Report: US to Tolerate Afghan Corruption

U.S. military commanders in Afghanistan are developing a strategy that would tolerate limited corruption but target large-scale abuses, The Washington Post reported late Friday.

Citing unnamed senior defense officials, the newspaper said Pentagon officials had concluded that the Taliban insurgency was the most pressing threat to stability in Afghanistan rather than corruption.

They also believe that a sweeping effort to stamp out corruption would create chaos and a governance vacuum that the Taliban could exploit, the report said.

"There are areas where you need strong leadership, and some of those leaders are not entirely pure," the paper quotes a senior defense official as saying.

"But they can help us be more effective in going after the primary threat, which is the Taliban."

Graft is a major issue in Afghanistan, which is rated by international monitor Transparency International as second only to lawless Somalia on its scale of the world's most corrupt countries.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has ordered a review of the two anti-corruption bodies, the Major Crimes Task Force and the Sensitive Investigative Unit, which have been operating for 18 months with the help of foreign advisers and with mostly U.S. funding.

U.S. State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said the United States was "in touch with the Afghan government" about the departure of the deputy attorney general, adding he had been doing "vitally important" work in fighting corruption.

Sen. John Kerry, after meeting Karzai earlier this month, said the Afghan government must show progress on eradicating corruption or risk losing U.S. support.

Approval of nearly $4 billion in U.S. aid to Afghanistan is being blocked amid fears that U.S. money is being siphoned off by Afghan officials.

The United States has almost 93,000 troops in the country, who along with 48,000 NATO soldiers are battling a Taliban-led insurgency.