Rishwat Khor, Kheshwar Khor “Eat a bribe, eat a country”
Corruption is eating Afghanistan alive.
According to a United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) survey conducted in 2012, half of Afghan citizens paid a bribe while requesting a public service and the total cost of bribes paid to public officials amounted to US$ 3.9 billion. This is an increase of 40 per cent between 2009 and 2012.
In another survey conducted by The Asia Foundation in 2015, 89% of Afghans surveyed said that corruption is a problem in their daily life. Yet, according to the UNDOC survey:
“While corruption is seen by Afghans as one of the most urgent challenges facing their country, it seems to be increasingly embedded in social practices, with bribery being an acceptable part of day-to-day life. For example, 68 per cent of citizens interviewed in 2012 considered it acceptable for a civil servant to top up a low salary by accepting small bribes from service users (as opposed to 42 per cent in 2009).
How is it that 89% say corruption is a problem, yet 68% say it’s OK for a public servant to ask for a bribe? How is it that corruption becomes so embedded in the daily life of a culture that it becomes the norm and is simply expected?
I had lunch recently with a good Afghan friend who is a former Ambassador to a Western country and he related how another former Afghan Ambassador was bragging to him that same day how he embezzled $500,000 while serving in his embassy post. According to my friend Afghan officials talk openly about their involvement in corruption and compare amounts that they have stolen, ridiculing those who have grabbed less than they could.
Afghanistan, being the centralized state that it is, provides very modest health care to all of its citizens, mainly paid for by the international aid programs of foreign donor countries like the U.S. who is the largest aid donor in the health sector having invested over $1 billion between 2002 and 2012. Unfortunately, in 2015 53% of the population reported having had to pay a bribe to receive any health care service at government run clinics or hospitals. In a just completed corruption assessment on the Afghan Ministry of Public Health, the section headings of the report itself are entitled: embezzlement, extortion, bribery, fraud, falsification, theft of public goods, nepotism, and discrimination.
The abuses reported include having to pay a bribe in a clinic to be seen by a doctor; having to pay a doctor before surgery is performed or a baby delivered; having to pay hospital cleaners to change the sheets on a patient’s bed; and having to pay a bribe to receive prescribed medication. Clinic furnishings, equipment, food, and fuel are sometimes appropriated and used at employees’ homes or stolen out right and sold in the marketplace. There have been instances of ambulances purchased with foreign aid money having been appropriated by clinic administrators for use as their own personal vehicle. It goes sadly on.
All of this is a ticking time bomb. Not that Afghanistan needs anymore bombs. But if 53% of the population has to pay a bribe to receive health care that is their right as Afghan citizens, with all the resentment that must engender, what about the other 47% who will not or cannot because of their poverty pay a bribe to receive care and are turned away? Maybe they can report these problems to the police? No they can’t. 53% of the population has said they have to pay a bribe when requesting police services. How about the courts? No luck there either. 63% say they have to pay bribes when interacting with officials in the judicial system. So where can they turn to for justice? Who will hear their story and act?
The Taliban are waiting to embrace them and all their rage against a corrupt government and the foreigners who prop it up. The Taliban will advocate for their grievances in the tragic ways we have come to expect. As they say, if you “eat” a bribe, you “eat” your own country.