Corruption! Only those know the real meaning of this word that live in an environment where they observe, hear and sometimes get involved in it. Such an environment does prevail in Afghanistan and its people are those who pay billions of dollars as bribes every year to access services that should be provided to them without any trouble, headache or spending their money illegally, according to the constitution. One admits or denies, corruption has cracked Afghanistan from within.

This is because there has been no consistent and effective effort to curb it in the last eleven years. Those who are involved in embezzlement of billions of dollars roam freely inside and outside Afghanistan as their affiliation with certain strong political figures turns out to be heavier than Afghan laws.

The main purpose of establishment of High Office of Oversight and Anti-corruption, Anti-corruption Unit of Attorney General’s Office, Ministry of Anti-corruption, concerned unit of National Directorate of Security and specific anti-corruption sections in certain government entities is fighting and preventing corruption, bribery, embezzlement, nepotism and other related crimes. Nonetheless, this is only the common people who fall in their trap and big fishes involved in huge cases of corruption remain unbound of any law and any regulation.

Seeing the fragility of security, political and economic condition, one can say that huge of amounts of international funds poured in Afghanistan have all gone futile leaving negligible positive impacts on the living condition of the people of this country. For the nearly $450 billion Congress estimated last year that the US alone has spent waging war in Afghanistan, every Afghan man, woman and child could have been handed $15,000. That sum is 10 years' earnings for an average Afghan, according to U.N. estimates. However, the benefit of international aid money that has reached to common people is little and in some cases nil. They remain trapped in poverty.   

In July last year, President Hamid Karzia issued a decree in which he ordered central ministries, prosecutors and judiciary to fight bribery, nepotism and cronyism and report within six months to the presidential palace. That deadline has expired and now it seems like the decree has remained confined on paper as corruption remains as rampant as it was before.

Gradually, corruption has turned into a part of Afghan culture. What we are gifting to our coming generations is the bad trend of bribery and nepotism. The roots of such evils must be burnt out today or else it will burn us.