They Don’t Understand Democracy

The West Denounces Afghanistan — and Takes the Spotlight off Its Own Failures

The Afghans don’t know what democracy is. They oppress their women. If they hear the phrase “rule of law,” they switch off the safety on their assault rifles. If you preach democracy to them, they think of bazaars. No, Afghans are truly something else. We have recently been hearing that line increasingly here in the West. Yet, for years, we were told the exact opposite: Just a few simple steps and the Afghans will be exactly like us. Let them vote once or twice and they might be poorer than we are, but they’ll be just as free and self-determining. Not to mention happier, too. So now they’ve voted for the fourth time — this time for parliament — and what do we see? Fraud, corruption, violence and fanaticism. Where did we go wrong?

We must want to believe that. How else should we interpret the official statements coming from our Western government offices? No mention of the blatant and everlasting election fraud. If you ask why we’re not mentioning that, you’ll just get a knowing smile along with the platitude that you can’t expect Westminster-style democracy; we’re dealing with Afghanistan here! There’s the constant reminder to be realistic, and the realism leads to the denunciation: The Afghans? They’re all wild and unpredictable!

But that’s a really transparent rhetorical excuse. While NATO plans its withdrawal, we’ve already started passing the buck to Afghanistan. Well, we tried, but they’re just too different; they don’t understand democracy, and they don’t want it! But the West won’t get off that easily. All this cultural relevancy talk about Afghanistan’s “intrinsic otherness” undermines one of the building blocks of Western society: the universality of human rights. To claim that the Afghans reject all these Western imports is to misinterpret not only the situation on the ground, but also to saw off the branch we’re all sitting on.

That’s the collateral damage of an operation that takes the spotlight off a simple, yet very dramatic question: How is it possible that the 37 NATO nations — among them the world’s richest countries — could fail to get the world’s fifth poorest country back on its feet? What did all those soldiers accomplish in the nine years they’ve been there? What effect did the many billions of dollars and all the bombs and rockets have? This failure of the Western governments is the subject we should be discussing — not the failures of the Afghan people.

The debate has to begin at the beginning; it has to begin with 2001 and the Sept. 11 attacks. The enormity and the global visibility of these attacks forced the West to act. It decided it had to go to war. When that decision was made, scarcely anyone considered what a Herculean task that would be. The question of whether the West was powerful and capable enough to solve all the problems wasn’t even considered. Why should it be when the West was at the zenith of its powers and was facing the ultimate challenge from al-Qaida? Who even mentioned the developing world powers of China, India and Brazil in those days?

It’s difficult to deny that the West stumbled into this war because of a mixture of hubris and necessity. But that in itself can’t explain the West’s failure in Afghanistan. What came to grief in the Hindu Kush was also a specific political concept; the notion that somewhere in the reigning darkness, there was a switch just waiting to be thrown and then light would come streaming brightly in — in this particular case, into the house called Afghanistan. Politicians and generals alike nourished this illusion by constantly talking of a “new strategy,” of a “decisive year” or of “the turning point.” Policy became an act of revelation: All we had to do was find that special key and the doors to paradise would be unlocked. That was bound to end in disillusionment.

Instead of promising the grand solution, it’s more about turning many little fine tuning knobs. When everything has been properly adjusted, there will be progress in Afghanistan. Developmental aid is the key phrase here. A policy of hard work with no assurance of success. Today, the word is that there can be no civilian assistance in Afghanistan without the protection of the military. But what have the soldiers accomplished thus far? Stability? Wrong. Democracy? Wrong again. Everything thus far has failed because they are part and parcel of the same thing. But whoever comes as a helper must be seen as neutral in order to be trusted. And only something trusted has a chance of success. The military presence, by its own sheer weight, blocks all those little knobs from functioning.

It’s time to end the military presence in Afghanistan.