Warlords and Drugs

One thing which scares us a lot here in Afghanistan is the presents of warlords in politics and economics. There is a huge new area here in Kabul where they are all putting up new houses. Houses?!? They are actually more looking like these palaces you know from the mogul area in India. A little Amber (Jaipur) Palace with it’s mirror-hall as an entrance-area. Horribly presumptuous if you consider Afghanistan as one of the five poorest countries in the world followed only by Burundi, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Sierra Leone.

But these people get their money basically out of drug-production (Afghanistan is producing 70% of the opium you find on the world-market), bribery, corruption, etc. And now you are asking what the government is doing against this? Well nothing! They are the government.

What I have heard, some of the highest ministers and politiciens are deeply involved in all this. And the recent parliamentary elections have shown nothing better. Many of the warlords have actually been elected. The reasons are basically huge sums these people had put into bribery and similar things. Many had been paid (I heard of sums up to 100-130 U.S.$), phone-cards had been distributed, mosques had been build: a “good” Muslim should be a “good” politician. A “good!!!” Muslim for sure!