KABUL—Western countries must share the blame for corruption in Afghanistan and should also give more credit to President Hamid Karzai's government for recent improvements in fighting it, the country's finance minister said.
A fraud-tainted election has wrecked Karzai's reputation among the countries that fund and defend his government, making his ties with the West the sourest of his eight-year rule.
Karzai is due to be inaugurated on Nov. 19, while U.S. President Barack Obama is in the final stages of deciding whether to send tens of thousands more troops to reinforce a nearly 110,000-strong international force.
Finance Minister Hazrat Omar Zakhilwal acknowledged Afghan corruption, but said Western leaders were driven by domestic politics to take a particularly harsh stance in recent months, distorting a record that in fact showed progress this year.
"No matter what the president does, no matter what his ministers do with respect to corruption, they will continue to say, 'well, the government's corrupt, the ministers are corrupt' and all that," Zakhilwal told Reuters in an interview.
"What it tells us right now is, no matter what we do against corruption it will never be acknowledged. It will continue to be a political statement," he said. "Good apples, bad apples are all thrown into one basket."
Zakhilwal cited his own ministry, which he said had increased government revenues by 60 percent this year by cracking down on tax evasion and customs fraud.
"That means corruption is certainly down. Big cases busted. People removed, prosecuted. That's a success. But the reflection in the statements is as if things have gotten worse, whereas the reverse is true: things have gotten better," he said.
Big Test
Karzai's next big test will be naming a new cabinet this month, with Western officials insisting key ministries be awarded to technocrats and kept out of the hands of former guerrilla chiefs who delivered votes for Karzai.
Zakhilwal, a Western-educated economist who is among the group of technocrats admired by diplomats and is expected to retain his post, said the new government lineup would probably contain familiar faces, but would nonetheless be an improvement.
"Focus on the portfolio, not on the number of ministers that will be replaced. We have 24-25 ministers. Within them are six or seven delivering 80 or 90 percent of development and services," he said.
"If 80 percent of services and development receive competent and effective ministers, that's a huge, huge change."
Expanding on a point made by Karzai in a television interview last week, Zakhilwal said Western donors were in part to blame for corruption by mismanaging billions of dollars in aid.
"What we are saying to the donors is, as we move forward, let's not make a political slogan of corruption. We know it exists and we know the causes. Some causes are within the government and some causes are outside it," he said.
Only 20 percent of aid was spent by the Afghan government and the rest by the donors themselves, he said, adding that the government's share had been properly accounted for.
"The blame now is put on the Afghan government as if all 100 percent of the aid has been delivered through the government and the government mishandled it. The aid has not been mishandled by the government. The aid has been mishandled by the donors," Zakhilwal said.
More than anything else, it has been the fraud-marred Aug. 20 election that turned Western countries against Karzai.
Karzai was declared the winner this month, but only after a U.N.-backed probe found nearly a third of votes cast for him were fake. That pushed his tally below 50 percent, which would have forced a second round had his opponent not pulled out.
Zakhilwal maintained that Karzai had in fact won in the first round, but agreed to accept the fraud probe's findings only because disputing them would have been more damaging.
