Corruption charges snag Afghan general
Top military man tasked with reducing fraud in war-torn province
KABUL, Afghanistan — One of Afghanistan’s top generals, appointed by the country’s president to clean up corruption in war-torn Helmand province, has been arrested on sweeping corruption charges after little more than a year on the job, senior Afghan officials said Tuesday.
Maj. Gen. M. Moein Faqir, the former commander of the 215th Corps of the Afghan National Army in Helmand province, was arrested Monday by the Afghan attorney general on charges that included misuse of food money meant to supply his soldiers, according to Lt. Gen. Helaludin Helal, a deputy defense minister.
Faqir’s reported arrest was the latest in a long series of setbacks in efforts to fight official corruption in Helmand, Afghanistan’s most violent province, where Taliban insurgents now dominate 12 of 14 districts. He was appointed in December 2015 after a scandal involving “ghost soldiers,” in which up to 40 percent of the 215th Corps’ troops were said to exist only on paper so that corrupt senior officers could collect extra pay.
Further illustrating the difficulty of bringing Afghan officials to account for their actions, Faqir, reached by telephone on Tuesday, denied that he had been arrested, although he confirmed that there were corruption charges against him. “I am home,” he said. “What the government is saying are all allegations. If they prove them, I am ready to be hanged.”
Faqir also said he had been fired “about five to six months ago.”
Helmand is the center of the opium poppy trade and the producer of most of Afghanistan’s heroin, which has been a major factor contributing to corruption.
Jamshid Rasuli, a spokesman for Afghanistan’s attorney general, denied that the accused general was at home. “General Faqir is under detention, he was arrested yesterday,” he said. “I cannot say his location for security reasons, but he is under the government’s detention.”