Brian M Downing
Elections took place in Afghanistan last week amid a spate of Taliban violence and a dearth of public optimism. Few observers in or out of the country expect meaningful change to come, whether Mr Karzai or Mr Abdullah or another wins. The results might not be known for months, but clearly someone must find a way to govern the country. Failure would be disastrous for Afghanistan.
In the almost eight years since the Taliban was driven from the country, politicians, warlords, and tribal elders have failed to build any semblance of national government. President Karzai’s efforts have aimed mainly at securing his personal power, alienated many tribes in the South, and built sympathy for the Taliban. Corruption dominates most spheres of life, including the police and army, which are known to make separate peaces with the Taliban.
With interest in Iraq in decline and recession a part of life, Americans are looking more at Afghanistan, and they do not like what they see. European publics, less admiring of military adventures than their American peers, are even more circumspect. Images of patrol after patrol, cynical or unctuous elders treating with western officers, and feckless politicians in the capital are not winning support back in western countries. The Kabul government must win hearts and minds in the West as surely as the counterinsurgency program must win them in Afghanistan. Failing that, official requests for troop increases will be countered by public calls for withdrawal.
Political failure in Kabul might also lead to a broader conflict in Afghanistan. Should the US and NATO withdraw, the insurgency will lose many fighters who serve mainly to oust foreign occupiers, but they will consolidate among the Pashtun tribes of the South and East. This will greatly strengthen concern in Tajik, Uzbek, and Hazara peoples of the North and Center, who suffered tremendously under the Taliban and are loth to accept another period of their rough hand.
Warlords such as the Tajik Mohammed Fahim and the Uzbek Abdul Rashid Dostum have pledged support to Karzai but, wary of another danger from the Pashtun, have retained militias. And their forces are likely more able than the Afghan National Army. The Northern people will have the support of Russia, India, and Iran, all of whom wish to contain Islamist militancy, all of whom are willing to fight to the last Afghan.
Fear of a US/NATO withdrawal and the prospect of a larger war should lend resolve to the politicians in Kabul and the various local power holders with whom they must build a state and military. A ready though not entirely promising analogy might be the reforms that South Vietnam was able to push through once the US began to pull out of the country, belated and ultimately ineffectual though these reforms were.
Thus far after Thursday’s election, the auguries are not promising and dire events must be at least considered. Evidence of wide-scale vote fraud is surfacing and the Tajik candidate, Abdullah Abdullah, is crying foul. Despite the best efforts of US officials to contain the dispute, Kabul might soon see the turmoil that Tehran just stifled, though comparisons might bring some doubt. The Iranian elections took place amid considerable optimism regarding the prospects of change. The Afghan elections took place amid widespread cynicism. Furthermore, Kabul lacks the numbers of urban middle-class members and students that took to the streets of Tehran.
Nonetheless, protracted fighting, even by modest numbers of spirited demonstrators – augmented by sympathetic Taliban attacks in and out of Kabul – could prove disastrous to the feeble Karzai government, regardless of the truth of claims of fraud. Karzai has less popular support than Ahmadinejad has. He has no equivalent of the Republican Guard or Basij militia to suppress protest, though by the same token, there is little likelihood of the Afghan National Army bringing order through a coup. This leaves two forces capable of reestablishing order in the event of turmoil – the militias of Northern warlords and the battalions of the US and NATO.
©2009 Brian M. Downing
20 August 2009