An Afghan Reconstruction Horror Story, Part 1

A major troop surge is currently underway in Afghanistan, where in the past year more American soldiers were killed than in any previous year since the war began. President Obama has called the country “the central focus, the central front, on our battle against terrorism,” citing the need for the Afghan government to do more to combat resurgent al Qaeda and Taliban forces. But if the first internationally led endeavor in post-9/11 nation-building fails it won’t be solely because of a battlefield defeat. The warped nature of the Afghan political system will be as much to blame. Many honest liberals and reformists, culled from the ranks of an impressive Afghan diaspora, have tried to rebuild a country ravaged by a decade of Islamist totalitarian rule only to discover that, while surface appearances may indeed be more hygienic, “official” corruption and criminality persist at levels intolerable for the future viability of a post-totalitarian regime. The sad case of Dr. Mohammed Atash, the former president of Ariana, Afghanistan’s largest commercial airline, should be seen as a cautionary tale for what the U.S. and Europe may face in short order: namely, a failed state built on the ruins of the Taliban and sustained by cynical domestic interests.

Like many gifted students from the Middle East in the late 1960’s, Atash received a cosmopolitan education, first earning a B.S. in chemistry from the American University in Beirut, for decades the training ground for future Muslim luminariesÑin Atash’s year, the school graduated the U.S. ambassador to both postwar Afghanistan and postwar Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad, Voice of America journalist Rauf Mehrpour, former Chancellor of Kabul University and Minister of Finance Dr. Ashraf Ghani, as well as a host of other notable Afghans. And like Khalilzad, Atash continued his graduate studies in the U.S., attaining a Ph.D. in Educational Research, Statistics, and Measurement from Florida State University, which enabled him to act as the Head of Chemistry and Research Departments in Afghanistan’s Ministry of Education Science Center between 1970 and 1977. Having completed that stint, Atash returned to the U.S. and worked as a researcher and professor of applied statistics; he also founded a chain of automotive lube shops; his own consulting firm, PARSA; and the non-profit Nooristan Foundation, which has been dedicated to rebuilding schools in the rural districts of Afghanistan and in 2003 received a $100,000 grant from America’s Fund for Afghan Children, established by President Bush. In 1999, Atash was invited to participate in the Rome Group of the Loya Jirga, the government-in-exile that sought a peaceful form of regime change during the pre-9/11 reign of the Taliban.

So he had all the credentials of a brilliant and influential member of the Afghan diaspora, which, even before the first bomb fell on Kabul in 2001, was poised to begin the long process of rebuilding its impoverished homeland. After the Taliban was routed, Atash became a fixture in the international media: He was the Founding Chairman of the Afghan-American Chamber of Commerce and helped projects through institutions such as the World Bank and the United States Trade & Development Agency that lay the seeds of foreign investment in Afghanistan. Not surprisingly, he was approached in 2005 by Hamid Karzai’s Ministry of Finance, which recruited him as a Senior Advisor, a role which afforded countless opportunities for abstract planning but very few concrete projects. It was a more interesting phone call that Atash answered months later that forever changed his life, and altered his view of the Karzai government.

Enayat Qasimi, an Afghan-American attorney and former legal adviser to the newly elected President Hamid Karzai, had been recently  appointed Minister of Transportation, a significant post since Afghanistan sees as many as 30,000 Muslims making the annual hajj and traveling to Saudi Arabia. It was especially for the purpose of reforming the “hajj operation” that Qasimi solicited Atash to become the new President of Ariana, one of Afghanistan’s leading airlines, once considered by travel experts to be among the finest in the world. (Qasimi had previously hired Atash as unpaid consultant to the Ministry of Transportation on the strong recommendation of Ambassador Khalilzad.) It was now known as one of the world’s “most dangerous” carriers. A combination of Taliban incompetence and economic sanctions had reduced Ariana to a scant fleet of mostly Russian- and Ukranian-built aircraft, and with a foreign flight route limited to Dubai and Riyadh. A U.N. Security Council Resolution in 1999 ordered the grounding of all overseas flights and the shuttering of Ariana’s offices in Kabul. The national airline’s use in the trafficking of drugs, as well as of Al Qaeda and Taliban figures, had been notorious for years, and with these added restrictions, it didn’t take long for Ariana effectively to go out of business, which it did a month after 9/11.

By 2002, the U.N. resolution was lifted, but the state of industrial disrepair endured, and the hajj was being conducted in such a disorganized and dangerous manner that the new Karzai administration set itself an ambitious goal: By December 2005, all pious Afghans should be able to make an easy pilgrimage. This was the task Atash stood to inherit, so he was understandably reluctant to accept, citing also his lack of experience in the aviation industry. But Qasimi persisted and eventually his fellow expatriate felt morally obliged to accept the corporate presidency, which he describes as a “demotion” given his thirty-plus years as a successful businessman in Washington, D.C., and a slew of remunerative private sector offers. His government salary was set at $100 per month, paltry even by Third World standards, and the post required him to live in Kabul with U.S. and NATO forces on the ground and warlords and resurgent Taliban fighters still an ever-present threat to his safety. Atash also agreed, out of apparent magnanimity, to do without a personal security detail and to live in relatively spartan conditions at a time when most other administration officials and adjuncts enjoyed lavish accommodations.

But there was an additional reason for Atash’s reluctance: He knew the weak track record Karzai’s government had in weeding out corruption within its own ranks; corruption, Atash explains, was that government’s modus operandi, a fact that had become clear to anyone paying attention during even the early phases of reconstruction. “There is no culture of criticism of authority in Afghanistan,” Atash told me, “and anyone working in the government can afford to accept zero accountability for his actions.” The best tenure as a minister or high-level functionary was one distinguished by non-accomplishment, and a genuine reformer was seen as engaged in a hazardous occupation. “I killed my political ambitions by accepting this job,” Atash said. Nevertheless, his conscience prompted him to accept Qasimi’s offer, which he did in May 2005.

For the first few months, Atash became a student again, learning whatever he could about aviation and redeveloping a multibillion dollar transportation company that had been, as he put it, a “neglected house with no repairs.” A chief obstacle was the culture of graft and embezzlement that governed the airline’s day-to-day operations, a culture that was given particular leeway by Ariana’s lack of a modern accounting apparatus. Amazingly, the company hadn’t produced a balance sheet in twenty years, so Atash created a computerized bookkeeping system using the SAP software and he hired two foreign firmsÑone German, the other IndianÑto conduct audits of Ariana’s two previous years, which could then be used as a basis of comparison against future performance. Greater transparency meant not only eliminating graft but also highlighting old debts; Atash obtained more than $6 million in outstanding payments from Ariana’s General Sales Agent in Saudi Arabia. He made the company more amenable to employee feedback, holding regular meetings with Ariana staff during which everyone from ticket agents to baggage handlers could air their grievances and offer insights as to how the airline was performing in general. In addition, Atash reopened its training center for pilots and airline personnel, which had been closed for many years, as well as instituted a cargo deal with the United Arab Emirates to expand Afghanistan’s exports internationally.

Safety was another priority, as Ariana was notorious for its malfunctioning aged aircraft, which were often forced to make emergency landings (Atash was a passenger during one such episode, caught on film, in 2004).

As with most mismanaged corporations, Ariana was hemorrhaging cash, mostly for defunct projects that had been outsourced to foreign entities in the mad rush to reform Afghanistan’s infrastructure after the Taliban’s removal. In one of his first orders of business, Atash cancelled a contract with Lufthansa Consulting, which had been hired at a cost of $2,000 per day per person, inter alia, to assist in the airline’s management as well as to write an operation manual for Ariana, . In a year’s time, the contract hadn’t produced significant improvements, and after nixing it, Atash instructed Captain Assad Sharza, Ariana’s Vice President of International Affairs, to write an operation manual himself, which he did within three months, in his spare time, and at no added expense to the airline.

Sharza is Western-educated pilot who was imprisoned by the Taliban in the 1990s after having returned to Afghanistan to help in an early, doomed revitalization program for Ariana. At Atash’s request to recruit qualified Afghans, Sharza was contacted by the Afghan Embassy in Washington, D.C., in 2004 to help the airline.  He had never met Atash before working with him, but described him, in a phone conversation with me, as “very knowledgeable in economics and business. He was the first president of Ariana I saw who was willing to discuss anything with me.” Sharza’s tenure with the airline hovers between tragedy and farce: He was not only fired from the position after Atash resignedÑthe new president fearing Sharza’s loyalty to the oldÑand he was not only refused his salary of $5,000 for six months of executive employment, but also the government declined to cover his cost of living beyond his basic hotel room charges. By the end of his stay in Kabul, which the new administration talked him into as his wife lay dying back in New York, Sharza found himself having to pay $45,000 of his own money in incidental expenses. “It is such a corrupt country,” he said, stifling a laugh. “From Karzai, all the way down.”

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