McClatchy Blogs features reporters and editors
\ncovering issues and events from Washington to
\nJerusalem, Afghanistan and beyond.<\/i><\/p>\n
How does the U.S. military support Haiti without looking like an occupier?<\/b><\/p>\n
Nukes & Spooks<\/p>\n
Posted by Nancy Youssef<\/p>\n
In the midst of the looting, violence and chaos that is engulfing Haiti, the U.S. military is trying to strike a delicate balance – reaching out and providing aid, while signaling to the Haitians it has no interest in occupying their country.<\/p>\n
It is a challenging task. While the United States has been Haiti’s largest foreign aid contributor for decades, it’s also been its most frequent occupier. It’s a role the U.S. would like not to repeat.<\/p>\n
The U.S. military has said that it wants the Haitian people to see troops passing out food, water and other needed items. En route to India today, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates addressed concerns that the U.S. presence could look like an occupation, telling reporters that while U.S. forces would provide some security, “I haven’t heard of us playing a policing role at any point.” U.N. forces would take the lead he said, adding: “We are there in support of them and the government of Haiti.”<\/p>\n
But that might be difficult. The Haitian government is weak, its infrastructure frail and its security situation so precarious that it demands a show of force. On Monday, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon asked the U.N. Security Council immediately to send 3,500 security officers to address the security problem.<\/p>\n
So how does the U.S. military support a weak government without looking like occupiers? That is, to properly support this government, the U.S. may have to step in and be the government because Haitian officials simply cannot do the job. And what are the consequences of looking like an occupation force?<\/p>\n
New U.N. survey shows extent of bribery in everyday Afghan life<\/b><\/p>\n
Nukes & Spooks<\/p>\n
Posted by Jonathan Landay<\/p>\n
It’s no secret that paying bribes is a part of everyday life in Afghanistan. A report released last week by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime that attempts to quantify the problem shows just how daunting it will be to reduce the corruption that permeates the government and helps power recruiting for the Taliban-led insurgency.<\/p>\n
The report concludes that Afghans in 2009 paid bribes totaling about $2.5 billion, or the equivalent of about 23 percent of GNP. That means that bribery and opium production, which accounted for an estimated $2.8 billion last year, represent the country’s largest income generators.<\/p>\n
“It is almost impossible to obtain a public service in Afghanistan without greasing a palm,” writes Antonio Maria Costa, the UNODC executive director, in the report. “During the past 12 months, one Afghan out of two, in both rural and urban communities, had to pay at least one kickback to a public official.”<\/p>\n
The report was based on a survey of 7,600 people in 12 provincial capitals and more than 1,600 villages across the war-torn country. It provides sobering reading for U.S. and allied officials who are pressing Afghan President Hamid Karzai to clean up corruption as part of the strategy to contain the Taliban-led insurgency.<\/p>\n
The average bribe amounts to $158, the incidence of bribery is somewhat higher in rural areas than urban areas – 56 percent versus 46 percent, and it is more prevalent in the country’s north and the east, according to the UNODC report.<\/p>\n
“A kickback is so commonly sought (and paid) to speed up administrative procedures that more than a third of the population (38 percent) think that this is the norm,” it found.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
McClatchy Blogs features reporters and editors covering issues and events from Washington to Jerusalem, Afghanistan and beyond. How does the U.S. military support Haiti without looking like an occupier? Nukes & Spooks Posted by Nancy Youssef In the midst of the looting, violence and chaos that is engulfing Haiti, the U.S. military is trying to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4325,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-220860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4325"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220860\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}