A Fine Mess

Books from a school burned by the Taliban outside Kandahar, 2004

The only silver lining to be found in the Afghan election fiasco is that some money will be saved that would have otherwise been used on setting up polling sites and counting votes and transporting ballots on the backs of donkeys into the hinterlands, and that some lives, too, might be preserved because voters in at-risk areas won’t have to brave threats from the Taliban and other goon squads to voice their preference. Otherwise, to state the obvious, this looks terrible.

Abdullah can walk away with some dignity, and perhaps more of a platform for himself, but no one else looks good, not Karzai, not the UN, not the US or NATO. Through Afghan eyes, they will all be further discredited. The impression that they are false prophets of democracy and rule of law will become even more deeply entrenched. The various insurgent groups can smirk and start mining a propaganda bonanza, while the warlords, drug runners, and other high-level crooks can sit back and rest easy, knowing that their way of doing business is prevailing across the board, across the land.

The Obama administration is left to rue the fact that they couldn’t find an alternative to Karzai when they came to office–that they still cannot find one–and any number of people can point disapproving fingers at the newly-crowned, thoroughly-tainted Afghan president, though given the record of all the foreigners who’ve been involved in the country since 2001, we can all take a little credit for what unfolded, and what fell apart, over the past month. And the simple message contained in the mysterious billboards someone was putting up around Kabul a few months back still holds:

now what?