U.N.: Afghans pay billions in bribes

? Corruption in Afghanistan is so entrenched that Afghans had to pay bribes worth nearly a quarter of the country’s GDP last year, a United Nations report said today.

Afghans paid $2.5 billion to bribe public officials over the past 12 months, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime said in a report on corruption in the country.

“Drugs and bribes are the two largest income-generators in Afghanistan,” the program’s executive director, Antonio Maria Costa, said as he launched the report in London. The country’s opium trade last year was worth an estimated $2.8 billion.

The United States and other countries contributing aid and troops to Afghanistan are waiting for President Hamid Karzai to form a new administration capable of combating corruption and instituting the reforms needed to garner public support and defeat the Taliban.