Corruption skyrockets in Afghanistan
(www.antiimperialism.wordpress.com)
Afghans paid nearly a billion dollars in bribes in 2009, up from 466 million in 2007, according to the Kabul-based NGO, Integrity Watch Afghanistan. The rapid growth of corruption in Afghanistan, which includes not just monetary payments but nepotism and sexual extortion, occurs only years into the US’s occupation of the country.
According to the report, 15% of households were affected by land-related corruption in 2009. Another report by the UN paints an even grimmer picture, stating Afghans paid out $2.5 billion in bribes, and that Afghans themselves consider corruption to be the country’s biggest problem.
Presumably, neither of the polls asked Afghans what role the occupation might have or if imperialism was the biggest problem facing the country. This is because both surveys were crafted to serve not the masses of Afghanistan, but imperialism’s long-term rule over them.
Nonetheless, the reports offer important insights. Though imperialists deliver pretty speeches about freedom, democracy and prosperity, they impose and maintain a social order which actively denies these things to the masses of the world. At places where imperialism is most directly involved, whether Third World industrial compounds or countries with militarily-imposed puppets, the masses have the least freedom, democracy and prosperity.
Compared with the paltry 1- 2.5 billion dollars in bribes, Afghans have paid many times more than this in the form of exploitation of their labor and resources, as well as in their lives due to the US’s war. This daily injustice occurs not just to benefit of the imperialists and their Third World lackeys, but their First World lackeys as well, i.e. the majority of people in the First World who are bought-off into supporting this rotten system.
Corruption, like many of the world’s problems, finds much of its root cause in imperialism. It is from the Third World masses’ struggle against imperialism that solutions to this and many more problems will arise.
Sources:
http://www.iwaweb.org/corruptionsurvey2010/Main_findings.html
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,672828,00.html
RAIM-Denver 
Indeed, the survey probably offered only a limited range of options, not including imperialist occupation. So it is not valid to conclude that Afghans regard corruption as their country’s greatest problem. For example, if the survey asked “Which of the following is the greatest problem in Afghanistan: corruption, hangnails, or the high price of champagne?”, most people would point to corruption, but that wouldn’t mean that no other issues (such as U$ occupation) were of greater concern to the majority of Afghans.