September 04, 2009

 

Afghan Election - Modernity Conflicting with Taliban’s Retrogression

 

Results of the August 20 Presidential election in Afghanistan may not be officially announced before mid-September. Unofficial tallies so far of some 20 per cent of the votes cast give Hamid Karzai, a Pushtun from Southern Afghanistan, a lead of about 10% over his closest rival Abdullah, a Tajik from Northern Afghanistan. If either of them fails to get over 50% of the votes, a run off election between these two main contenders is likely to be held in October.

It is a landmark election, inasmuch as it is for the future of the country. It is actually a contest between modernity, represented by the candidates mentioned above and the traditional mores and radical ideas of the Taliban. Far from providing a sideshow, the Taliban appear to be clawing to the center stage. They have created such an aura of intimidation and fear that a large percentage of voters particularly in Pushtun territories have avoided the vote. They did carry out their warning, in a few cases at least, that the indelible-ink-bearing finger of any one who took part in the ballot would be chopped off.

Only 5.5 million are said to have cast their votes in a population of 34 million with half of them eligible to vote. Bulk of the population is below 30 years of age. Apart from the President, the elections will also choose 420 councilors across 34 provinces.

While the Taliban have been expanding their influence over the past eight years since their overthrow in the autumn of 2001, Mr. Karzai’s area of operation has been shrinking till it became virtually confined to Kabul and he was given the nickname of “The Mayor of Kabul”. His government is acknowledged as hopelessly corrupt and ineffective. Since he has been unable to provide the much-needed security to the populace, they have been drawn to the Taliban and the warlords to seek redress of their grievances. He himself has sought and received the support of warlords like the notorious Abdul Rashid Dostum, ignoring the advice of the US to the contrary. Less than 20% of world opium was produced in Afghanistan when he first became the President; now it is 93%. His brother is reputed to be the opium baron of the country.

His chief opponent in the election, ex-foreign minister Abdullah, has launched a campaign alleging that the Karzai administration had indulged in massive rigging of the vote, “a state-engineered fraud” as he called it. If the final count and concrete evidence support the allegation, a kind of civil war between the north and south of Afghanistan might ensue. A return to the kind of civil war Afghanistan knew in the 1990s is possible, though Afghans overwhelmingly dread such a possibility. It was to end the civil war in 1996 that a majority of Afghans accepted Taliban rule, which began with the promise of law and order.

A civil war at this stage would postpone the run off election, if that becomes necessary, and lead instead to violence, death and destruction. Security will be a grave casualty and socio-economic projects will have to be put on hold.

Afghanistan has now some 100,000 foreign troops, 67,000 of them from the US, and the remainder 33,000 contributed by NATO. Yet this massive formation has been unable to provide security to the people at large. Taliban constitute the chief culprit in this. Their roadside bombs and suicide attackers have been killing increasing number of foreign soldiers. Taliban propaganda presents the US and NATO troops as occupiers of their land and “sole support of a corrupt regime of drug lords, thieves and charlatans.”

A psychological warfare is buttressing the Taliban’s guerrilla attacks, roadside bombs, IEDs, and suicide bombers. Afghanistan is presented as the graveyard of all foreign invaders. The defeat and withdrawal of the Soviet forces is cited as the latest in a string of such victories of the Afghan warriors.

The US is projected as the invader and occupier of Afghanistan for the past eight years. It may face a similar humiliating defeat at the hands of the Taliban. Conspicuous by its absence is any mention of the US role in the proxy war against the Soviet Union.

No doubt, the number of casualties of US and NATO soldiers has been on the increase. The year 2009 has been the deadliest year for foreign forces since the overthrow of Taliban in 2001. The more the body bags of Western soldiers, the less is the support for the war in their homelands.

Here in the US there is another factor that is weakening the will of the people to fight the war to the end. Partisan politics and opponents of Obama, for whatever reason, want to see him humiliated in the battlefield of Afghanistan despite the fact that he had inherited the war from the Bush administration.

A weakness of the American psyche is that it lacks tenacity and long-lasting patience. Also, it cannot accept easily a setback. Voices are thus heard these days advising the government to abandon the war in Afghanistan and simply walk away from it.

That would be a great disaster, not only for the US but also for its allies, including Pakistan and the Western world. The Soviet Union disintegrated after the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Obviously, the US, the sole super power since then, can hardly afford committing a similar blunder. And, victory in the war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda is not a far-fetched prospect either. The Taliban do not constitute even a minute patch on the might of the US. They were, for instance, eliminated from Swat within days by the Pakistan army once it decided to do so.

President Obama has called the Afghan election “successful”, and more importantly, he has made a clear commitment: “We have got to make sure that we are really focused on finishing the job in Afghanistan”. He had referred to the Afghan war as “the war of necessity”; for, the threat of another 9/11 emanated from the identification of the US by the Taliban and their patron Al Qaeda as their chief enemy and target.

Pakistan is interested in a secure and crisis-free Afghanistan. The porous border between the two countries makes it possible for a crisis in one to seep into the other. The rugged terrain admits of sheltering the guerrillas of one in the territory of the other. That is how elements of Taliban could find refuge on the Pakistan side of the border after the coalition forces invaded them for providing refuge to Al Qaeda suspected of having planned and executed 9/11. Common tribal links and a unique code of conduct facilitated their use of the tribal belt as a safe haven.

Pakistan has a deep interest in the emergence of a friendly government in Afghanistan following the election. Political and military stability in Afghanistan will help augment stability in Pakistan too. If the election yields a legitimate and popular government, no matter which candidate wins, it would receive the support of Pakistan. For, such an elected government can hardly align itself with the antediluvian Taliban.

The forward-looking people of Pakistan are wary of the growing influence of the Taliban, the obscurantist clerics and virtually illiterate mullahs, who want to put the country on the path of retrogression and of even self-annihilation.

arifhussaini@hotmail.com