A decade of failure in the fight against corruption
Abdullah Elham – journalist, writer and political analyst
A high-level joint anti-corruption body said that it found “significant vulnerabilities to corruption” in the activities of three of Afghan government’s ministries and its Civil Service Commission, while also highlighting “questionable practices” that affect peoples’ ability to receive services. Their latest assessment found corrupt practices in the Ministry of Labor’s pension administration, the Ministry of Higher Education’s issuance of certificates and exams administration, the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation’s administration of land for repatriates, and the Civil Service Commission’s employments process.
These are not the only governmental administrations and nor the first time we are hearing about corruption in its institutions. According to surveys of the United Nations from 2001 onwards the corruption is increasingly spreading to most parts of the governmental institutions in spite of spending millions of dollars in the fight against corruption. And now it became clear that unlike the perspective that lack of political will to effectively fight against corruption is the only reason of the failure in this regard, but there are other factors of corruption which shows that the roots or so deep and it is complicated for Afghan government to carry this fight out successfully by their own, war, economic instability, foreign interventions, bureaucratic deficiencies and the lack of hopes for a good future amongst people have all caused the failures in this field.
The wide spreading negative culture of finding wealth with any possible way and the poor administrable role of the ruling governmental bodies, the lack of job security, warlord’s influence, the foreign presence, mafia presence, lack of powerful and transparent monitoring institutions, the weak role of government and judiciary are all negatively affecting the mechanism for effective fight against corruption.
The lack of an academic research on the roots of corruption and lack of an effective mechanism to fight the corruption are also negatively affecting this process; but in a glance, politicization of the public administrations, limitations on access to information and lack of its role in feedbacks, lack of transparency in budget management and lack of an effective accountable monitoring and evaluation system, lack of effective service providing mechanisms and its monitoring and evaluation systems and the weak judicial system draw attention in this field.
Therefore removing the complication from bureaucratic systems, positive and effective motivation of human resources, integration with civil society, private sector and public and also interactions among various governmental bodies for effective fight against corruption seems important points in the strategy for this purpose.
In all over the world, bureaucratic systems exist for ruling and fulfilling the need of governing and authority, and regularly in accordance with the needs of the society have been updated, and naturally such a system also exists in Afghanistan, but is not fulfilling the needs of today’s Afghanistan, which is causing to more depth and complicity of corruption.
In the result of academic and comprehensive research the recognition of priorities and practical steps towards implementation of a comprehensive and effective strategy can help this struggle get close to the goal, otherwise we will just witness the reports and surveys showing the increasing level of corruption in our governmental bodies.