At the police training centre in Kabul, American trainers take a wearily pragmatic view of corruption. Even after recent increases in salaries for Afghan security forces (all of them paid by the US) an Afghan policeman earns $130 (£80) a month. The cost of living in Kabul for an average family is about $250. For many there’s no other way to make up the shortfall. “The best we can hope for is that if they are taking bribes, at least they know it’s wrong,” says an American mentor.

In Afghanistan everything has its price. You don’t want to queue in Kabul airport? Jump it for $2. You want a driving licence, but not the lessons or test? That will cost $160. You want a place at Kabul University but can’t pass the exam? $6,000. You want to be released from a prison sentence for drug smuggling? $60,000.

The country comes in the bottom five states in the world on Transparency International’s measure of corruption. It would be astonishing if Afghanistan were not a very corrupt country. It is the fifth-poorest on Earth and corruption is a feature of all its neighbouring states. It has traditions of patronage to which corruption is a natural adjunct. It has little manufacturing but does boast an astonishingly lucrative black economy in the smuggling of various commodities, notably heroin. The drugs trade is equivalent to about a third of the legitimate economy and worth about $4 billion a year. It pushes up living costs and creates almost irresistible temptations for low-paid government officials. Western officials say a border police commander on a key drugs route can expect $400,000 to wave a large shipment through.

Afghan officials say that corruption is also a growing problem within Western companies working for the US and other governments in the country. Only 20 per cent of aid money actually goes through the Afghan Government. The US Government admitted this week that the industry was so poorly regulated it didn’t know how many US contractors were working for it in Afghanistan.

(tom coghlan and jerome starkey, The Times, 4November2009)

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