NYT front page tomorrow: Intractable Afghan Graft Hampering U.S. Strategy
here's the intro to an article to be on the front of Thursday's Times:
For the past few months, possibly the most intriguing poker game in Kabul has been taking place in the sprawling pink sitting room of the man at the center of one of the most public corruption scandals in the world, the near collapse of Kabul Bank.
The players include people tied to President Hamid Karzais inner circle, many of whom have profited from the crony capitalism that has come to define Afghanistans economic order, and nearly brought down Kabul Bank. The games stakes arent too big a few thousand dollars up or down, one of the participants said.
Betting thousands of dollars a night in a country where most families live off a few hundred dollars a year would seem like a bad play for Sherkhan Farnood, the founder and former chairman of Kabul Bank, the countrys biggest. His assets are supposed to be frozen, and he is still facing the threat of prosecution over a scandal that could end up costing the Afghan government and, by extension, the Western countries that pay most of its expenses almost $900 million, a sum that nearly equals the governments total annual revenues.
But Mr. Farnood, who in 2008 won about $143,000 at a World Series of Poker event in Europe, appears to know a good wager when he sees one. Despite years of urging and oversight by American advisers, Mr. Karzais government has yet to prosecute a high-level corruption case. And now many American officials say that they have little expectation that Mr. Farnoods case will prove to be the exception or that Washington will try to do much about it, especially after violent anti-American protests in recent weeks have sowed fresh doubts in the Obama administration over the viability of the mission in Afghanistan.