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Junkie
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Interesting article on Afghanistan
I thought this was an interesting and balanced article on the situation in Afghanisation, and its comparison to Iraq.
Quote:
Afghans count their blessings - they're not in Iraq
October 21, 2004
Afghanistan has cause for hope, but its relative peace is still far from secure, writes Paul McGeough.
There was shooting in Kabul last night, but it is still a long way from Baghdad.
The relative safety of the Afghan capital and a stunning demonstration of the people's yearning for a new life when they came out to vote in their millions on October 9 are proof that good things might happen in this crazy world.
The risk is that the wrong lessons will be read from it all. President George Bush is charging right on, claiming that Afghanistan vindicates Iraq. But there are huge differences and, alas, great similarities that are cause for caution.
Washington's powerful ambassador in Kabul, Zalmay Khalilzad, gets a lot of flak for his heavy-handed efforts to shape events here. But his assessment of progress is fair: "If the journey of Afghanistan standing on its own feet [to be] a successful country is 10 miles, Afghanistan, in my view, has just passed mile three."
But he went on to make the vital argument that is absent from the White House rhetoric: "It could take as long as 10 years for it to be a truly successful country in terms of security, in terms of economic development, in terms of being a successful democratic state."
The average Afghani is infinitely better off than his Iraqi counterpart.
The Taliban and al-Qaeda are still fighting, but on a narrow front, and the absence of a nationwide insurgency means Afghans can dare to hope.
Hope is a powerful motivator. It's the reason why the bazaar in Bamiyan, in the high Hindu Kush of central Afghanistan, has doubled in size in the past couple of months; it's why there is still an army of NGOs at work here, trying to build bridges and schools, medical posts and a government.
Successes in Afghanistan stem from political legitimacy, the role of the United Nations and international cooperation. None of these applies in Iraq.
The Washington-sponsored busload of exiles came to Kabul in 2001. But unlike in Iraq, an interim government was quickly established to represent most movements in the country.
Unlike in Iraq, the UN was heavily involved in that process and in the effort to rebuild the country - an Asia Foundation poll found recently that while 65 per cent of Afghans viewed the US favourably, the UN rated 84 per cent. And unlike Iraq, the foreign presence in Afghanistan is genuinely an international effort - so it is not seen by Afghans as an American occupation.
It was messy at first. The US did not want other forces getting in the way of its pursuit of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. But NATO is here and in many areas the residents never see US troops.
In Bamiyan this week, I saw a couple of unarmed New Zealand soldiers wandering in the bazaar. The comparison with Baghdad was surreal - there, untrusting, trigger-happy, tense and heavily armoured Americans are the face of the international community.
But given the US propensity to make itself the problem and not the solution, other factors are at work here.
Many Afghans are well disposed to Washington because of its long, covert funding of the mujahideen war against Soviet occupation in the 1980s. There is no national anxiety here about foreigners making off with a trophy resource, like Iraq's oil.
It suits the Afghans for the Americans to be preoccupied with the search for Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. They, too, want to be rid of them; and in the hunt, the US is co-opting, training and funding the Afghan warlords who, in other circumstances, might be shooting at Americans.
In the Iraqi chaos, nearly 1100 US military personnel and an estimated 20,000 Iraqis have been killed since March last year. In Afghanistan, about 140 Americans have died since October 2001 and an estimated 1000 Afghans have been killed this year.
The timetables are similar - Iraqis had 25-odd years of Saddam Hussein; Afghans had 25-odd years of civil war and strife. One significant difference is that Iraqis were oppressed internally and under sanctions externally, but the majority could get on with their lives; Afghans were absolutely at war and absolutely sick of it.
In a perverse way, the US has made of Iraq what Afghanistan used to be.
In Iraq, few dare to trust their new order. The once powerful Sunnis are convinced they will be marginalised; the oppressed Shiites cannot trust Washington to allow them to exercise the power of their numerical strength; and the Kurds fret constantly that, as in the past, they are about to be betrayed.
Success or failure in Afghanistan's next seven miles will be dictated by another element that is absent in Iraq - a sense that there were unambiguous winners out of the conflict.
Everything depends on what those winners do with their power.
For now, the drug barons, warlords, ethnic heavies and tribal elders remain unchecked. Despite his rhetoric, the interim president, Hamid Karzai, is their puppet and, for now, the most appropriate analogy is Colombia, not Switzerland.
That is a status quo that Afghans understand. It is not a life, it is not a democracy but, for most, the shooting has stopped. And if Karzai is the bridge to global funding to rebuild the country, that helps to explain the huge support he seems to have garnered in the presidential election.
There is a momentum here, but it is so fragile. There is peace, but it's a dangerous peace and the risk in all this naive talk of success, is that the world will move on.
That's not nation building.
Paul McGeough, the chief Herald correspondent, has reported extensively from Iraq and Afghanistan.
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Mr Mephisto |