WASHINGTON: Under a new anti-corruption strategy for Afghanistan, the US will not aggressively pursue top Afghan officials suspected of fraud, conceding that ''limited judicial capacity and political interference'' from President Hamid Karzai's government make success in prosecuting them unlikely.

Instead, the document puts a priority on fighting corruption at the local level and strengthening Afghan institutions to deal with it through an array of new and existing initiatives. Whether that approach will make a difference remains unclear.

When it comes to dealing with corrupt senior Afghan officials, the Obama administration ''may be compelled to act unilaterally'' when the Afghan government chooses not to, by freezing the officials' financial assets in the US or preventing their travel abroad, the strategy says.

The guidelines, obtained by McClatchy Newspapers, are designed to direct US government efforts against one of the most serious problems threatening the counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan, backed by nearly 100,000 US military personnel.

The US, which has funded billions of dollars in development projects in Afghanistan, hopes to persuade Afghans to trust and support their own, insurgent-threatened government. But corruption permeates every aspect of Afghan society, from the bribes that officials demand for permits of all kinds to powerbrokers' control of resources such as minerals and timber.