Afghan president calls for 'jihad' to fight corruption

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Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Tuesday called for a national "Jihad" to fight the corruption in the country, media reported.

Speaking at a Kabul high school, he said graft in government contracts, land grabbing and illegal drug production and trafficking are major problems. He said education is the key to ending corruption.

Ghani said that certain sectors were under scrutiny and sweeping changes would be made in a bid to fight the problem, TOLONews quoted him as saying.

Ghani said that if corruption turns into an organised phenomenon it becomes like a "cancerous lesion" that can threaten the essence of the nation.

Transparency International consistently ranks Afghanistan among the world's most corrupt countries. Most of the world's heroin comes from Afghanistan.