“Thinking Western” The 2009 Afghan Election Says It All
By Philip Shaw M.Sc.

With Dr. A.K. Enamul Haque

One of my preoccupations is international tourism.  I have always been kind of fascinated with overland routes to specific destinations. One such overland travel route, which I would consider fascinating, is driving from Europe to Bangladesh.  In fact when I was in Australia I would often see travel literature of people who liked to travel overland from Australia to London England.  It would truly be an adventure.

Of course I will never get to take such a route unless my adventurous colleague Dr. Enamul Haque decides he’s up for it.  I wouldn’t hold your breath.  I think both Enamul and I like the overland route, which takes an airplane to Dubai.  That way we get to miss international hotspots like Afghanistan.

In many ways we have visited Afghanistan several times before in this column.  It is one of the most tortured countries outside of Africa.  It’s a place where seemingly civilizations have fought over for many years.  In 2009 Afghanistan continues to be in the crosshairs of global media focus.  Lately of course that focus has been on the discredited Afghan presidential election.

In the West there is a certain sterilization to the Afghan question.  For many of us here in the developed world, “thinking Western” seems so easy and of course many of us feel why can’t our Afghan friends think the same. Some of this of course is translated into the annals of power within our respective countries.  That’s only a small reason why we find the North Atlantic Treaty Organization hunkered down far from the North Atlantic where it was born.  The Afghan presidential election is also a result of Western good intentions clearly missing their mark.

It’s a real problem. If you believe that NATO is in Afghanistan to keep Al Qaeda from having a safe refuge to attack the West that is one thing.  However if you believe the West is there to set up some democratic government for the good of all Afghans, then the election results of 2009 are an indictment on the whole process.  Even though the idea of elections is about inclusiveness and democracy the 2009 Afghan election was wracked with corruption and fraud.

Election day violence was rife all across the country.  Of course the Taliban boycotted the election.  According to Afghan government officials there were about 73 incidents of violence that took place over 15 different provinces on Election Day.  However that figure could surely be much higher and who knows what it really is.  When you have discredited candidates running and the notion that the UN might favor a person like Hamid Karzai over everybody else it doesn’t seem very fair.

It makes the Afghanistan soup that much murkier.  However, is it realistic to expect a rogue rebel group like the Taliban to engage the vestiges of democracy?  I think it’s almost laughable, but the West had to do something to bring Al Qaeda to bay.  It is one thing to attack Afghanistan after the terrible terrorist attacks in New York in 2001 and eight years later finding yourself there and wondering what to do.  The 2009 Afghan election didn’t solve anything.

I can almost hear my esteemed colleague Dr. Haque yelling at me.  I am sure he would be saying something about foreign intervention into someone else’s country.  I know what he means; we had actually discussed this in a previous article about four or five months ago.  Democracy is one thing but leaving out the Taliban in the Afghan question is like playing baseball without the bat.  There will be no peace and no security until the Afghan people work out their own problems.  Of course the difficulty is nothing will come easy and there surely will be a lot more loss of life, women would be disfranchised and history would take its course.  In the Western world there is no stomach for that, at least outside the African continent.

I cannot see things coming together in Afghanistan.  That country was carved together by the British and an argument could be made it should have never happened.  In fact you can see the divisions cut along ethnic lines in the discredited election results.  Needless to say it’s pretty obvious the whole western world is redefining their take on Afghanistan.  For many it looks like the Afghanistan end game will be never-ending.

Clearly, there are some decisions to make in Western capitals.  The Afghan election was the latest setback in Western strategy for Afghanistan.  Pres. Barack Obama is surely reconsidering his next move.  For the West remaking Afghanistan hasn’t turned out the way it was envisioned and I tend to believe it never will be.  Thinking “western” doesn’t work for everybody.

The Future of Afghanistan
A.K. Enamul Haque PhD

Phil and I had discussed Afghanistan in several of our writings.  He was rightly pointed out that I would question the presence of US troops in Afghanistan.  Several times in the past Phil mentioned that the reason for the US to intervene in Afghanistan was 911.  My question is, is it so true?  I cannot agree with him on this.  In my last writing on Afghanistan I had shown that during the Cold War the Soviet invasion into Afghanistan led to US intervention into this country.

What I liked in Phil’s writing this time is that he has also convinced himself that Western-style democracy may not work well in many of the countries in the east.  Afghanistan is just an example where it is in trouble.  Recent news out of Afghanistan tells us that there will be a run-off election for the Presidency.  Reporters from Afghanistan are also saying that it is going to be a big joke as the Afghan people are not used to voting twice to elect one president.  So it is likely that many may not turn out in the polling stations. If this happens then the NATO mission in Afghanistan is in big trouble too.

The problem of NATO and Western forces in Afghanistan is how to leave this country in a safe hand.  The process they have chosen to do so is to introduce a Western-style democracy with an elected president as its head.  What they have forgotten is that the social mosaic of Afghan people is quite different.  Afghanistan is still a feudal society.  According to one statistics, only 18.7% men and 2.8% women are literate in this country.  This too varies by region and by economic status.

They are not used to secret ballots or voting and so it will be hard for them to think of voting in private and not telling it in public.  As a result, the essence of secret ballot, one of the pillars of Western democracy, does not exist in Afghan society.  Afghan people still today divides into tribes and groups. This needs to be changed to ensure a greater social welfare for them.  However, it cannot be done by force or by law, it has to come from within the Afghan society.

Other countries need to help them to make a good choice through effective persuasion, and increasing their level of awareness against the feudal system.  That is why I think that some type of social intervention is necessary.  However, this intervention must remain respectful to the values and culture of Afghan society.

I thought President Obama would be brave enough to acknowledge the weakness of the current Western strategy in Afghanistan and would alter the path of Western intervention.  In our last writing on Afghanistan I had mentioned that the war is heading east.  Over the past few months we have seen increasing Taleban attacks in Pakistan.  It seems to me that Pakistan is already in deep trouble and my hunch is that over the next few years it will cross the Pakistan border and enter into India.  This is not desirable from any point of view and I hope the leadership in the West will understand the difficulty of continuing such a war for decades in a country like Afghanistan.  I do hope that the gesture of goodwill will be back in our mind.”