Ex-Senior Official Alleges Afghanistan Government Trading Official Posts for Sex

A general who served as a senior adviser to Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani alleged the current administration is trading sexual favors for government posts, several news outlets reported this week.

“People were working systematically for promoting adultery in the palace, and everyone is aware of it,” Gen. Habibullah Ahmadzai, a former senior adviser to Ghani declared on Khurshid TV on May 23, citing it as one of the reasons for his leaving his post after working with Ghani for over three years, non-governmental organization Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) reported Monday.

Reportedly, the general did not provide any specific evidence.

OCCRP noted:

Critics have claimed that these accusations are largely retaliatory for Ahmadzai’s failure to be elected to parliament in the 2018 election but Mariam Wardak, a security analyst who worked within the administration, backed up the general’s claims in an interview with an Indian news network.

“One may take General Ahmadzai’s interview as someone scorned,” the analyst told World is One News (WION). “But that understanding of the issues he brought up and highlight reflect reality.”

'Sexual favours' charge against #Afghanistan government: Security analyst @MaroWardak speaks exclusively to WION about the latest controversy to hit the @ashrafghani government pic.twitter.com/lJdnykEEP4

— WION (@WIONews) May 25, 2019

On Tuesday, Jamshid Rasuli, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office in Afghanistan, told reporters that the Ghani administration had formed a team to investigate the allegations, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reported.

“Rasuli said investigators had asked Ahmadzai to deliver any evidence he may have to support his claims by May 30,” RFE/RL added.

Nargis Nehan, the acting Afghan minister of mines and petroleum, wrote on Twitter on Saturday, “As a female member of cabinet in [Kabul], I can say with confidence that these allegations are baseless.”

As a female member of cabinet in NUG, I can say with confidence that these allegations are baseless. I ask NSC @hmohib & AWN @MaryAkrami to follow up this matter. We have advocated for women political participation for decades and can’t let it be used for political rivalries. https://t.co/Zl0aChHGTA

— Nargis Nehan (@NehanNargis) May 25, 2019

Rasuli reportedly said investigators had asked Ahmadzai to deliver any evidence he may have to support his claims by May 30.

Acknowledging that the corruption allegations blew up on social media, the New York Times (NYT) reported Sunday:

With the presidential elections just months away, the timing of the allegations, with no evidence, could be politically motivated. And they could also ensure serious ramifications for women working in the Afghan government, since even moderate urban men are often hesitant to allow the women in their families to work in public offices.

Ghani is seeking a second term in the Afghan elections, delayed for a second time to September 28 as U.S.-Taliban peace negotiations continue and may yield a power-sharing agreement.

Afghanistan is no stranger to graft, ranging from the theft of government funds to officials’ involvement in the lucrative opium trade that is partly fueling the unprecedented number of heroin overdose deaths in the United States.

In 2017, John Sopko, the chief of the watchdog agency known as U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), warned that fraud, waste, and abuse of American taxpayer funds feeding the country’s appetite for corruption has become endemic, fostering deadly violence and placing American troops at risk.

SIGAR listed ongoing “endemic corruption” in its latest report on “high risks” to America’s $133 billion nation-building effort, unveiled in March.

At the end of April, SIGAR noted in its latest quarterly report to Congress:

Corruption remains an enduring risk to the U.S. mission in Afghanistan. SIGAR’s September 2016 Lessons Learned Program report on corruption found that corruption substantially undermined the U.S. mission in Afghanistan from the very start.

SIGAR concluded that failure to effectively address the problem means U.S. reconstruction programs, at best, will continue to be subverted by systemic corruption and, at worst, will fail. Despite many anticorruption efforts, the problem persists. According to the Department of Defense, “corruption remains the top strategic threat to the legitimacy and success of the Afghan government.”

In the TV interview last week, Gen. Ahmadzai added that illegal sexual favoritism practices to the long list of corruption activities in Afghanistan.

It is unclear if the alleged sexual acts were consensual or not.