Is This Wealth Redistribution Or Just Corruption? [Reader Post]

More than three billion dollars, packed into suitcases, loaded onto pallets, and declared to the Afghan authorities has been loaded onto airplanes and flown legally out of the country from Kabul International Airport in the last three years.

Officials believe some of the cash, if not most, is siphoned from Western aid projects and U.S., European and NATO contracts to provide security, supplies and reconstruction work for coalition forces in Afghanistan. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization spent about $14 billion here last year alone. Profits reaped from the opium trade are also a part of the money flow, as is cash earned by the Taliban from drugs and extortion, officials say.

The amount declared as it leaves the airport is vast in a nation where the gross domestic product last year totaled $13.5 billion. More declared cash flies out of Kabul each year than the Afghan government collects in tax and customs revenue nationwide. “It’s not like they grow money on trees here,” said a U.S. official investigating corruption and Taliban financing. “A lot of this looks like our tax dollars being stolen. And opium, of course.”

Most of the money is transfered through “Hawalas”, a sometimes secret organization that has transfered money in the Muslim world for centuries.

The officials believe hawala customers who have sent millions of dollars of their money abroad include high-ranking officials and their associates in President Hamid Karzai’s administration, including Vice President Mohammed Fahim, and one of the president’s brothers, Mahmood Karzai, an influential businessmen.

Where they allegedly get the money is one of the questions under investigation.

Vice President Fahim, responded through his brother, A.H. Fahim, a businessman, who denied the allegations. “My brother? He doesn’t know anything about money,” Mr. Fahim said.

Mahmood Karzai said in an interview he has engaged in only legitimate businesses and has never transferred large sums of cash from the country.

In a Jan. 22 financial disclosure form that he gave the Wall Street Journal to review, Mr. Karzai declared his net worth was $12,157,491 with assets of $21,163,347 and liabilities of $9,006,106. He reported an annual income of just over $400,000 but didn’t provide dates.

Mahmood Karzai, an American citizen, blamed the allegations that he was transferring illicitly earned cash from Afghanistan on political opponents.

“Yes, millions of dollars are leaving this country but it is all taken by politicians. Bribes, corruption, all of it,” he said. “But let’s find out who is taking it. Let’s not go on rumors. I’ve said this to the Americans.”

Apparently, Obama’s War in Afghanistan is so profitable, that ending the war would destroy the pension plans of Afghan politicians.  It is no wonder the Afghan leadership seems reluctant to defeat the Taliban, without the Taliban, the graft money would dry up and they would rely solely on the heroin trade.

Obama shares his genius once again, during a break from the boob tube.