It's a Real Puzzle All Right

 The Washington Post reports that Afghani officials are carting out millions of US dollars, European euros, and Saudi riyals out of Kabul and into Dubai. It's a mystery where all the money is coming from... 

The cash, estimated to total well over $1 billion a year, flows mostly to the Persian Gulf emirate of Dubai, where many wealthy Afghans now park their families and funds, according to U.S. and Afghan officials. So long as departing cash is declared at the airport here, its transfer is legal.

But at a time when the United States and its allies are spending billions of dollars to prop up the fragile government of President Hamid Karzai, the volume of the outflow has stirred concerns that funds have been diverted from aid. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, for its part, is trying to figure out whether some of the money comes from Afghanistan's thriving opium trade. And officials in neighboring Pakistan think that at least some of the cash leaving Kabul has been smuggled overland from Pakistan.

"All this money magically appears from nowhere," said a U.S. official who monitors Afghanistan's growing role as a hub for cash transfers to Dubai, which has six flights a day to and from Kabul.

Meanwhile, the United States is stepping up efforts to stop money flow in the other direction -- into Afghanistan and Pakistan in support of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Senior Treasury Department officials visited Kabul this month to discuss the cash flows and other issues relating to this country's infant, often chaotic financial sector.

Billions of US dollars flowing into Pakistan and Afghanistan, along with millions of Saudi and European money, fattening up individual pockets instead of repairing Afghanistan. What a great, noble venture we're involved in. 

Comments

[Ray]

Well,if it isn't coming from drugs, it seems to me that it boils down to supervision doesn't it; not just handing it over and saying "There y' go! Oh, by the way, it's for Aid." The President might alert the his recently appointed Muslim advisor, and also install an Afghanistan Financial Overseer or position like it, to liaise with him.
Forget it; it's facetious. I just have a cheque book and credit cards and I know where my money is going.

[NVH]

Well you can't prop up a fledgling democracy without some guys posing as leaders wearing Armani burkhas and shit. Where the hell do you think they sell that stuff? Kabul?