VIEW: Afghanistan after withdrawal — II —Amjad Ayub Mirza

In an Afghanistan where will there be no accountability for corruption and no election process that would give the people a chance to choose, only might will be right

A decentralised Afghanistan will be utterly ungovernable from a weak centre. Power sharing with insurgents subverts the principle on which the Afghan war was supposed to be fought. The principle was to bring a ruthless and fanatical religious sectarian terrorist organisation to a situation of total defeat. Bearing in mind that the population had been under the rule of local ‘dignitaries’ for centuries and yet had lived in poverty and were deprived of the privilege to be educated, power sharing with such monoliths, allowing them access to state revenue to draw their own local budgets does not sound a promising arrangement since there is more chance of the monies being set aside for the benefit of the local elite.

And the traditional alternatives to a centralised justice system, based on the sectarian interpretation of shariah, will mean more violence towards women in the name of religious morality and more torture inflicted upon dissidents.

Another suggestion brought forth like a genie out of the jar in the Foreign Affairs article, ‘Defining Success in Afghanistan’ is that of mixed sovereignty. It says, “Mixed sovereignty would go a step further [than decentralised democracy], granting local authorities the additional power to rule without transparency or elections if they so chose.” If a ‘transparency-free’ and ‘non-elected local governing body’ were to be the end result of the nine-year war that has claimed 350 British and over a thousand US soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Afghan and scores of Pakistani civilians in Waziristan and the tribal areas, then why on earth did we get rid of the Taliban in the first place?

In an Afghanistan where will there be no accountability for corruption and no election process that would give the people a chance to choose, only might will be right. Calling centralised democracy “a bridge too far”, the writers of this apologist essay insist that, “Kabul would retain control over foreign policy and the ability to make war and enforce narcotics, customs and mining law and limited authority over interprovincial commerce.” This is going back to the days of the French King Louis XIV and the English King Charles I, who had such arrangements with the nobility in return for their pledges to support the king in raising an army and funds to support him conquer more lands for monetary exploitation.

What about the Afghan constitution, the 60 female members of the Afghan parliament, the terrorised populace, the threat of future terrorist attacks from the new safe havens that would spring up in the autonomous territories under the ex-mujahideen and the Taliban?

Implementing a solution to the Afghan war will not be an easy task. It demands patience and much preparatory work. Not only do the Afghan government and anti-terrorist forces and voices in that country need to be strengthened, in order to create a stable regional economic and political environment, the countries bordering Afghanistan need to be assisted as well. For Pakistan, such talk by American think tanks presents a worrying picture. If the above-mentioned proposals are implemented under the auspices of the UN, Pakistan must brace itself for a huge surge in radical religious sectarian militancy in the tribal belt bordering Afghanistan as well as in Punjab.

As NATO and the US have decided to flee from the war, it will be Pakistan that will bear the brunt of the unfinished job. Hence, it might be a good idea to commence the debate regarding the nationalisation and regulation of the seminaries across the country with the provision of introducing vocational training in them.

As an uncertain time approaches fast, Mr Shah Mahmood Qureshi could extend help by offering the Afghan government facilities in Pakistan to train a new generation of able civil servants who could take up the reconstruction work in Afghanistan and represent their country as ambassadors and foreign service personnel, thus reducing the state’s reliance on the same old corrupt and impotent army of government officials.

Meanwhile, the coalition and the Karzai government should stick to its guns and the offer it has made to the insurgents: renounce violence, sever links with al Qaeda and swear allegiance to the Afghan constitution. For those who take up the offer, a normal political afterlife awaits them. The larger part of the disarmed insurgents can be held in UN-observed compounds and re-educated before they finally could be made ready to join the Afghan National Army. If this strategy worked for the Nepalese Maoist guerrillas, it could work for Taliban insurgents. A renewed Afghan National Army then would be able to protect — collectively — the trillions of dollars worth of iron and copper ores in and around the Aynak region and many other minerals that nature has gifted this unfortunate nation.

(Concluded)

Dr Amjad Ayub Mirza is a freelancer based in London. He can be reached at dr_amjad_mirza@hotmail.com