Jawed Ludin earned over US$11,000 a month when he worked first as President Hamid Karzai’s spokesman and then as his chief of staff in 2004-2007. Through several donors-funded projects including “Bridging the Information Gap” which was administered by the United Nations Development Fund (UNDP) and another project which was bankrolled by The Asia Foundation (TAF), Ludin was paid thousands of dollars every month on top of his other remunerations from the Afghan Government.
Under a UNDP contract, Ludin was paid $6,000 a month for over three years while the USAID-financed TAF paid him $5,000. In return for the generous payments, Mr. Ludin facilitated donors’ access to Afghanistan most sensitive political office - the Presidential Palace.
As the Palace’s top spokesman and Chef de Cabinet, Mr. Ludin also had unrestricted latitude in disbursing large amounts of donor money on projects which were designed to build a strong and effective communication infrastructure for the Afghan President.
The two projects disbursed over $20 million in five years, according to UNDP and USAID internal documents.
With that money, Ludin hired over 40 employees for the President’s media office, authorized procurements of office equipment and managed other discretionary funds such as financing friendly newspapers and radio/TV stations.
Fund disbursements were not subject to Afghan Government oversight and Mr. Ludin’s office only had to place approval signature over periodic donors’ financial reporting which were produced by UNDP.
On top of his bulky salaries from foreign donors, Jawed Ludin was also paid by President Karzai and from the Afghan Government sources. Air tickets to Canada where Ludin’s wife was living and costs of his and his immediate family’s treatment in India were generously covered through the Palace’s slush funds which came from the CIA and Iranian sources.
In 2007 after Afghan officials reported suspicious activities by British forces in Helmand Province, a British-passport-holder Ludin was increasingly accused of being too sympathetic to Brits. Karzai decided to send Ludin away first to Norway and then to Canada as his ambassador.
While in Canada, Ludin divorced his first wife and married a British citizen.
In 2011 Karzai recalled Ludin to Kabul and appointed him as deputy foreign minister but in practice he acted more like the foreign minister given Zalmai Rasoul’s chronic incompetence.
Knowing it was his last position under a Karzai government, this time Ludin fiercely build up his business and financial backbone in Kabul.
What Mr. Ludin did from 2011 to 2013 in the Afghan Government remains unknown to the public but only six months since he quit the Afghan Government and got hired by ANHAM, a UAE-based multinational firm, his bank accounts hold millions of dollars. He has spent over $1 million buying two luxury apartments - one in Dubai another in London.
ANHAM runs multibillion dollars contracts in Afghanistan and was previously accused of bribing senior Afghan officials.
The Daily Beast recently published a story about Sayed Tayeb Jawad, a former Karzai ambassador to the US and now a lobbyist in Washington, who, like Ludin, was paid by donors while working for Hamid Karzai in Kabul in 2002-2004.
Mr. Jawad is as much well off financially as Mr. Ludin is and he also has business association with ANHAM. Both men have contacts and supporters in the U.S. Government, Congress and business circles.
Mr. Jawad is a U.S. citizen and like every other citizen has taken the oath to uphold and serve U.S.’s interests first of every other country’s. Ludin is also a subject of the British Queen.
Why President Karzai posted these and other hyphenated Afghans as Afghan envoys abroad and/or placed them in senior positions in his government is often justified under the rubric of “lack of capacity” in Afghanistan.
Over a decade with these sort of professionals Afghanistan has become the world’s most corrupt state. The professionals, however, are thriving businessmen.
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