Justifying a crime is worse than committing a crime. Because when a crime is being justified, then it becomes lawful and paves the way for other crimes that may happen in future and even legitimizes them. Besides widespread corruption, there are many kinds of invisible corruptions in Afghanistan which have hidden behind the secured shelter of law. The word corruption is widely understood to be the improper use of a public or official position for private gain. Corruption is the second dilemma after insecurity that Afghanistan is dealing with. Unlike its common concept, corruption is not only bribery; it consists of bribery, patronage, nepotism and all kinds of illegal use of official position in benefit of personal, party, ethnic or sectarian groups. By several investigations being launched on corruption, these kinds of corruption are well-known but there are many kinds of unknown corruptions which have never been pointed out.
A country in which majority of people live under poverty line and most of its human resource is unemployed, the thousands of dollars in salaries of some officials are nothing but corruption. In a country called Afghanistan, some receive thousands of dollars as salaries but some others receive the same amount in Afghanis. The extreme gap between salaries of officials seems to be a kind of corruption which has been justified by law. This article claims that the deep gap between salaries of officials is itself a concrete corruption and as well as one of the main causes of bribery and administrative corruption in Afghanistan. The inadequate salaries of civil servants not only cause bribery in government offices but as well as causes Tanbali and Kam-kari in public sector.
Corruption in Afghanistan:
The word corruption “Fisad” has a lengthy record in Dari language by different concepts such as immorality and rebellion but corruption in its new concept “Fisad Edari” is a new expression in Dari literature and a new phenomenon in Afghanistan governance. The degradation concept of “corruption” into one of its meaning shows how corruption has prevailed which has changed the meaning of a word. According to UNDP findings in 2012, corruption was the second problem Afghanistan faced after insecurity and more shameful, Afghanistan is the second corrupt country in all over the world. Since corruption is a great challenge on progress of Afghanistan, fighting corruption is the duty of every responsible citizen to analyze it by all its facts and figures.
Corruption has deep roots inside social and political structure of Afghanistan. However, recognizing all its causes and effects is out of capacity of this writing, the social injustice is being considered to be one of the main and unknown causes of corruption in Afghanistan. A further distinction can be made between political or “grand” corruption on the one hand and administrative or “petty” corruption on the other. While the former refers to acts of corruption perpetrated by high-ranking politicians and decision-makers, the latter concerns offences committed by mid- and lower-level public officials who are responsible for administrative procedures and services provided to the public. Political corruption is being committed by high-ranking officials and most of countries are afflicted in this type of corruption. Political corruption has political and administrative causes and has not yet infected cultural and public behavior. Because political corruption is happening among numerous politicians, it is not as mush threatening as administrative corruption. While corruption is not being restrained, it will spread further and infiltrate into soul of a community and infect its culture and tradition. In this level it would be too difficult to control the entire nation from the disease of corruption.
Afghanistan is dealing with both political and administrative corruptions and the second one seems to be more frequent than the former one. There is no doubt that most of the corrupt officials desperately refer to corruption. The abnormal situation of their lives unwillingly impel them to corruption. To speak down to earth out of verbosity, the inadequate salaries of civil servants is not enough to cover the monthly expenses of a family and obligate them to cover the rest of their expenses by illegal ways. The inadequate salaries of civil servants on one hand and their incomparable salaries with those working in private sectors, NGOs and high-rank on other hand provoke civil servants to compete in illegal ways e.g. when a person working in private sector is receiving thousands of Dollars, it makes his/her friend who receives this amount in Afghani to compete him/her by referring to bribery.
The low salary of lower-level civil servants is nothing but a cruelty which has been forced by decision-making officials. According to definition of corruption, the injustice categorization of salaries in Afghanistan is a type of corruption made by high-ranked officials and justified by laws which has been made by themselves. So the injustice regarding salaries in Afghanistan is being called “legitimate corruption”, corruption which has hidden behind law and no one dare to name it corruption or fight against it. The justified corruption is more likely to be unacceptable than the explicit corruption. The injustice division of salaries is itself corruption, causes more corruption and bribery and is morally wrong.
To fight corruption basically, first of all we should root out its causes and restrict the proper situation for growing corruption. The misery in lives of vast majority of people on one hand and luxurious lives of minority officials on other hand need a reform in salaries. A law is needed to be passed to set a range of salaries for different positions without large differences in salary scales. Instead of squandering lots of money in fighting corruption, better to fight the causes of corruption by considering justice in determining and distributing salaries.