Afghanistan’s Last Hope: Dictatorship

The Taliban does not have to win on the battlefield

Since the Taliban began regaining strength in 2005 at the latest, the discussion in western nations has focused above all on military mistakes and failures. If early talk was of the ruthlessness of American troops, now it is about the German military ever since they called in an air attack on two fuel transporters that reportedly killed many civilians. As important as the discussion of military involvement may be, it hides the fact that the NATO nations’ as well as United Nations’ missions in Afghanistan have also failed politically.

The most visible manifestation of this failure is the presidential election of August 20. Hamid Karzai’s political party engaged in massive falsification of the balloting. The upshot: If NATO nations allow their last best hope to get away with this, their promises of democracy are worthless. If, on the other hand, they force Karzai into a runoff election or declare the results null and void – which they realistically should – they then risk further instability with renewed violence or perhaps even a power vacuum that could cause Afghanistan’s total collapse.

Now the chickens have come home to roost because NATO and the UN have allowed Afghanistan’s political institutions and its civilian society to remain weak. Warlords and former military commanders who actually belong before military tribunals dominate the parliament in the absence of any political party. The fact that voter participation was so much less in this election than it had been in 2004 is due not only to the deteriorating security situation, it is also because the Afghan people have become disillusioned.

NATO and the UN have also failed in other important areas. The failure of the anti-drug war under the aegis of Great Britain is manifestly apparent. While the size of the poppy harvest was somewhat reduced recently, all it accomplished was to stabilize the market price of opium because the warehouses were already overflowing with it. Afghanistan continues to cover more than 90 percent of global heroin demand.

Reconstituting the Afghan police force was Germany’s task, and that has also been a spectacular failure. The number of trainers sent has always been far below the number required. The police forces remain too weak, too poorly trained and too corrupt.

The Italians were responsible for constructing an Afghan justice system. That has been disastrous as well, as exemplified by the death sentence handed down to journalism student Parwez Kambakhsh who was tried without access to legal counsel, convicted of blasphemy and sentenced to death for publishing an article critical of Islam on the internet. Under pressure from western nations, the sentence was commuted to 20 years imprisonment and later dropped altogether when President Karzai pardoned him provided he went into exile.

Instead of protecting citizens’ legal rights, Islamic law is used to repress the populace. When worst-case scenarios such as that of Kambakhsh are reversed, it happens not via the court system but rather from international pressure on Karzai. He, in turn, puts pressure on the judges, something that only emphasizes their lack of independence.

The much-ballyhooed freedom of the press is also non-existent in Afghanistan. This was shown not only in the Kambakhsh case but also by the fact that Karzai was able to censor any press mention of Taliban attacks on election day. Conditions for the media are certainly better than they were under Taliban rule, but freedom of the press looks much different than what passes for it in Afghanistan today.

Women’s rights are also in equally bad shape. True, girls may now attend school and women may vote – if they dare. But compared to five years ago, their participation in the election process has declined. Since the Taliban’s treatment of women was used as a justification for intervention in Afghanistan, the women’s rights issue has long since disappeared off the table. During elections now, it is no longer unusual for tribal chiefs and husbands cast votes in their wives’ names even though the practice is illegal. If the perennial suggestion for negotiations with “moderate” Taliban members ever becomes reality, there may be promises again of women’s rights.

It is certain that Afghanistan, which suffered from 20 years of warfare prior to western intervention and whose problems existed even before that, cannot be transformed into a model democracy in just a few years. But in addition to the Bush administration’s rejection of “nation building,” other western nations also grossly underestimated the scope of that Herculean task.

The Afghanistan conference that Merkel, Brown and Sarkozy seem to consider so important in the near future is just an attempt to desert the sinking ship by shoveling as much responsibility as possible off onto Karzai as quickly as they can.

The West failed in Afghanistan because they were unable to offer any realistic alternative to the Taliban. The Taliban has the advantage of not having to be “better” than the West; it is sufficient that they can discredit the “western system” and present themselves as the true representatives of Islamic interests. The Taliban does not even have to win militarily in order to drive NATO out of the country. They only have to show that NATO cannot protect the Afghans; they only have to continue driving up the cost of the international commitment until the West decides it can no longer afford it.

The best that the West can hope for now is to leave an authoritarian puppet behind who will fit the American description “he may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch,” one who may be able to keep the nation on a pro-western course. That may even be possible in terms of security-oriented politics where the terror will be directed “only” at Afghans and perhaps their near neighbors, but no longer toward the West. But that will be inadequate compensation for the failure to create a real state.