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WEEKLY
SECTIONS |
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| Afghanistan's failed electoral exercise |
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Thursday, October 22, 2009
Ikram Sehgal
In assessing the situation for US president Obama, Gen Stanley McCrystal notes, "the weakness of state institutions, malign actions of power-brokers, widespread corruption and abuse of power by various officials, and ISAF's own errors, have given Afghans little reason to support their government."
Soviet Gen Boris Gromov could well have used the same words in describing the worsening situation in the late 80s to then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. One thing has not changed, the Afghan army let the Soviets do most of the fighting against the Mujahideen. Presently US and Coalition troops do all the fighting against the Taliban, the present Afghan National Army (ANA) does even less than what their predecessors were doing in the 80s. The Soviets' favourite Afghan then was Najibullah. Two decades later the only difference the US and its coalition partners are now propping up Hamid Karzai. Najibullah may have been brutally promoting a godless regime, but he was not corrupt, as Karzai is, in presiding over a sham democracy.
The recount having taken out a three-million-plus fraudulently cast votes showed that heavy voting by angels at ghost polling stations was rampant. According to Ambassador Peter Galbraith, the US diplomat who was No 2 to Kai Eide, the UN head in Afghanistan, was fired from the job for trying to get the Independent Election Commission (IEC) to close down such bogus polling stations. The IEC's Karzai bias was just a reflection of the entire Karzai government machinery involving itself in extensive and systematic stuffing of ballot boxes. The attempt for a power-sharing deal having failed a run-off is scheduled for Nov 7. How this will take place in the short time available and in the circumstances prevailing is mind-boggling. The deliberate subversion of the integrity of the electoral process which saw fully one-third of the votes for Karzai to be fraudulent has been conveniently ignored. The entire elections should have been scrapped and those involved disqualified. It is ridiculous that government known to be full of drug warlords should be acceptable to the West for good governance in Afghanistan, especially after being found guilty of sanctioning such sophisticated fraud. What more are those caught with their hands in the cookie jar be capable of, will Nov 7 be credible? How can the US and coalition partners tolerate their young men being killed in support of such abomination?
The Pakistan army has started its long awaited assault in South Waziristan to eliminate the main source of terrorism in Pakistan. Fully 6-7 Brigades of the Pakistan Army are presently engaged in battle, attacking in concentric fashion from three directions, boxing the militants against the Durand Line. A Mehsud-heavy faction of the Taliban has at its core Uzbek, Chechen and Arab militants. The Taliban and Al-Qaeda are intertwined significantly here, the Al-Qaeda hierarchy using the South Waziristan redoubt as their main base. For the guerrillas to try "to fight and run away" in line with Mao's dictum "live to fight another day" will be difficult, most of them have families and have virtually nowhere to run, they are being forced to stand and fight as they are pushed deeper into their last mountain strongholds. The army has a window of opportunity for 30-45 days. The first flurry of snows will impede air operations, a vital element supporting the ground troops in this tough, almost inaccessible terrain.
There has been a lot of talk about Pakistan's commitment in the campaign against terrorism. Statistics show that in Swat only, the Pakistani army has had casualties in the past three months equalling all that suffered by US, Coalition and Afghan forces together in the past nine months, this 3:1 ratio has prevailed for most of the past several years. For its part, the Afghan National Army, now almost 120,000 strong and eight years in the making, has had casualties less than a third of US and Coalition forces put together. The ANA has finessed to perfection the art of avoiding combat. Their casualties run about 10-12 percent to that of the Pakistani army. Among Afghanistan's law enforcement agencies, including police and the customs, the casualties are less than half suffered by Pakistan's law enforcement agencies in the past few years, even our civilian collateral damage is several times that of Afghanistan.
It boils down to a matter of commitment. The ANA is not motivated to fight. They are at best a ceremonial Praetorian Guard meant mainly to protect the interests of the ruling Afghan hierarchy. Afghans must at the very least match the sacrifices their allies have been rendering (and still are). Before the Obama administration puts more American boys in harm's way in Afghanistan by accepting Gen Stanley McCrystal's request for a surge (of up to 40,000 more troops), the US must insist that Karzai's ANA takes the same risks that US and Coalition troops are taking.
Afghan technocrats presently in government were almost all educated in Pakistan during the 80s and 90s. While it is depressing to hear their anti-Pakistan rhetoric ad nauseam at various forums, they are mostly following the Karzai line blaming Pakistan and the ISI for everything under the sun. While Afghanistan depends upon Pakistan for everything, the only thing the Afghans give us (or can give us in the future) is trouble. Nevertheless, it is in Pakistan's interest to have a stable and peaceful Afghanistan. We must engage with these technocrats with sensible dialogue about genuine cooperation, they are at least a stark contrast to their present political bosses with drug-ridden corrupt backgrounds like Karzai's brother Wali Khan or war criminal Rashid Dostum. Instead of trying to impose a farcical democracy that has no relevance to the good governance envisaged by the west, why not empower a credible technocrat to head a government of national reconciliation for a period of time?
A modern unified state of Afghanistan is certainly a necessity. For that the Taliban will somehow have to be persuaded that engagement in dialogue rather than confrontation is the route to follow. They will have to come to terms with modernity and progress rather than stay steeped in obscurantism. The only way to break the stranglehold of both religion and ethnicity is by throwing economics at the situation, where commerce must be suited to the genius of the people. Whether engaging in governance, combat, in trade or whatever, Afghanisation is the only way to go!
The writer is a defence and political
analyst. Email: isehgal@pathfinder9.com
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