Quotes of the Day

As NATO's member nations convene in Bucharest, Romania, to discuss the state of the alliance, Afghanistan will be at the top of the agenda. General Dan McNeil, commander of the alliance's 43,250 soldiers in Afghanistan, has lobbied for another troop surge to help battle the rising insurgency in the country's south. But lower-level commanders on the ground have something else to add to that wish list. Says one: "Frankly, defeating the Taliban is the least of our worries. They are not going to beat us. What is killing this country is corruption and drugs. That is not for NATO but for the Afghan government to deal with." Some 8,000 more troops, which would constitute the two brigades that McNeil wants, may help secure volatile areas and clear the way for development — key steps toward winning the hearts and minds so dear to counter-insurgency strategists. But if Afghans have no faith in their government to provide equal justice and uniform law, NATO's efforts will be of little worth.

Despite the presence of foreign troops and the supply of billions of dollars in aid, the insurgency has grown stronger since the Taliban were first pushed from power in 2001. Corruption is fueling that growth: for example, the insurgency is funded by the cultivation of poppy and the smuggling of heroin, which many police and officials ignore. Last year Transparency International ranked Afghanistan 172 out of 180 countries surveyed for its Corruption Perceptions Index. "Corruption is the tree," says Parliamentarian Hossein Balkhi. "Terrorism, destabilization, smuggling and poppy are its branches; if you cut down corruption, the rest will die."

Every Afghan has a story about corruption. The electronics shop owner in my old neighborhood in the capital Kabul hasn't had electricity for the past year. Reason: he refuses to pay the $400 bribe to secure a connection to the electrical grid. That, of course, is a minor issue. Need, aggravated by limited supply, allows petty corruption to flourish in every corner of the world without necessarily feeding an insurgency. But what about the driver of an Afghan friend who was picked up one day by the police, beaten, stripped naked and left outside in the snow for several nights until his employer paid a bribe of $3,000 to release him? "We could have complained afterwards," says the employer. "But then we could have been charged ourselves for bribery."

"What do you expect," asks Izzatullah Wasifi, director of the General Independent Administration of Anti-Corruption, "when we pay a [policeman] $60 a month, give him a gun, and tell him to stand up against terrorists and narcotics smugglers, when everyone around him is corrupt? We pay him nothing and expect him to act like an angel and go home and feed his family what — dust, rocks?" The solution, says Wasifi, is better training and higher salaries, both of which are forthcoming under a new U.S.-led police-training program. Last fall President Hamid Karzai admitted that several unnamed high-ranking officials were involved in corruption, saying at a development conference, "the banks of the world are full of the money of our statesmen." Karzai swore to take action but five months later, not a single official has been brought to trial. Meanwhile, some officials build mansions and buy armored SUVs worth far more than their annual salaries.

The Taliban are exploiting public frustration with the government; they say they will reintroduce their brand of radical Islamic law if they come back to power. While few want to see a return to those dark days, the allure of law — any law — is drawing some Afghans to the insurgency. If the authorities hope to crush it, then they must crush corruption first.

• Aryn Baker