The Foreign Service Journal, June 2016

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JUNE 2016 13 Randy Berry addresses the Pride Reception at U.S. Consulate General Amsterdam on July 29, 2014. EDGARVANDEBURGT/U.S.CONSULATEGENERALAMSTERDAM those activists. Sometimes just meeting and talking with a member of the LGBTI community can be enough to change hearts and minds. However, operating as it does under a “do no harm” policy, the State Department walks a delicate line between encouraging and protecting activists in countries where they may face severe punishment by the government or the local community. In the coming year, one of Berry’s top priorities will be redoubling efforts to combat violence against LGBTI persons, particularly transgender individuals. —Shannon Mizzi, Editorial Assistant An Existential Threat: Corruption in Afghanistan I n a pair of recent talks at the Univer- sity of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs and at Harvard University, Special Inspecto r General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) John Sopko spoke bluntly on the perilous state of reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan and, in particular, the role of corruption. Recently Sopko, who is well known for his no-nonsense approach, has come under scrutiny from diplomats an d others who claim that his stridency is counterproductive. These charges were aired in an investigation by Politico in early May. The former state and federal prosecutor with the Depart- ment of Justice’s Organized Crime and Racketeering Sec- tion was appointed by Presi- dent Barack Obama in 2012. While at Harvard, Special Investigator General Sopko focused on the deteriorat- ing security conditions in the country, and in Pittsburgh he explained how “pervasive cor- ruption poses a deadly threat to the entire U.S. effort to rebuild Afghanistan.” Initially the U.S. government had little understanding that corruption could threaten the effort in Afghanistan and actually helped to create conditions for corruption to flourish, injecting vast sums of money into the country with pressure to spend but little oversight. By 2009, the special investigator says, the government came to realize that “corruption is not just a problem for the system of governance in Afghanistan; it is the system of governance.” This conclu- sion is shared by former International Security Assistance Force Commander General John Allen and other military leaders. The problem, then and now, is that combatting corruption requires the co- operation of Afghan elites whose power relies on the very structures anti-corrup- tion efforts sought to dismantle. Two large-scale scandals in 2010, one involving a key aide to then-Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the other implicating the brothers of the president and vice president, showed that corrup- tion was far more deeply entrenched than U.S. authorities had understood. Estimates for total bribes paid by individual Afghans range from $2 billion (according to Integrity Watch Afghani- stan in 2014) to $4 billion (according to the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime in 2012). Since its establishment in 2008, SIGAR has made more than 100 arrests and achieved over 100 convictions or guilty pleas, including from American military personnel (both officers and enlisted), federal civilian employees and contrac- tors. This election was not without controversy, and I’m so proud that London has today chosen hope over fear, unity over division. I hope that we will never be offered such a stark choice again. Fear does not make us safer; it only makes us weaker, and the politics of fear is simply not welcome in our city. —Sadiq Khan, London’s first Muslimmayor, in his acceptance speech on May 6. Contemporary Quote