All Blog Posts from World Watch

Tired of working amid corruption, a 32 year old Russian police officer has made an unthinkable video appeal directly to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. He says he now fears for his life, but thinks this whistle had to be blown.

"Vladimir Vladimirovich, I am appealing directly to you," says Major Alexei Dymovsky in his video, referring to Putin's by his traditional name. "You have been talking about corruption – you have been saying that not only should corruption constitute a crime, you said it should also be unseemly to engage in corrupt practices. But this is not the case in this country."

The words were more likely to come from a human rights activist or an opposition politician. But this rare outpouring of emotion came from within the Russian power structure, from Dymovsky, a cop in the city of Novorossiysk.

"I want you to know how we live – ordinary officers, ordinary policemen – those who solve and untangle (crimes) and detain (criminals), those who do the real work," Dymovsky said in his recorded speech, during which he looked visibly nervous and stumbled at times.

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Updated 2:28 p.m. EDT

The New York Times reported Wednesday that brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been on the CIA payroll for at least eight years, according to American officials.

Ahmed Wali Karzai (at left) is a powerful figure in the southern Kandahar province with reported ties to Afghanistan's opium trade, which is owned and operated largely by the Taliban.

According to the Times' sources, who were not named, Karzai has received "regular payments" from the American foreign spy agency in exchange for his organizing a paramilitary force in Kandahar which operates at the CIA's behest.

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Everyone said it wouldn’t be perfect. The Afghan elections could never be free, thanks to the Taliban threats and intimidation, but there was a hope it might be fair. Perhaps wishful thinking in a country riddled with corruption.

The two main contenders jockeying for presidency, the incumbent President Hamid Karzai and the former foreign minister, Abdullah Abdullah have both accused each other of vote rigging.

Just over 17 percent of the votes have been counted showing Karzai with 42.3 percent and Abdullah on 33.1 percent.

Grim Milestone Nears for U.S. Troops in Afghanistan
Karzai, Rival Nearly Even in Afghan Vote
Violence as Votes are Counted

But the Election Complaints Commission received nearly 800 allegations of fraud on polling day alone. Over 40 were serious enough to affect the outcome of the vote and required immediate investigation.

On top of that, the people counting the ballots are viewed as less than independent. The members of the Independent Election Commission were hand picked by President Karzai.

And now as partial results drip-feed in, Afghans are left to await the announcement of the winner. On the streets of Kabul, it’s become a guessing game of what will happen next and speculation is certainly an art form to Afghans.

Ahmad, a tailor, suggested the next step should be to divide the country in half: North and South. “Abdullah can have the North, Karzai the South,” he said, roughly splitting the country along tribal lines.

Though I pointed out the creation of Pakistan in 1948 lead to a bloodbath along the India-Pakistan border, he simply shrugged and said, “we are used to death.”

I asked an Afghan woman if there was evidence of serious vote-rigging would Afghans protest? The woman, who wouldn’t give her name, seemed bemused, she told me she didn’t vote and she felt protesting would be as useless as voting itself.

Hopelessness is the most dangerous outcome to this election. Many in the international community want Afghans to believe in the democractic process, anything else would make a mockery of 5 million Afghans who risked their lives to go out and vote.

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Child trafficking, including the abduction and sale of children, is a growing crisis in Iraq, with officials and aid agencies claiming scores of young people, including babies, are sold both internally and outside of the country.

The Guardian, in an article written by Afif Sarhan, reports Monday that criminal gangs are taking advantage of poor families while profiting from the cheap cost of buying infants (prices of children range from $300 to $5,900). The paper also says a broken and corrupt bureaucracy, weak law enforcement and lack of border security make it easier for such trafficking to operate.

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