‘Go to bed with dogs, you wake up with fleas’: Crack down on Afghan corruption, U.S. watchdog urges

WATCH: John Sopko, Inspector General for the U.S. Office for Afghanistan Reconstruction, tells Mercedes Stephenson his office has had some recent setback in trying to rebuild Afghanistan and that peace and security are necessary to move forward.

The old saying holds true when it comes to how the West went into Afghanistan.

“You go to bed with dogs, you wake up with fleas,” said John Sopko, U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. “That happened in Afghanistan.”

And he warns that is complicating efforts to try and root out systemic problems like corruption and the expansion of the opium trade.

In the discussion, Sopko said the challenges facing both donor countries contributing aid to the troubled country, and those like the U.S. deploying fresh batches of soldiers to its regions, stem to a large degree from going in without a clear understanding of exactly who Western countries were empowering when they set about replacing the Taliban with local leaders.

Many of them, however, had ties to the same group the West wanted to defeat — now, the longer-term consequences are being felt.

“We empowered a lot of these warlords,” Sopko said, pointing to corruption as one of the major problems facing countries trying to change the system.

“Now we’re stuck with them, and we’ve got to do something with them.”

So how does one deal with a problem like corruption?

It has consistently stymied efforts in countries around the world, as corruption is not limited to Afghanistan.

Canada is the ninth-largest donor to reconstruction projects in the country.

It has spent roughly $2.8 billion in reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2016, and recommitted an additional $465 million in 2016 to help with the cost of the Afghan security forces and empowering women and girls. - More

‘Go to bed with dogs, you wake up with fleas’: Crack down on Afghan corruption, U.S. watchdog urges - Continue reading →