SPEAKING
FREELY Afghanistan in a downward
spiral By Haroun Mir
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please click hereif you are interested in
contributing.
KABUL - Despite a
successful presidential election in 2004 and
parliamentary elections in 2005, the situation in
Afghanistan has been worsening since then. The
year 2006 was a bloody one in terms of casualties
for both coalition and Afghan forces as well as
for the
civilian population.
In addition to
long-lasting problems such as military conflict,
narcotics and warlordism, the Afghan government is
increasingly facing new dilemmas which emanate
from people's dire social and economic conditions.
People demand jobs, shelter and legitimate means
to live a decent life. It is the prospect of
political turmoil that poses the far greater
danger for the stability of the country than
military threats by the Taliban.
In fact,
the Taliban and their allies have been able to
improve their fighting capacity and propaganda
capabilities, as well as to considerably extend
their territory inside Afghanistan because they
were able to improve their organizational
structure, train a considerable number of new
recruits and receive better supplies of arms and
ammunition.
It will enable them to
increase their attacks on NATO (North Atlantic
Treaty Organization) and Afghan forces while
terrorizing the civilian population with
occasional, but ever more frequent, suicide
bombings. This year, they will extend their
control over major districts in the south and
southwest of the country and improve their
capacity to interrupt the main highways connecting
Kabul to major cities in the south and west of the
country.
Since NATO does not have enough
soldiers on the ground to control the entire
Afghan territory bordering Pakistan, its main task
will be limited to defending major cities while
the insurgents expand their control in small towns
and isolated districts. NATO's sporadic military
operations will only have limited, short-term
impact.
NATO can temporarily dislodge the
insurgent forces from their strongholds but it
cannot police the area and requires Afghan forces
to do the job. In most cases, since there are not
enough Afghan security forces, the Taliban simply
reemerge from their hideouts and take back
control.
The US military contingent
outside the NATO mission is not sufficient to
pursue and engage small and highly mobile groups
of insurgents in the rugged and difficult Afghan
territory bordering Pakistan. Without of a
significant increase in the number of NATO troops,
nothing will change until the Afghan National Army
and Afghan National Police grow in strength and
numbers.
It doesn't help that Afghanistan
lacks strong pluralistic political parties,
necessary elements for a healthy democracy. In the
absence of any coherent political ideology or
vision for the future of the country, political
regroupings take place based on ethnic
affiliations. Tensions over sharing power in the
government among the various ethnic groups are
growing rapidly, and political and intellectual
debates in the Afghan free media focus on
differences among them rather than their common
interests.
Meanwhile, neighboring
countries which are against the presence of NATO
forces in Afghanistan are working to incite
violent ethnic rifts as a means to undermine
NATO's efforts. The worst scenario would be if
ethnic differences become a motive for armed
conflict in Afghanistan, as currently in Iraq. The
country would sink once again into political chaos
and misery.
Afghan politicians are
unfamiliar with the notion of compromise and
constructive political dialogue in order to
overcome their political differences. Since
Afghanistan is a very poor country, everyone
struggles to have a share of government resources,
which are the only financial resources available
and are largely donated by the international
community.
Until now there has not been a
legitimate and genuine political opposition to
President Harmid Karzai. In fact, those who oppose
the president are for the most part his former
political allies who had been his ministers at one
time during the past five years.
Removed
from their high-level government positions, they
have turned into dedicated enemies who do
everything possible to undermine Karzai's
leadership.
For instance, the recent
formation of the new political entity called the
United National Front (UNF) seems to be a
short-lived coalition of former Northern Alliance
leaders and a few prominent former communist party
members. This new group is not established on the
basis of a common political platform or a vision
for the future of the country. Instead, its
formation is a tactical political move for some of
its members to put pressure on Karzai in order to
extract more advantages from him, such as key
government positions. Sadly, they ignore the fact
that if this regime falls prematurely the only
alternative would be a comeback of the Taliban.
One of the major political issues in
Afghanistan is the lack of natural leaders. While
the whole south of the country has become
leaderless due to the elimination of traditional
Pashtun leaders during the past three decades of
war, the north has also lost its only legitimate
leader, the late Ahmad Shah Massoud, the former
leader of Northern Alliance, who was killed in a
suicide attack in September 2001 by al-Qaeda.
The biggest challenge in the near term is
to find charismatic and sufficiently unifying
leaders. The next Afghan presidential election is
less than two years away. In fact, without strong
pluralistic political parties or charismatic
political leaders the country will face tremendous
leadership challenges which will further intensify
ethnic tensions.
The economic situation is
deteriorating rapidly because of insecurity, lack
of enforcement of property rights, administrative
corruption, and most importantly people's
pessimistic expectations. The meager private
investment by a number of Afghan expatriates is
seriously threatened by ever increasing kidnapping
and ransoming of Afghan businessmen and their
families. Instead, narcotics have once again
become the main source income.
One of the
crucial problems in Afghanistan is poverty. Only a
small number of Afghans, who work for foreign
companies, earn adequate wages. Those who are
employed in public administration earn on average
less than $50 a month. In addition, the massive
return of Afghan refugees from Pakistan and Iran
has created an extra economic burden on the
country.
Kabul has become a big ghetto
where very poor people build rudimentary shelters
on the top of hills and mountains. The Afghan
government does not have adequate financial
resources and the capacity to respond to all
legitimate demands of the returnees.
Also,
unemployment has become a growing concern both for
the people and the government. Every year hundreds
of thousands of young boys and girls graduate from
high schools and colleges and cannot find jobs.
The Afghan administration does not have the
capacity to hire more people, and jobs in the
private sector don't exist.
Young
graduates of high schools and colleges are just
added every year to the growing number of
unemployed. While a limited number of people live
a relatively good life, the rest of population
struggles to survive.
In addition,
corruption is asphyxiating the very fragile Afghan
administration. It has become widespread and
evident to the point that even the president
admits it but cannot prevent it. There are two
reasons for corruption in Afghanistan. At the very
low level, civil servants become corrupt because
they cannot live with $40 or $50 monthly salaries.
In the higher echelon, easy money from
narcotics corrupts administrators. For instance,
drug traffickers are willing to pay huge amounts
of money to corrupt political appointees to
undermine the rule of law.
It is important
to remember that all previous governments in
Afghanistan have fallen not because of their
military weaknesses but because of social,
economic and governance issues. For instance, the
communist regime was able to defend an encircled
Kabul for almost four years after the withdrawal
of Soviet troops from Afghanistan in 1989. The
regime eventually fell in 1992 during a power
struggle among different factions.
NATO is
capable of containing the military threat of the
Taliban, far from the center of power in Kabul,
but in the event of political turmoil or popular
revolt over lack of progress, like the riot of May
29, 2006, in Kabul, it can't prevent the
unraveling of the Afghan government.
I
wrote in June of last year for the International
Affairs Forum: "The much publicized unfortunate
road accident of May 29th of a US military vehicle
wasn't the main cause for riots in Kabul. It
became a pretext for those unemployed,
disenchanted, and disillusioned young to show
their anger toward the government and the region's
most convenient boogey man, the United States.”
In fact, relative to last year, the
socio-economic conditions for young Kabulis have
gotten worse. They have become pessimistic about
the prospect of a better future because the
international community has failed to deliver what
was initially promised for Afghanistan in terms of
reconstruction and economic development.
The focus of NATO countries on military
issues alone will not overshadow the threat of
political turmoil arising from people's terrible
economic conditions. Afghanistan needs more
assistance from NATO countries to rebuild its
civil society and to create economic means for its
long-term political stability as a viable country.
Haroun Mir is a policy analyst
for SIG & Partners Afghanistan. He served over
five years as an aide to the late Ahmad Shah
Massoud, Afghanistan's former defense minister.
(Copyright 2007 Haroun Mir.)
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please click hereif you are interested in
contributing.
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