Sell Your Daughter To Free Your Son. A Story Of Corruption In Afghanistan

Samsor (not his real name) works in the Afghan Attorney General’s Office. He’s in his early 30’s and has a degree in political science from Kabul University. He’s worked at the AG’s office for nine years as an investigator, specializing in uncovering official corruption by top level officials.

“This job is very difficult,” he told me on Sunday. “We all work very hard, but sometimes all of our work is undone by a single phone-call from the president.”

Samsor is of course speaking of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who in the past year alone has pardoned drug runners, the Kabul mayor who had been found guilty of stealing city money, pedophile provincial governors and a host of other very scummy public “servants.”

Still, the men and women of the AG’s office, tasked with prosecuting Afghanistan’s growing criminal class, plod on, taking solace in small victories.

One of Samsor’s favorite cases was that of the Kunduz attorney general.

Samsor says that about two years ago he was sent to Kunduz province to look into allegations that the top prosecutor there was taking money to go easy on the criminals he was supposed to be convicting.

“There was a case where a group of thieves, maybe 14 of them, had robbed an entire village at gun-point. The prosecutor in Kunduz did not want to arrest anyone, but under pressure from our office he arrested a few young men. One of them definitely was not involved and his mother went to beg that her son be released. The prosecutor said, ‘give me $4,000 (US) and I’ll let your son go.’ The woman of course had barely enough money to feed herself, much less $4,000, so she said, ‘I do not have this money.’

The prosecutor suggested that she sell her 14-year-old daughter to raise the money for her son’s release. Luckily that was around the time that I arrived from Kabul. I took her testimony and we prosecuted the case. The prosecutor received 12 years in prison and he did not have powerful enough friends to get released. He was 74 when I sent him away and inshallah he will die in prison.

People like him have ruined this country.