The Muslim Comprador Class and the Afghan American Foundation
In the USA and overseas, it's time to stop being fooled by unscrupulous and corrupt leaders
Muslims, including some in leadership positions, have been some of the greatest beneficiaries of the global War on Terror over the past 20 years. Muslims, in toto, are often portrayed as the war’s victims because of the harsh prosecutions for FBI-created plots, Islamophobic surveillance practices, and drone strikes in Muslim-majority countries. For many Muslims, however, things have not been all bad; some would prefer this gravy train never stop.
Some Muslims acted as agent provocateurs and informants. Thousands of informants—sometimes called “rakers” and “mosque crawlers”—scoured the Muslim community throughout the 20 year war on terrorism (the practice ended as policy with the NYPD, but never at the FBI level). These informants were often paid to devise plots ensnaring mostly the poor and those with intellectual disabilities. Some, like Shahed Hussain managed to make this process quite profitable, with the government generously paying lump sums under the table.
Some Muslims are careerists and contractors. Many Muslims have sought employment in the War on Terror. They have made livings largely dependent on narratives about Islam and Muslims that were meant to perpetuate the frame of this war and the violence it caused. While the best known example of false narrative-profiteering was Countering Violent Extremism (CVE), which involved non-profit grants for “community-based” organizations (among others), contracting in the defense industry and other security focused industries has also been quite common.
Some Muslims have worked for corrupt governments. These Muslims became mixed up with the interests of Muslim-majority countries that perpetuated murderous policies, or were engaging in grift on a massive scale. Some American Muslim leaders’ love affair with the UAE, known to be one of the most aggressive human rights abusers in the world, falls into this category. American Muslims benefited from working for governments other than the United States in other instances as well.
With the fall of Kabul, it is an opportune time to examine the ways some Muslims have worked to fool the Muslim community using the infrastructure of the War on Terror. Whether in Afghanistan or the United States itself, the war has worked not only through the direct subjugation and repression of Muslims, but also through the production of a Muslim comprador class.
“Wealth and Power Beyond Your Wildest Dreams”
It has long been documented that the Taliban tried to surrender to the United States as early as 2001. Americans stayed for years regardless, looking for terrorists.
Over the course of this occupation, children in Pakistan and Afghanistan experienced great suffering. They were scarred by the deaths and humiliation of their parents and peers and even scared to see the sky. Sadly, the person who helmed hundreds of drone strikes in Afghanistan over 9 years was known to be an American Muslim. Further, America killed, raided and captured on the strength of frequently fake “intelligence” from Afghans with access to the United States military. Those Afghans used human beings as tradable goods, having people killed for petty grievances or to help with a criminal opium enterprise. Indeed, the American occupation incentivized a dehumanizing culture in which Afghans sold each other. Americans even dropped leaflets in Afghanistan promising Afghans “wealth and power beyond [their] wildest dreams” for turning in Taliban.
Americans flooded the country with cash, much of which remains unaccounted for. One auditor claims about 40% of the money went to criminal syndicates, corrupt officials, or even the Taliban. Indeed, plenty of Afghans got rich with “poppy palaces” springing up in the country for its American-sponsored drug lord class.
The Afghanistan Papers documented the extensive corruption within American-occupied Afghanistan, which was little more than a narco-state. In this sense, the frequently reported “progress” in Afghanistan these past 20 years was largely fake. The education system: fake. The military: a joke. The justice system? Plenty of Afghans were turning to the Taliban to settle disputes long before the occupation-supported government collapsed.
Nothing created by the occupation was considered trustworthy by anyone. Much of the reason why Americans had to leave is that the puppet Afghan government was a racket. It is partially for these reasons that the Taliban refused to negotiate with the Afghan government until a peace deal was already reached. They likely figured it was a fake government and a waste of their time. The Americans seemed to agree since they played along.
The Taliban were never angels and it’s been documented their forces committed crimes, like the Viet Cong in Vietnam and the FLN in Algeria or the Continental Army in what became the United States. It does make sense for there to be calls for accountability for crimes that took place during the war on Afghanistan by all parties. Unfortunately, that’s not likely to happen.
A Similar Problem inside the United States
While Americans have not been victims of the War on Terror to the same degree as the people of Afghanistan, plenty of treachery has been visited upon American Muslims (and non-Muslims in some cases) by fellow Muslims. The FBI, as has been documented extensively, created entire fake terrorist plots. American Muslims (or people who claimed to be American Muslims) who worked as informants of the FBI, once numbering as many as 15,000, sold young people—particularly the poor and those with intellectual disabilities—in fantastical terrorism plots dreamed up within the government. Plenty of Muslims were willing to play along and profit from this policy, resulting in tragedies that were both expected and unexpected.
As I and others have previously exposed, some Muslim nonprofit organizations were more than willing to do their part in hyping terrorism to promote the fraudulent program “Countering Violent Extremism.” They took it as their mission to promote the narrative that Muslims are a problem community and follow a problem religion. Simultaneously, they positioned themselves as leaders of that same religion. Though we in the US have experienced less violence, we have had plenty of corruption.
Enter the Afghan American Foundation
The Afghan American Foundation was founded in 2021. We don’t have any of the financials on this organization since it is so new. It has a website that somehow lacks a donation option. It does not appear to have any staff or headquarters. What it does have though is some significant access within the American Muslim community as well as with media. One of its board members stated that she spoke for the entire Afghan American community, as if it were a monolith.
Some Afghan American Foundation (AAF) board members represent the careerist/profiteer politics Muslims have become numb to these past 20 years. Board members include participants in the global War on Terror, both in the United States and in Afghanistan. They want to convince people that they, who would not be trusted in Afghanistan, should somehow be trusted in the United States as voices representative of Afghanistan. When it comes to an organization like AAF, mantras that we should “center the voices of Afghans” just mean centering the losing side of a futile and corrupt war.
Two AAF board members peddled CVE, the fraudulent anti-terrorism soothsaying program at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). One of them also joined the DHS after leaving a Muslim nonprofit that effectively acted as subcontractor to DHS, promoting its trash inside the Muslim community without regard for any ethical considerations, decency, or truth. This was the War on Terror, after all. That non-profit, the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), later admitted its support of CVE was wrong and that the program itself was harmful. Despite this admission, MPAC’s own CVE program remains on its website and that of the Department of Homeland Security. MPAC also failed to hold its Executive Director anyone accountable for misleading the Muslim community for six years. I wrote about this here.
Another Board member of AAF worked for Hamid Karzai as the “Director of the Presidential Schedule.” Karzai’s family was known to be involved in the opium rackets; indeed Obama Administration officials went to the press and accused him of personally using drugs. Karzai himself admitted the CIA brought over bags of cash to his offices for years. It is doubtful this cash was sent to center the voices of Afghans.
Calls for “centering” the voices of Afghans and Afghan-Americans came up repeatedly in programs the Afghan American Foundation conducted with Emgage (a security state-focused astroturf organization) and its ally the Muslim Public Affairs Council.
There are individuals on the board of the Afghan American Foundation who have no obvious ties to the occupation of Afghanistan or the domestic war on terrorism in the United States. However, an organization that wants to be an ethical voice should clean house before claiming any kind of authority. Muslims who in good faith want to give Afghans a platform to speak about the important issues of both US foreign policy and the plight of the people of Afghanistan should be wary of the Afghan-American Foundation.
Try to Distinguish
While Afghanistan became a deeply corrupt place over the past 20 years, there are good and decent people there who fear Allah and want to do the best to help their land. The Muslim nonprofit sector and Muslim leadership in the United States also has some good people who want to do the best for their community. Unfortunately though, without some healthy skepticism and critical analysis, many of us will be scammed as we have been throughout the War on Terror. Many who claim a leadership role in the Muslim community are not so different from the most corrupt elements of Afghan society. Corruption in Afghanistan was not much more than a mirror to our own society.
The key for Muslims who want to support organizations out of a desire to do good and to do something pleasing to Allah is to evaluate our leadership and institutions more carefully. Blind deference is foolish, yet it is the norm.
Perhaps it is time we selected leaders that did not feed at the War on Terror trough.
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Edited by Muneeza Rizvi
CIA was running secret Einsatzgruppen-style death squads in Afghanistan, slaughtering whole families and burning down their homes, massacring kids in schools
https://thecradle.co/Article/investigations/1401
Once again a brilliant write-up and especially the last para on scrutinizing leadership of non-profits before giving them any aid. Thank you & jazak Allah to Ahmed and Muneeza. Allah karay zore qalam aur ziada ❤️