I wasn’t sure what to make of Una Vera’s post about a new Afghan anti-corruption effort, and she was good enough to respond to clear things up. Bottom line: who knows if it’s for-real right now!

I think Ershad Ahmadi and Eshaq Aleko are sincere when they say they want to stamp out the kind of official corruption that has undercut every effort to advance peace and development in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban, but they are in for quite a fight if they are. The history of post-2001 Afghanistan is filled with stories of civil servants who tried to do the right thing, and were crushed into the dust by corrupt and vastly more powerful forces within the state, and abandoned by an unreliable and divided international community when they could have steered their country away from today’s treacherous waters with a little political support. Just look at the disarmament program. Or the elections. Or the transitional justice plan.

Read the whole thing. The world needs more Unas.