Afghanistan Second From Bottom in Survey of Perceived Corruption

Click map above to launch an interactive version with individual country scores.
The darker the blue, the higher the perceived level of public sector corruption.

Costa Rica may be the happiest country in the world and Germany the most beloved, but Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index for 2009 has ranked Afghanistan, after eight years of military occupation by Britain and the US, as second from bottom for perceived levels of public sector corruption amongst 180 countries around the world. Only Somalia is worse. As the organisation says in its press release:

When essential institutions are weak or non-existent, corruption spirals out of control and the plundering of public resources feeds insecurity and impunity. Corruption also makes normal a seeping loss of trust in the very institutions and nascent governments charged with ensuring survival and stability.

Yep - that sounds pretty much like President Hamid Karzai's government, in whose defence 234 British soldiers have given their lives for since the start of operations in 2001.