HuffingtonPost: Putting Crooks On The CIA Payroll

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The New York Times reported in October 2009 that “Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials.”

The Times also reported in August 2010: “The aide to President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan at the center of a politically sensitive corruption investigation is being paid by the Central Intelligence
Agency, according to Afghan and American officials.”

That aide was Mohammed Zia Salehi, the chief of administration for the National Security Council, who was arrested in July after being wiretapped soliciting a bribe from a company suspected of shipping billions of dollars out of the country for Afghan officials, drug smugglers and insurgents. Karzai then had him freed. As the Times put it:

Mr. Salehi’s relationship with the C.I.A. underscores deep contradictions at the heart of the Obama administration’s policy in Afghanistan, with American officials simultaneously demanding that Mr. Karzai root out the corruption that pervades his government while sometimes subsidizing the very people suspected of perpetrating it.

HuffingtonPost: Huge Salaries With No Accountability

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In an October report, the special inspector general for Afghanistan concluded “that the U.S. government is unable to determine how much money it has given the Afghan government in salary supplements since 2002, or how many recipients are being paid.” Anecdotally, however, it didn’t look good.

For example:

[O]ne senior official in the Afghan President's office received a monthly salary supplement of $5,000 from USAID in addition to his monthly government salary of $2,000 and a monthly $1,400 hospitality allowance. That official kept his $5,000 monthly supplement when he left his position to assume a senior position at a ministry that was not part of the USAID salary support program.

The report found that salary supplements paid to Afghan government employees can be as much as 20 times higher than their civil service salaries.

HuffingtonPost: Extortion and Corruption Along The Supply Chain

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The House Oversight Committee in June issued a massive report entitled "Warlord, Inc. Extortion and Corruption Along the U.S. Supply Chain in Afghanistan". The report culminated a six-month investigation into the Pentagon’s “Host Nation Trucking” (HNT) contract. It concluded that
the $2.16 billion contract “fuels warlordism, extortion, and corruption, and it may be a significant source of funding for insurgents.”

The report’s main points:

• Security for the U.S. Supply Chain Is Principally
Provided by Warlords. (The principal private security subcontractors
are warlords, strongmen, commanders and militia leaders who compete
with the Afghan central government for power and authority.)
• The Highway Warlords Run a Protection Racket. (The contractors and
their trucking subcontractors pay tens of millions of dollars annually
to local warlords across Afghanistan in exchange for “protection.”)
• Protection Payments for Safe Passage Are a Significant Potential
Source of Funding for the Taliban. (The highway warlords who provide
security in turn make protection payments to insurgents to coordinate
safe passage.)
• Unaccountable Supply Chain Security Contractors Fuel Corruption.
(There is widespread corruption by Afghan officials and frequent
government extortion along the road. The largest private security
provider for HNT trucks complained that it had to pay $1,000 to
$10,000 in monthly bribes to nearly every Afghan governor, police
chief, and local military unit whose territory the company passed.)

UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) Admits Election Fraud But Denies Cover Up

CLICK HERE TO READ STORY @ eGov Monitor

The top United Nations envoy to Afghanistan has acknowledged that “widespread” fraud took place during the August elections, but stressed that there are mechanisms in place to ensure that the result reflects the will of the people.

“It is true that in a number of stations that opened in the south and south-east, there was significant fraud – but it’s not only there,” noted Mr. Eide, who added that “the extent of that fraud is now being determined.”

In recent days, former Deputy Special Representative Peter Galbraith has accused Mr. Eide of favouring incumbent Afghan President Hamid Karzai in the run-up to and after the country’s 20 August election by allowing voting irregularities to occur.

The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), which is headed by Mr. Eide, did not monitor the elections – which were organized by the Independent Election Commission (IEC) –but did support the process.

“I have spent all my time over the last weeks for one purpose – and that is to bring this election process forward. That’s been a difficult process, marred by so many problems, not least, as you know, by widespread fraud. So it’s not been easy and that has been my only focus,” Mr. Eide told a news conference in Kabul yesterday.

“It is important to bring this country through this process and to continue this process of installing democracy in Afghanistan,” said the Special Representative.

Mr. Eide – who was flanked at the news conference by the ambassadors of the United States, United Kingdom, France and Germany and representatives of the European Union and NATO – refuted allegations made by his former deputy about the election process, including “ghost polling stations” and discrepancies in voter turnout.

The Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) is in the process of auditing suspicious ballot boxes and other complaints related to the elections.

“I believe that the institutional framework we have created – whatever its weaknesses and those are weaknesses we recognize – I understand well that these institutions would, in the end, be able to remove fraudulent votes and honour valid votes,” said Mr. Eide.

“We are now at a critical juncture,” he stated. “We have put very solid mechanisms in place to ensure that those steps are taken correctly, and that the result reflects the vote of the Afghan people.

“And I do believe, therefore, firmly, that when the result is being certified it will be a result being made on a solid basis and that should be acceptable to the Afghan people.”

Afghan watchdog alters vote recount after criticism

http://www.reuters.com/article/asiaCrisis/idUSISL341008

(For more on Afghanistan, click on [ID:nAFPAK])

By Peter Graff

KABUL, Oct 7 (Reuters) - The U.N.-backed watchdog overseeing a fraud investigation in Afghanistan's Aug. 20 vote altered its ballot-counting rules on Wednesday, ditching a plan criticised for favouring President Hamid Karzai.

The new recount rules, which watchdog officials said were a "clarification", take into account the possibility one candidate may have disproportionately benefitted from fraud, a finding that would be necessary in order for Karzai to be forced to face a second round.

The Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC), mainly appointed by the United Nations, has ordered a recount of ballot boxes it deemed suspicious -- around 12 percent of the total -- after finding "clear and convincing evidence of fraud".

To speed it up, officials are sampling 10 percent of those suspicious boxes.

Preliminary results gave Karzai 54.6 percent of the vote. If the fraud investigation reduces his share below 50 percent, he would face a run-off against his main challenger, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah.

For that to happen, the commission would have to find fraud overwhelmingly benefitted Karzai, which the president denies.

Under rules the ECC announced on Monday, such a finding would have been unlikely, because the commission said it would eliminate the same percentage of votes for all candidates from groups of ballots that were suspicious for the same reason.

On Wednesday, it issued new guidelines, which specify a separate percentage of fraudulent ballots would be calculated for each candidate, so candidates who benefitted more from fraud would face a greater penalty.

Diplomats say about 75 percent of the ballots in the suspicious group were cast for Karzai. Karzai's opponents say his share of the fraud may have been far greater, because most of the fraud took place in the south, where he won overwhelming support.

Under Monday's rules, more than 1 million ballots could be found to be fraudulent and Karzai would still win in a single round. Under the revised rules, Karzai could potentially face a second round if as few as 520,000 votes are disqualified.

KARZAI SAYS FRAUD EXAGGERATED

Karzai says the extent of fraud has been exaggerated by some Western officials and media. Officials expect the final outcome next week, with a second round at the end of October if needed.

ECC officials said the new rules amounted to a "clarification" of Monday's order, rather than a change. ECC official Scott Borden said the intent was always to calculate separate percentages for each candidate.

However, Borden and several other ECC officials, including the body's head, Grant Kippen, had told Reuters on Monday the same percentage would be applied to each candidate.

Asked by Reuters on Monday: "You are going to apply the same percentage to all of them, that's what you said today?", Kippen nodded and said: "Yep."

"We are trying to put some sort of number on it: 70 percent, 50 percent, 20 percent, etc. And then we will be looking at all of the votes that these candidates have received in that universe and we will be applying that percentage against the votes that these candidates received," he said.

The initial rules had attracted criticism. Peter Galbraith, a U.S. diplomat fired as deputy head of the Kabul U.N. mission for speaking out about fraud called them "not acceptable".

"It cannot be correct to treat all presidential candidates equally for disqualification of ballots, because there was not an equal opportunity for fraud," Galbraith told Reuters on Monday.

"Let's not mince words: there was one candidate who had control of the state apparatus." (Editing by Jonathon Burch and Jerry Norton) (For more Reuters coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan, see: here)

UN Denies Galbraith's a Whistleblower, Told Him to Be Quiet about Bias pro-Karzai

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, October 7 -- With the UN facing charges of bias and cover up of fraud in Afghanistan, Wednesday in New York the UN presented no fewer than three officials to the Press corps, all intent on rebutting and bad mouthing the UN's fired deputy envoy Peter Galbraith.

The Department of Peacekeeping Operation's second in command Edmond Mulet said the Galbraith has "personal motives" for going public with his complaints that main envoy Kai Eide has been covering up electoral irregularities in the service of Hamid Karzai. Inner City Press asked Mulet to describe how Galbraith has hired for the job, and why these personal motives, or propensity to be a loose cannon, had not been discovered at the time.

Mulet said that while Galbraith had been "a candidate among others... he was selected by the Secretary General... I cannot deny that him being a citizen of an important country that plays an important role in Afghanistan, that also was a factor we took into consideration." Video here, from Minute 1:01:56.

According to Mulet, the UN thought Galbraith's American citizenship was a plus, that Galbraith would somehow represent or be a conduit to the United States. So what now -- does Galbraith speak for the U.S.? Or, as some surmise, did Richard Holbrooke create a Frankenstein and then "leave him out to dry"?

UN's Mulet and Spokesperson in past, Galbraith as whistleblower not shown

Inner City Press asked Mulet and his colleagues to respond to Galbraith's statement in the Daily Telegraph that

"the final instruction from the Secretary-General before sacking him last week was: 'Do not talk.' He initially agreed to Ban Ki-moon's request after being given assurances that his dismissal would be presented as a dispute over how the UN mission was handling electoral fraud in Afghanistan. But he decided to break his silence, after officials announced instead that his sacking was in the 'best interests of the mission.' 'I might have tolerated even this last act of dishonesty in a dispute dating back months if the stakes were not so high.'"

While Mulet didn't answer, his colleague Wolfgang Weisbrod-Weber, the Director of the Asia and Middle East Division of DPKO, said that while he didn't know what Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said, DPKO has told Galbraith "do not exacerbate the divergence of views in public unnecessarily."

Since Galbraith was complaining not only of electoral fraud but also of bias by his boss, Kai Eide, and was told to be quiet and then was fired, Inner City Press asked how this complied or relates to the UN's statement policy of protection of whistleblowers' rights to make such complaints. Video here, from Minute 1:04:14.

Mulet insisted that Galbraith is not a whistleblower, saying "he has a personal agenda, a person objective that will become clear in the future." Another reporter said that Ban's chief of staff Vijay Nambiar said that Galbraith was removed because he was trying to engineer an unconstitutional change of government in Afghanistan. There was no response to this, nor to Inner City Press' question about whether the UN will, as Karzai challenger Abdullah Abdullah and others have urged, conduct an investigation of Eide's actions, by the Office of Internal Oversight Services.

While Mulet and Craig Jenness, Director of the Electoral Assistance Division of the Department of Political Affairs both insisted that the UN had no monitoring role in Afghanistan, a May 11, 2009 press release by the UN statedthat "UNAMA will follow these elections closely and monitor the campaign to help ensure that the fundamental political rights of the Afghan people are respected. " So which is it? Watch this site.

Abdullah questions UN impartiality in Afghan vote

Afghanistan's former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah (L) and incumbent President Hamid Karzai.

Abdullah Abdullah, the main challenger to incumbent President Hamid Karzai, has raised serious doubts about the neutrality of the UN since the August poll in Afghanistan.

During a Saturday news conference in Kabul, the former foreign minister sharply criticized the head of the United Nations' mission in Afghanistan.

Abdullah emphasized that Kai Eide, the UN special envoy to the country, had worked against uncovering the full extent of fraud in the polls, which were also marred by the Taliban intimidation.

He also suggested that a full internal inquiry was needed into Eide's conduct, saying that the alleged fraud had "greatly damaged" the reputation of the UN in Afghanistan.

"... But as far as I am concerned, in my mind I have no doubt that it has seriously damaged the UN's credibility in Afghanistan."

The sharp criticism comes after the dismissal of a key deputy to Eide. Deputy head of the UN mission in Afghanistan Peter Galbraith was sacked over a dispute with his superior about how to handle allegations of fraud.

Galbraith had requested the annulment of the votes in 1,000 of the 25,000 polling stations and a recount of ballots at 5,000 more. Eide, however, had called for the recount of 1,000 polling stations.

The UN mission alongside the Kabul government was responsible for the election's smooth running in the war-ravaged country.

The final and uncertified count of votes indicated a Karzai victory in the Afghan presidential election. The results showed Karzai gaining more than 54.6 percent of the vote and rival Abdullah Abdullah, who managed to win less than 27.8 percent.

The election has been overshadowed by allegations of widespread fraud. Should fraud investigations cause Karzai's figure to drop below 50 percent, he would have to go and compete against Abdullah in a second round of elections.

US diplomat claims UN tried to gag him

By Ben Farmer in Kabul
Published: 6:11PM BST 04 Oct 2009

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/6259530/US-diplomat-claims-UN-tried-to-gag-him.html

Peter Galbraith: Top UN official lost job after clash with boss over Afghan fraud Photo: AFP/GETTY

The former deputy to UN special envoy Kai Eide, told the Washington Post that Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's final instruction before firing him last week was: "Do not talk".

He initially agreed to the request after being given assurances that his dismissal would be presented as a dispute over how the UN mission was handling electoral fraud in Afghanistan.

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But he decided to break his silence after officials announced instead that his firing was in the "best interests of the mission".

"I might have tolerated even this last act of dishonesty in a dispute dating back many months if the stakes were not so high," he told the wall . "But the fraud was a fact that the United Nations had to acknowledge or risk losing its credibility with the many Afghans who did not support President Hamid Karzai,"

Mr Galbraith also launched an outspoken attack on his Norwegian former boss accusing him of repeatedly denying or downplaying vote rigging that favoured Hamid Karzai.

Mr Eide had told Mr Galbraith not to pursue allegations of fraud and had sided against him when he demanded Karzai-appointed electoral officials enforce anti-fraud measures.

Mr Galbraith, who oversaw UN support to the elections, said his colleagues were now so disgusted by the events that led to his firing that at least five were planning to resign.

Mr Galbraith said: "As many as 30 per cent of Karzai's votes were fraudulent, and lesser fraud was committed on behalf of other candidates.

"The fraud has handed the Taliban its greatest strategic victory in eight years of fighting the United States and its Afghan partners."

Calling the poll a "foreseeable train wreck", he said he had tried to prevent fraud by demanding polling stations not open in insecure areas where they could not be monitored or observed.

A spokesman for the UN in Kabul said the mission "has not, does not and will not turn a blind eye to fraud".

He said the UN had insisted on "slavish adherence to the election process" and the organisation's neutrality had been "paramount at all times".

Fired UN envoy claims third of Hamid Karzai votes fraudulent

• Jon Boone in Kabul and Ed Pilkington in New York
• guardian.co.uk, Sunday 4 October 2009 21.18 BST

Peter Galbraith accused his former chief at the UN, Kai Eide, of deliberately playing down the level of cheating in the election. Photograph: Toby Talbot/Associated Press

A former senior United Nations diplomat in Kabul has made a scathing attack on the UN's handling of Afghanistan's disputed elections, claiming that almost one in three of the votes cast for president Hamid Karzaiwere fraudulent.

Peter Galbraith, the former deputy head of the UN mission in Afghanistan, singled out his former chief, Kai Eide, for criticism, saying he had deliberately played down the level of cheating in an election where, in one region, "10 times as many votes were recorded as voters actually cast".

Galbraith was sacked last week, after his disagreements with Eide, a Norwegian diplomat in charge of the UN mission, about how to deal with electoral fraud became public. Galbraith said the extraordinary level of fraud in the August vote "has handed the Taliban its greatest strategic victory in eight years of fighting the United States and its Afghan partners".

The election was a "foreseeable train wreck", he said, with Eide standing idle as Afghan election authorities and ministers loyal to the president avoided taking steps that could have reduced massive fraud.

The forceful intervention via an opinion piece in Sunday's Washington Post, came at an increasingly difficult time for the US-led war effort, beset by deteriorating security, mounting deaths and political uncertainty. The US military suffered its deadliest day in more than a year on Saturday when eight American soldiers were killed in sustained attacks on eastern outposts.

Galbraith's disclosure could torpedo what many diplomats in Kabul suspect is an attempt by Eide and the US to minimise controversy over fraud allegations, and to move quickly to declare Karzai re-elected president. Opposition politicians, including Abdullah Abdullah, the second-placed candidate, who wants to see a run-off vote, have seized on remarks made by Galbraith since he was sacked by Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, last Wednesday.

On Saturday Abdullah accused Eide of "giving a green card for fraud to determine the outcome of the election".

A war of words between Galbraith and the UN (which has attempted to characterise the row as a "personality dispute") has been gradually escalating. In a letter to Ban, leaked to the New York Times, Galbraith made devastating allegations against Eide, including the claim that the latter ordered him not to hand to election officials information which showed turnout had been tiny in the south, where the Taliban intimidation campaign against voters was most effective.

Galbraith also said Eide told him to stop lobbying for the elimination of "ghost polling stations" — voting centres too dangerous to actually open, but which nonetheless received ballot papers that could be filled out by corrupt officials.

His article in the Washington Post, "What I Saw at the Afghan Election", went even further with its claim that a third of Karzai's votes were fraudulent. If true, that would mean the president received well under the 50% for him to win on the first round. Preliminary results give Karzai 55% and Abdullah 28%.

The UN-backed Afghan election complaints commission has ordered an audit of 10% of 3,063 votes deemed to be suspicious either because of a very high turnout or where nearly all votes went to a single candidate.

However, Galbraith writes: "President Obama needs a legitimate Afghan partner to make any new strategy for the country work. However, the extensive fraud that took place on August 20 virtually guarantees that a government emerging from the tainted vote will not be credible with many Afghans."

Unless the US can build a relationship with a legitimate Afghan partner, its options are drastically reduced. The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, last week recognised as much: "Without a willing partner, one free of corruption and transparent, I don't think any situation or any series of meetings can adequately solve for the Afghan people the problem that that would contribute to."

In his earlier letter to Ban, Galbraith also claimed Eide prevented him trying to stop the independent election commission, in overall charge of the vote, from abandoning its safeguards, which would have excluded fraudulent ballots, probably reducing Karzai's score to below 50%, forcing a second-round vote.

Eide told him to back off, Galbraith said, after Karzai ordered his foreign minister to protest that the American was interfering in Afghan affairs. He said the Afghan government threatened him with expulsion.

US diplomat 'forced out' over stance on Afghan election fraud

Officials say Peter Galbraith removed from UN post after pressing for inquiry into results heavily favouring Karzai

• Peter Beaumont in London and Jon Boone in Kabul
• guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 30 September 2009 14.08 BST
• Article history

The most senior American diplomat at the UN mission in Afghanistanappears to have been forced out of his post after failing to secure an investigation into claims of widespread fraud favouring Hamid Karzai in the August presidential elections.

According to UN officials speaking anonymously, Peter Galbraith, the deputy UN special envoy, is being removed from his post following a row with his Norwegian boss, Kai Eide, over the issue. Galbraith had taken an outspoken line towards the allegations of fraud in the 20 August election, in the process angering Karzai, the incumbent president.

Peter Galbraith, the top American UN diplomat in Afghanistan, was apparently forced out after the country's ministers refused to work with him. Photograph: Toby Talbot/Associated Press

Galbraith – responsible for electoral matters at the UN mission in Kabul – has already left the Afghan capital. UN officials previously acknowledged the dispute but attempted to play it down as a difference over "style".

Whether or not Galbraith returns in the short term, UN sources say the secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, was persuaded to end Galbraith's mission after ministers in Karzai's government apparently said they could no longer work with him.

Eide has confirmed that Galbraith left the country after an argument, but denied he asked the secretary general to remove him. In an email to the BBC, Galbraith denied he had been fired, but he is not expected to return to Kabul.

The recall of Galbraith would almost certainly have required the agreement of the Obama administration and has come as a surprise following the earlier demand by Obama's own envoy to Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, that Karzai respect the proper election process.

US criticism of the Karzai administration emerged in the leaked confidential report prepared by the US commander in the country, General Stanley McChrystal, which warned that corruption within the Karzai government was as big a threat as the Taliban.

The exit of Galbraith, a highly regarded diplomat who first came to prominence in the Balkans, would appear to further reduce Obama's scope for manoeuvre in Afghanistan at a time when he is facing calls from his military commander for up to 40,000 more soldiers. The delivery of such a prominent scalp for Karzai – if confirmed – would underline how little leverage the international community has over his regime, widely regarded by the international community as being part of the country's problem.

Perhaps significantly, Galbraith's reported removal comes within days of reports that the US and its allies decided to accept Karzai remaining as president even if the investigation into voter fraud meant his share of the vote falling below 50%, which had been expected to trigger a run-off with his closest rival, Abdullah Abdullah.

Galbraith was formerly the US ambassador to Croatia and helped negotiate the end of the war in that country. He served as director of political, constitutional and electoral affairs for the UN transitional administration in East Timor from 2000 to 2001. Outspoken in his criticism of the conduct of the US war in Iraq during the Bush administration, he resigned from government to write The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End.

Within hours of the news that Galbraith was not expected to return to Kabul, a member of the UN's political affairs unit had resigned. Others are likely to follow among the diplomats who liked Galbraith personally and backed his tough approach to officials of the Afghan Independent Election Commission (IEC), who many believe are complicit in attempts to rubber-stamp a Karzai first round victory.

One UN source said the mood inside the mission was "far from happy" while another said the west appeared resigned to dealing with a tainted president.

Galbraith left Afghanistan shortly after a stormy meeting in mid-September attended by a large number of election monitoring organisations and other groups where he attacked IEC officials for not making preparations for a run-off.

A UN diplomat said Galbraith's strategy had been to try to compel the IEC to investigate the huge number of suspicious ballots before announcing preliminary results that put Karzai well over the 50% mark.

Galbraith was reported to have been furious that the IEC first voted to apply a set of fraud standards to its count that would have excluded tens of thousands of votes, only to reverse the decision the next day, apparently following political pressure.

His tough stance prompted Eide, once a close friend of Galbraith, to ask him to leave the country for a short period. Eide is far less confrontational and has adopted a cautious approach to navigating through the aftermath of an election now widely regarded as irreparably tainted.