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| Afghan Choices or American Interests? |
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By Dr Salman Ahmed
salman.ahmed@newcivilisation.com | |
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"With home-bred hordes the hillsides teem, The troopships bring us one by one, At vast expense of time and steam, To slay Afridis where they run, The 'captives of the bow and spear', Are cheap alas! as we are dear." - Rudyard Kipling, "Arithmetic on the Frontier"
Afghanistan is continuously presented by the Bush administration as the flagship in the administration’s efforts to promote democracy and good governance in the Islamic world. As President Bush stated in his speech to the Republican National Convention in September 2004: “I believe in the transformational power of liberty: The wisest use of American strength is to advance freedom. As the citizens of Afghanistan and Iraq seize the moment, their example will send a message of hope throughout a vital region.” More recently, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, while in Kabul, held a joint news conference with Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai in which she stated: "I want to say to the Afghan people that their story here of coming out of civil war and turmoil and difficulties, and going to vote to demonstrate their commitment to democratic enterprise, has indeed been an inspiration to people all over the world." This mood of optimism about Afghanistan has even extended to respected commentators such as Peter Bergen, the adjunct professor at John Hopkins University and fellow at the New America Foundation, who believes that the situation in Afghanistan has now turned the corner. In his opinion it is no longer true to say that President Karzai is only the major of Kabul, that the country is effectively run by warlords, that the country is in the process of becoming a narcotics-state or to describe the Taliban as a resurgent force. Rather in Bergen’s opinion Hamid Karzai is “a genuinely popular leader winning 55% of the votes in Afghanistan’s October elections”, the Taliban are “spent as an effective military force”, Karzai “has edged out the warlords or promoted them to politically irrelevant positions” and last years “poppy crop has been cut by as much as 70 percent in Afghanistan’s three key opium-growing provinces.”i
The problem with such an optimistic reading of the situation in Afghanistan is that it contradicts a plethora of official and independent reports. The optimism is largely based on incomplete information or a misreading of the situation driven by a political agenda and by default may end up prolonging Afghanistan’s many crises rather than coming up with the necessary political solutions to alleviate them. One does not have to wait to pass judgement based on the argument that ‘Rome was not built in a day’ as there is now a widespread feeling that Afghanistan has failed to effectively progress since the US led invasion of 2001. One does not expect to see a prosperous country with a rule of law living in a state of security overnight, yet the adverse political reality should not be overlooked in the context of waiting for the ideal, especially if the ideal has minimal chances of success within the current political paradigm. Despite the excesses and shortcomings of the Taliban regime, the US led coalition promised to transform Afghanistan from its backward misogynist regime to a country that could take its place as a fully-fledged partner in the international community. Though there has been obvious investment and capital poured into the country, the situation has failed to reach even the most pessimistic targets set for it in 2001.
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