled for completion next year and built with money from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

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