When it comes to statistics for Afghanistan, the numbers are usually daunting. Number of additional troops requested by General McChrystal: 40,000. Number of fraudulent Karzai votes in the 2009 elections: 1 million. Amount of money the US has spent in Afghanistan since 9/11: over $227 billion. But this year in Afghanistan, one statistic has reached a new low, the number 2.

Afghanistan is, according to Transparency International, the second-most corrupt country in the world, beaten out for first only by antediluvian Somalia. Keeping close company with Afghanistan and Somalia is a veritable who’s who of failed states and repressive regimes: Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Burma, Guinea, and Chad, to name just a few. While some corruption is inevitable in a country torn by war, Afghanistan has been steadily worsening: in 2009 Afghanistan was the 2^nd most corrupt country surveyed; in 2008 it was the 5^th most corrupt; in 2007 the 9^th; and in 2005 the 43^rd.

Afghanistan’s number two spot is important not only because it underlines just how poorly the Karzai government is doing, but because it demonstrates the need for a US strategy that takes the problem of corruption head-on. If the above list is anything to go by, corruption goes hand-in-hand with instability, despot leaders and humanitarian crises- in other words, everything we don’t want for Afghanistan.

As Obama announces he’s close to making a decision on troop increases in Afghanistan, let’s hope he remembers to think about numbers other than those involving the US military.

Related posts:

1. Gen. McChrystal is no Gen. MacArthur
2. The War Within the War in Afghanistan
3. Afghanistan questions I hope will be answered tonight
4. Afghanistan: Still Wrong after all These Years
5. My Hamid Karzai Daydream