Nonschmopskapop.

A few days ago, the American ambassador to Afghanistan met with Hamid Karzai, then Obama called the Afghan leader. This was followed by Gordon Brown and several NATO leaders. Their message was the same: Clean up your government of corruption, get out of the drug trade or your legitimacy is in doubt.

Translated into Dario, Pashto or Urdu it means nonschmopskapop. Re-translated into English, French or German it also means nonschmopskapop. In other words—nothing.

Karzai rules over Kabul thanks to American and a few NATO guns stationed in the city. That is more powerful than stuffing ballot boxes.

To stay in power, Karzai does the traditional thing. He has deals going with a few tribal leaders and some of his appointed provincial governors. This allows them all to make huge amounts of money by divvying up the vast amount of devaluated dollars the U.S. government collects from its taxpayers. A portion of these earnings goes to the Taliban as payments for not interfering with the grand rip off. Then, there is the drug trade 

Karzai is comfy. The Americans tried to have him replaced by Abdullah Abdullah, but that didn’t work as Abdullah played the American nonschmopskapop game.

As we watch billions of dollars spent on huge bases, indicating that the American occupation of Afghanistan is a long-term project, we can be sure that a few Afghans are getting super-rich. Is that nonschmopskapop to you?