Wars Fail To End Corruption In Iraq and Afghanistan

Before 2001, Al Quaida was able to operate in Afghanistan because Afghanistan was a thoroughly corrupt nation in which the will of the people was not able to gain fair representation in a stable government. Before 2003, Iraq made many Americans nervous because its government was corrupt as well – controlled by a few power hungry individuals, unaccountable to the populations over which it claimed sovereignty.

The problems of Afghanistan and Iraq were, fundamentally, about corruption. Any response to the international instability caused by those nations could be judged by the extent to which it resulted in a decline in corruption in those nations.

The USA went to war against both nations, and has occupied them militarily for years, setting up new governments in the place of the old, corrupt regimes. The idea was that these new governments would serve as shining examples that would provoke an end to other corrupt governments throughout the Middle East and central Asia.

So, how well did war work as a tool for ending corruption and establishing stable, accountable governments? According to this year’s Corruption Perception Index from Transparency International, war and military occupation seems to have been an extremely poor tool for replacing corrupt regimes with honest ones.

The index ranks Afghanistan as the second most corrupt nation on Earth. Only Somalia, the home of pirates and warlords that lacks a real government, is more corrupt. Eight years of American military intervention in Afghanistan seems not to have made that nation less of a safe haven for extremist groups seeking to exploit lawless conditions.

Iraq is in better shape than Afghanistan – but not by much. Iraq is tied with the Sudan as the fourth most corrupt nation on Earth. Let’s not give up hope for Iraq, though. Our military has been there for one and a half years less than it’s been in Afghanistan. By the end of 2010, Iraq could be as corrupt as Afghanistan is now.