The money of the Western tax goes into the pockets of warlords, crooked government officials and the insurgents. Corruption is severe in Afghanistan. Although Afghan constitutional law and Islam define corruption as a very shameful act, Afghanistan falls in the list of the most corrupt countries of the world. Very unfortunately, the government in Kabul has terribly failed to tackle the evident embezzlements in its own offices.

In the eyes of the international community that is funding more than 90 percent of development and operational expenditures of Afghanistan, the image of Kabul administration has gone bleaker with the passage of ten years.

Due to massive corruption, certain donor countries have started rethinking about the way and procedures through which they have been forwarding funds to Afghanistan. Norway has frozen $36 million in aid to Afghanistan until Kabul clears up a corruption scandal surrounding Kabul Bank, the Norwegian deputy foreign minister, Espen Barth Eide said on Tuesday.

"A large part of our work in Afghanistan is contributing to good governance. What has happened at Kabul Bank is not an example of good governance," he said. Apparently, the Ministry of Finance and International Monetary Fund (IMF) have serious disagreements over the issue of the Kabul Bank.

The issue of Kabul Bank, Afghanistan's largest private bank signals how deep rooted corruption is in this country. Government's weak oversight and its failure to drag the culprits to courts and put them behind the bars have added fuel to the fire.

Freezing the funds by Norwegian government seems to be just the beginning. As per expectations, the trend will continue and more international funds committed to Afghanistan by other countries will be rethought, until and unless solid measures are in place to tackle corruption.

The stoppage of the funds will have awful consequences for the nascent and fragile economic stability Afghanistan has today.
It is not merely corruption against which the government has failed but also insurgency, narcotics and other political, social and economic problems like poverty, low employment rate, lack of good governance, political instability, violence against women and children and so on.