Foreigners are fuelling the problem of corruption in Afghanistan, a country already ranked as one of the most corrupt in the world, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said on Sunday. At a major international conference in Germany on the future of Afghanistan last week, Karzai pledged to step up the fight against corruption in return for sustained international support.
But speaking in the capital on Sunday, Karzai said foreigners were adding to the problem by, for example, awarding contracts to high ranking government officials.
"We have problems with both Afghans and foreigners... Our foreigner colleagues have not only been uncooperative but sometimes they have created obstacles," he told an anti-corruption conference.
"One of the ways to curb corruption is that foreigners should stop giving out contracts to the relatives of the high-ranking government officials. We have to revise and reform the contract system. "We have lost our mutual trust: foreigners think we go corrupt for political reasons, and we think they are corrupt for the same reason."
In a global survey published this month by Berlin-based anti-graft watchdog Transparency International, Afghanistan was again named one of the world's most corrupt nations, coming 180th out of 183 countries. Karzai said that the corruption problem was exacerbated by uncertainty over the future of the country. "We have to work together with our foreigner friends to give people assurance," he said. Afghanistan pledged at a conference in Bonn last Monday to maintain the fight against corruption as one of its "key priorities".
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