Afghanistan: still not a democracy

Karzai with his countrymen (Image via Wikipedia)

An investigation of allegedly fraudulent ballots in Afghanistan’s troubled election has reduced President Hamid Karzai’s portion of the vote to about 47 percent, an outcome that will trigger a runoff between him and his closest competitor, according to officials familiar with results.

The tally by the U.N.-backed Electoral Complaints Commission, which one official called “stunning,” is due to be finalized Friday. Preliminary results by Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission had given Karzai 54.6 percent of the Aug. 20 vote.

via Runoff Expected In Afghan Election – washingtonpost.com.

So it appears as though democracy cannot be imported into a nation that consists of ancient decentralized tribal regions. Shocking. In fact, it appears the only way to create the illusion of an “effective” centralized government is to prop up an incredibly corrupt western puppet, who has to steal elections in order to maintain an air of legitimacy.

The Karzai “democracy” facade is (unsurprisingly) crumbling, and with it, President Obama’s claims of progress in Afghanistan. Afghans don’t like the Taliban, but they don’t trust the Americans. This anecdote of a U.S. Major speaking to an Iraqi citizen succinctly summarizes the political environment in Iraq, but also Afghanistan:

Maj. Guy Parmeter: “Seen any foreign fighters?”

Iraqi farmer: “Yes, you.”

Foreigners cannot bring democracy to indigenous peoples because democracy is a grassroots, organic process that is built by the people, for the people. The best foreigners can do is string up an illegitimate marionette, whose brother serves as Afghanistan’s opium czar, while a rancid system of bribes masquerades as a democratic government.

Turns out, nation-building is a bitch, and the U.S. isn’t very good at it.

In an August 2009 Christian Science Monitor op-ed, Thomas H. Johnson, a research professor at the Department of National Security Affairs, and M. Chris Mason, a retired foreign service officer who served as a political officer on the provincial reconstruction team in Afghanistan’s Paktika Province, explain why importing democracy to Afghanistan won’t work. Johnson and Mason cite historian Eric Bergerud, who explained that the United States lost in Vietnam not because of its deeply flawed approach to counterinsurgency, but because South Vietnam never established a government seen as legitimate by a majority of its people.

What works for America may never work for Afghanistan. When a child tries to mash a play square peg into a round hole, adults chuckle and think the behavior is adorable, but Obama’s Afghanistan “road to victory” is essentially a grown-up version of the square peg-round hole model. Johnson and Mason describe the Karzai election as though a random American citizen (let’s call him Doug) woke up one day and declared himself king. Just as King Doug would have no power over anything, so many Afghans never saw President Karzai as anything but a silly man, claiming to have magical powers over their daily lives.

Johnson and Mason propose the U.S. work instead to re-empower legitimate local authorities in a more decentralized state. They don’t offer specifics about how to do that. We could toss lots of money and guns at the problem, and arm local tribes as we did in the 1980s with the Mujahideen, but that sort of ended up biting us in the ass. American officials estimate that, from 1985 to 1992, 12,500 foreigners were trained in bomb-making, sabotage and urban guerrilla warfare in Afghan camps the CIA helped to set up. The CIA funded the Mujahideen with hundreds of millions of dollars, and we see how much that helped Afghanistan flower into a thriving democracy.

It seems the longer we stay, the worse things get, and yet the pullout option is never treated as anything other than a sweet dream. Arming local militias may seem like a super idea right now, but let’s remember that 2009’s “freedom fighters” may become 2012’s “insurgents.” That’s what happened to the Mujahideen, so maybe it’s time to stop arming complicated situations we don’t fully understand.

Everyone keeps talking about why we have to stay in Afghanistan “for the women” as though this imperialist conquest has anything to do with humanitarian intentions. There are many ways to help Afghan women, but bombing their villages isn’t one of them.

If this was indeed a humanitarian quest, the U.S. would have rushed to Afghanistan’s side after Russia totally decimated the country, leaving more than a million people dead with millions more living in refugee camps, half a million disabled orphans, millions of unearthed land mines (which kill an average of 60 people per month,) and the rest of Afghans living an average lifespan of 43-years, 17 years lower than people in other developing countries. People have been starving, and experiencing severe drought, and yet the U.S.’s constant barrage of bombs made food aid deliveries near to impossible.

Yet we’re told this is a humanitarian mission as if an imperialist war has ever liberated a society, or made it more open and accepting. The truth is war closes a society. People become insular, untrusting, and are susceptible to religious extremism and other irrational behavior.

History is full of good people waiting too long to do the right thing, and yet President Obama seems determined to fulfill his legacy as the man who oversaw Vietnam 2.0.