KABUL, Afghanistan -- Traffic in the bustling capital city converges at a major intersection adjacent to a sprawling market ringed by wedding halls. Here, a dozen Afghan traffic police in white uniforms stop seemingly random cars. Heated conversations ensue, documents are passed back and forth, then money changes hands and the cops wave the drivers through.
The drivers' violation? "They are always making up excuses," Mohammad Zaman, a commercial minibus driver, says of the traffic police. He says that every day he and his fellow drivers pass through the intersection in order to pick up passengers on a nearby side road, they have to pay 400 Afghanis -- around $9 in a country where the average worker makes just $2 a day. ...
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