Report - United States Department of Defense

UNCLASSIFIED
prevent well-intentioned, reform-minded officers from reporting on or disrupting the criminal
activity perpetrated by their network.
ANP Corruption: The ANP faces major challenges from corruption. There is continued
reporting of individual Provincial and District Chiefs of Police (PCoPs and DCoPs) engaging in
illicit activities, accepting/soliciting bribes, abusing civilians, and cooperating with the
insurgency and narcotics traffickers. At a strategic level, there is sustained political interference
with investigations and with the ANP freely exercising their constitutional role in enforcing the
law. Agencies such as the MoI Major Crimes Task Force (MCTF) have been blocked when they
have attempted to detect and investigate corruption.
ABP Corruption: The ABP are particularly vulnerable to criminal influence and capture
because of the lucrative financial opportunities involved in cross-border smuggling, especially in
narcotics, as well as from the collection of illegal taxes and the theft of state customs revenues at
border crossing points and airports. Reporting of large payments for the purchase of ABP
positions suggests how lucrative these positions can be. Indeed, most (if not all) ABP officers
have to buy their positions and then reimburse their initial bribe cost by accepting bribes at the
border. Powerful, region-based CPNs and insurgents have sought to control revenue streams at
Afghanistan’s borders, and co-opting or controlling ABP units is key to generating illegal profits.
Political pressure by CPNs with politically strong power-brokers has an overbearing influence
over ABP corruption.
However, substantial progress was made this reporting period in preventing opportunities for
criminal interference in the security sector, including improvements across the MoD and MoI.
There have been several fuel system assessments completed during this period in the MoI and
MoD, with a continuing robust schedule of assessments and inspections being performed by the
Afghan Inspector General teams and oversight by the coalition team. Although the MoI
Transparency and Accountability Committee (TAC) has yet to have significant success removing
corrupt actors, the systems are in place, and ISAF is closely monitoring these new corruption
oversight institutions. Beyond three initial convictions in the National Military Hospital (NMH)
case, investigations/prosecutions have progressed slowly, but the Afghan investigation team has
made some progress. The Attorney Generals Office remains largely a proxy for an agenda of
patronage and influence.
MoD personnel, logistics, acquisition/procurement, finance, and legal departments continue to
make some progress on 50 of the 54 anti-corruption commitments made as part of the Office of
the National Security Council (ONSC) Transparency and Accountability Working Group
(TAWG) process. However, the ONSC TAWG, and the Senior High Commission on Anti-
Corruption (SHCAC) do not regularly meet to track progress or receive status updates, and
evidence of actual progress is minimal. The MoD office, tasked to implement anti-corruption
systems and increase transparency and accountability within the MoD, has started to show some
tangible results in tackling corruption issues in a few specific areas, although it now needs to
coordinate its actions with the MoD GS to increase its effectiveness across all departments.
The MoI phase of the ONSC TAWG completed the establishment of the initial anti-corruption
commissions in all seven police zones, and in eleven provinces and seven districts. The zone
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