Gates: Afghans should lead corruption fight

KABUL - U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said yesterday that while the fight against corruption must be led by Afghans, the United States is working on new ways to prevent millions of American dollars flowing into the nation from underwriting bribery and graft.

Gates spoke to reporters in the Afghan capital with President Hamid Karzai, who complained about the tactics of two Western-backed anti-corruption units that recently arrested one of his top aides on suspicion of bribery, likening them to heavy-handed Soviet tactics.

The United States views Mohammed Zia Salehi's arrest as a test of Karzai's willingness to take on graft in his government.

Salehi was arrested by Afghan police after allegedly being wiretapped discussing a bribe. He called Karzai from his jail cell in July and was freed hours later.

Soon afterward Karzai blasted the work of the U.S.-backed corruption investigators involved in that case and sought more control over them.

"The key here is that the fight against corruption needs to be Afghan-led," Gates said. "This is a sovereign country." Gates said two units, the Major Crimes Task Force and the Sensitive Investigative Unit, should operate under Afghan law. But he was clear that the United States will keep backing investigations into cronyism and illicit activities.

Gates said U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry and Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, were developing new guidelines for how U.S. funds are handed out.

Karzai pledged to work against corruption, which is undermining trust and making it difficult to maintain international support for the war.

Gates also said that if Taliban insurgents believe American forces will walk out of Afghanistan next July, they will be disappointed. Gates says U.S. forces will remain after the July 2011 date that President Barack Obama has set for the beginning of a pullout, if security permits.

Meanwhile in Washington, a Marine two-star general said Thursday that the Taliban is confronting a serious "cash flow" problem after losing some half of its annual drug trade money to a farming blight and government eradication efforts.

The assessment by Maj. Gen. Richard Mills is a bright spot in an otherwise difficult war involving some 100,000 U.S. troops.

American forces for several months have been bogged down in a fight with insurgents in the farming hamlets of Marjah, an area in southern Afghanistan considered at the heart of Afghanistan's drug trade.

Mills said the insurgency in Marjah is a shadow of what it was and that the Taliban's loss in revenue has made it difficult to resupply fighters. But, he added, the Taliban is continuing to terrorize the locals at night and hide explosive devices that are killing U.S. forces and civilians.