Myths and Impact of
[03.May.2018 - 09:50]Myths and Impact of Bad Governance on Stability in Afghanistan
Shahmahmood Miakhel
There can be no government without an army, No army without money, No money without prosperity, and no prosperity without justice and good administration.
This paper details specific events in Afghanistan during the last three and half decades. Many of these events have become part of the living history in Afghanistan. The main focus of this paper is not on the root causes of the ongoing insurgency in Afghanistan, but on the prospects of political, military, and economic transition leading up to 2014. The paper dispels a few myths that exist among Afghans, as well as within the international community, regarding Afghans and Afghanistan. It is important to mention that these myths have not only become part of the popular narrative and but also significantly influences policy formulation, albeit negatively. As former interior minister of Afghanistan, Ali Ahmad Jalali once said that “the Afghan government and international community are both partners in Afghanistan, but unfortunately neither side understands the other very well”.
Myths about Afghanistan
There are two types of myths, one set circulating within the international community and the other set circulating among the Afghan elites. The myths within the international community including the so-called non-Afghan experts, are:
• Afghanistan has never had a functional government;
• Afghans don’t know how to practice democracy and see it as perfectly acceptable to make deals with warlords and power brokers or – in some cases – even with known criminals;
• Since the Afghan government is weak and doesn’t control areas beyond Kabul, it is willing to make deal with the local warlords;
• The government doesn’t function because there is a lack of capacity and absence of laws and institutions to govern;
• Since Afghanistan’s government doesn’t function because of its ineffectual centralized system, the best thing to do is to ignore the central government and work with the peripheries; and
• Corruption is an inevitable part of Afghan culture.
Similarly the myths circulating among the Afghan elites are as follows.
• Counter terrorism is an excuse by the international community, especially the United States (US), to control the region in order to have access to Central Asian natural resources;
• The US wants to have a long-term presence in Afghanistan in order to stop Chinese influence in the region;
• The US is in Afghanistan to have control over extensive mines and natural resources in Afghanistan;
• For the international community to stay in Afghanistan, it is imperative that they maintain keep the status quo- allow insurgency to fester- to justify their presence, even if it means supporting both the Taliban and Afghan government at the same time;
• The presence of international community is a conspiracy against the Pashtun ethnic group in the region, which explains why a majority of fighting is occurring in the Pashtun areas on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border;
• The prime objective of international community is to destabilize the region, which is why they support both the Afghan government and Taliban. This view is particularly widely prevalent in rural areas where there is a significant information gap; and,
• The international community is in Afghanistan as part of a larger conspiracy to destroy Islam.
It is important to explain and dispel these myths. To begin with the myth that Afghanistan has never had a functional government and corruption is an inevitable part of the Afghan culture, is flawed.
Before 1978, people of Afghanistan experienced a functional government. They had the opportunity to travel to different provinces, to study in the universities, to fulfil military duties, to work as civil servants and also to address their grievances through the existing formal and informal institutions. All ethnic groups and educated elites had opportunity to serve in different part of the country and know each other better. In those times, for example, an unarmed police soldier in a very remote part of the country could summon anyone who had committed a crime or against whom someone had lodged a complaint, to the local government office. The elders -Maliks, Arbabs, Kalantar of Guzar or Qaryadars were obliged to report all criminal activities, including even deaths and births to the government. Similarly, with the exception of the people of Loya Paktia , no one, including sons of King Zahir Shah and President Daud, was exempt from military conscription. The country was so safe that one could travel to any part of the country during day and night without any dangers of physical harm.
In terms of accountability and transparency, most former senior government officials reached the highest positions by virtue of merit, not through favoritism, especially in the decades of democracy- 1960s and 70s. Examples of this trend include most prime ministers, ministers and governors who assumed positions after 1964 and who did not belong to the King’s family. They reached these positions mostly through their skill and hard work. Likewise, in Afghanistan the court system and rule of law remained functional and people had confidence in the system to address their grievances through the formal or informal justice system. Indeed, it was a sign of pride for most senior officials to be honest and poor rather than corrupt and rich. Even to this day, many people reminiscence of the value system of the previous regimes. Remarkably, despite all the ills committed by former members of Khalq faction of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), people praise them for not being corrupt, unlike the Mujahideen factions and warlords in later times. In particular, most senior officials of the Khalq regime still live under poor conditions, which show that they did not amass illegal wealth during their tenure in power.
A good example of the transparent and functional system is the story of President Daud’s daughter who was failed in the examination by a professor of Kabul University. According to Chief Justice Abdul Salam Azimi who was former Chancellor of Kabul University, Professor Mohibi of the Science Faculty refused to retract as President Daud’s daughter Zarlashta, did not do very well in her exam. Chief Justice Azimi said that many people approached Prof. Mohibi to try to convince him to change his decision, but the professor insisted that she had to be treated at par with the other students. President Daud summoned the professor and expressed his appreciation for his fairness and courage. Later, President Daud appointed Prof. Mohibi as Minister of Higher Education. Such examples are indicative of the fact that while Afghanistan did have a functional government and corruption was not an inherent part of the Afghan culture.
Another myth that needs to be tested is that Afghans do not know how to practice democracy. Many Afghans strongly disagree with this statement. In fact, principles of equality, representation and independence are strongly rooted among Afghans. Most of Afghanistan’s local institutions are based on equal participation of people in their day-to-day decision making processes. Jirgas and Shuras (two terms used for formal gatherings) are the best examples of how people make their decisions based on fair democratic participation. In most instances all the men of a community have the equal right to sit on councils like shuras. Local political positions are not strictly inherited and elders must work to satisfy their followers or they risk losing their positions. Unfortunately, in the past and especially since 2001, the international community has tried to impose non-democratic processes and regimes on democratic society of Afghanistan on a local level. They do this by favouring certain local commanders and providing them with resources so that they no longer need to respond to the needs of the communities. For example, during the last ten years, most of contracts in the security and construction sectors were awarded to warlords or to those who had support and blessing of the international community and not necessarily the support of the people.
The model of democratic governments might vary from country-to-country, but the essence of democratic process is fair participation of people in the decision-making process, governance and selecting or electing their leaders. To this day, many Afghans testify that a majority of local leaders before 1978 were respected by the people, not because of their wealth or rules of inheritance, but for their impartiality, fairness and service delivery to the people. In essence, Afghans have given a fair chance to socialism, communism, jihad, and democracy as the norms of governance– but all these ideologies have failed because of the unfairness of the government and the breakdown of governance structures they promoted. The past two centuries of Afghan history have amply demonstrated that the prime reason for the fall regimes is rooted in the system of resistance such regimes develop towards allowing popular participation.
As Professor Barfield "while Afghanistan’s Durrani rulers (1747-1978) may have originated in an egalitarian Pashtun tribal system, they employed a classical hierarchal model of governance to maintain power exclusively within their own dynastic lines. They abandoned the democratic and federal political institutions used among the Pashtun tribes at the local level, and replaced them with autocracy. Because of this, the relationship between the Pashtun tribes and their putative dynastic leaders was always a troubled one, in which cooperation (or conflict) depended on the issues involved.
According to Professor Barfield, the rulers imposed classical hierarchal autocratic model of governance on the egalitarian society of Afghanistan thereby excluding people from decision making processes that impacted on their day to day life. Throughout the history of Afghanistan people have resisted, both at national and local levels, attempts by rulers to impose non-democratic system or processes. Such resistance has either been through armed opposition or through means of non-cooperation with the regimes. This is the reason why regimes have failed. For example, in 1929 Amanuallah Khan’s regime was overthrown after he tried to impose a new value system without consulting local communities. The same fate befell on the communist regime after 1978.
Since 2001, exclusion of people from decision-making processes or ignoring opinions of people in the political process has created a schism between people and the government of Afghanistan. This has, in turn, created a conducive condition for the growth of the insurgency . Decisions taken in the Bonn Conference (2001), Emergency Loya Jirga (2002), Constitutional Loya Jirga (2003), and in subsequent presidential and parliamentary elections in (2004, 2005, 2009, 2010) have been ignored and undermined by the government and international community. Consequently, the results of each of these processes have faced credibility and legitimacy challenges. This paper does not attempt to provide details about each of these processes. In many of these instances participants were handpicked by the government and even vetted by President Karzai himself, reinforcing the perception that the chosen lot were not the real representative of the country as a whole.
Another good example is the recent election fiasco in Afghanistan. Parliamentary elections took place in September 2010, but the results and legality of parliament is still questioned even after more than one year, despite the fact that close to 120 million dollars were spent to ensure free and fair elections. By way of contrast, back in the 1960s, when Afghanistan had less communication infrastructure, the results of elections would be announced on the same evening, and the whole process cost very little. At present, elections in Afghanistan cost hundreds of millions of US dollars and are mostly funded by donors. It is very obvious that such patterns of elections would not be possible to be held without international support. However, it is possible to design the whole new election process in a way to reduce the cost to the level affordable by Afghan government in the long run. For example, in 2002, the election for the Emergency Loya Jirga, in four eastern provinces of Kunar, Laghman, Nuristan and Nangarhar, cost less than US $100,000 in which about 2400 representatives were elected by the people in first round of election. That election was more representative and legitimate in the eyes of people compared to the recent elections. In fact, the complications and slow announcement of results has only raises concerns that the election results are being manipulated by high level officials and that their votes matter very little.
Some commentators argue that lack of capacity and absence of institutions are the main problem of service delivery in Afghanistan. However, facts prove otherwise. Afghanistan may need to improve capacity and some procedures in the administrative system. But the actual problem is that of lack of vision and political will to use the existing capacity and to appoint competent, honest people to administrative positions. Incidentally, the reforms process in Afghan Security Sector, Judiciary, Economic and Civil Service sectors have created enormous job insecurity. Many qualified people have been removed from the system in the pretext of reforms. Arguably the Administrative system of Afghanistan is more sophisticated than the UN system and the current work force is capable of addressing the needs of the people. They can serve as the useful advisors to senior officials compared to the trend of appointing foreign civilian advisors who are not familiar with Afghanistan system. However, the views of such qualified, honest and dedicated workers in the country have not been taken into account. Moreover, they have been replaced by incompetent and dishonest officials by the government machinery due to favoritism, ethnic politics and corruption. In 2003, the local governance and administration department of the Ministry of Interior (MoI), had three foreign advisors. Ministry of Interior (MoI) decided not to renew their contracts because none of them was able to help and advise the department of local governance and administration. They lacked the field knowledge which is relevant for governance. On the contrary, the local directors who knew the system, rules and regulations, carried out most of the work and were found to be more suitable than the foreign advisors.
Commentators argue that the current centralized institutions or unitary system of government is a cause of instability in Afghanistan. They do not facilitate improvement of governance. This notion can be dispelled as well. Who is in charge of the model is more important than the model of the government itself. Models can be improved and that is a process in continuum. Despite the criticisms labeled against them, the current judicial and police system of Afghanistan have convicted some criminals. However, political reasons and influence of the mafia network ensured that the President released them by decree. Example can be cited of the April 2009 release of five convicted drug dealers by President Karzai. These five men were allegedly close to the President's campaign manager in 2009.
Many argue that the Kabul government is weak and doesn’t exercise authority beyond Kabul. The weakness in the government in Kabul is not because the Afghan government’s enemies are very strong, but because the government in Kabul has become hostage to selected few who benefit from the war economy and instability. It could be argued that the current government of Afghanistan is the strongest government in the history of Afghanistan: it has had national and international support, but unfortunately it is not able to use all this support for establishing a better system. Instead, it has appeased those few for shortsighted goals. According to the Asia Foundation Survey in 2011, the support for the government of Afghanistan is still much higher than sympathy for the armed opposition to the government. Yet it is a pity that the government has not been able to firmly establish itself.
A sense of well being is all pervasive in Afghanistan. People are generally of the opinion that they are better off now than ten years ago. Despite corruption, insecurity and mismanagement, people are still willing to give a chance to the current system. However, at the same time, there appears to be a complete failure of strategic communication from the government to the people. In contrast, the Afghan government’s enemies are more sophisticated in communicating their strategies. Their messages resonate more effectively among the Afghan people not because people agree with them, but because they are consistence with their messages and are able to implement their decisions, albeit ruthlessly. For example if Taliban issue a night letter to someone in the villages for stopping cooperation with the government and international community, people realise the seriousness of disobeying such a diktat. On the contrary, the Afghan government and international community are seen to be failing in fulfilling their promises. For example, on the recent reconciliation talks, different government entities, representatives of the international community, and political leaders have all been giving contradictory messages to the masses, thereby indicating that there is no consensus how to move forward with peace talks and what that means for the scheduled transition in 2014. The insurgents, on the other hand, have been better able to communicate through very clear messages and have shifted the debate against the government, to their own advantage.
Regarding the second set of myths, there is no doubt that the international community has made so many mistakes and lost so many opportunities to succeed in Afghanistan. One of the principal reasons of their failure in Afghanistan is the lack of understanding of the country, a total lack of preparedness for a long war and a lack of interest from the very beginning in nation or institution building in Afghanistan. As Minister Jalali mentioned in one of his discussions, 'when there was more time, there were no resources to support institutions in Afghanistan, but then when there were more resources, there is no time to build institutions in Afghanistan' . Even General Caldwell, head of NATO Training Mission- Afghanistan (NTM-A) mentioned in his review that there were not sufficient resources before 2009 for Afghan National Security Forces. Between 2003-2005, the total budget of the Ministry of Interior of Afghanistan, including IDLG, was around US$ 129 million, but now the total budget of ANSF is more than US$ 10 billion . A look at the involvement of international community and increase of resources every year reveals that the international community especially the US never had a long term plan for Afghanistan. Even now, the contradicting statements made by different US government officials and politicians are a pointer towards the fact that the US does not have a long term political strategy for Afghanistan.
The U.S. and international community has interest in the region for security and economic reasons. However, an unstable Afghanistan with the dangers that it might become a safe haven for the Al-Qaeda is of concern to the international community, Afghanistan’s distant and close neighbours. There is no doubt that the current policies of spending billions of dollars with no accountability will not bring stability to Afghanistan.
Some predict that the Taliban movement might initiate Jihad in Afghanistan. However, the opposite could be also true. The war in Afghanistan is not a religious war and those who support it do so for political reasons, using Islam or ethnicity as an excuse. However, since the government has been ineffective, those that support the Taliban or exploit ethnic divisions have been able to use religious rhetoric to further their causes.
There is no doubt that the international community has committed mistakes and that Afghanistan’s neighbours, especially Pakistan, have been supporting the insurgency and have provided them sanctuaries. It is an open secret. As the famous English proverb says that good fences make good neighbors, the Afghans have to protect their own interests. The same proverb, as found in the Pashtu language, says that, Khapal mal wa sata aw gawandai ta ma waya chee ghala (“Keep your property safe and don’t call the neighbour as thief.”). This implies that if Afghanistan does not take measures to protect its own interest, no one else will do the same. Likewise, as long as the Afghan people and government do not take responsibility, notwithstanding the support Afghanistan gets from international community, security and governance cannot improve in Afghanistan.
In 1973, leaders of the fundamentalist group of Jawanan Musilman (Muslim Youth Organization), including Gulbudin Hekmatyar and Professor Burhanuddin Rabani, Ahmad Shah Massoud, Moulavi Khales, Jalaluddin Haqani and others, escaped Afghanistan and crossed over to Pakistan. The then government of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in Pakistan trained and equipped them to stage war against the government of President Daud. These groups were sent into Afghanistan and attacked the government facilities in Kunar, Laghman, Panjsher, Nangarhar and Paktika provinces, but their uprising was immediately suppressed by the people of Afghanistan, who handed over most of the attackers to the government. The local villagers arrested the leader of the Laghman group, Moulavi Habi-ur-Rahman and his followers and turned them over to government officials. This example indicates that as long as people of Afghanistan trust their government, Pakistani training, arms, sanctuaries and support for the Taliban cannot destabilize Afghanistan.
During the communist coup in 1979, the regime replaced the entire government machinery with their party loyalists and this led to a collapse of the system of governance. This time around, the same insurgent groups and individuals that had earlier been rejected by the people were able to destabilize Afghanistan. It can be argued that the reason for the Mujahideen success was because of the absence of legitimate government in Afghanistan and failure of governance. The same was true for Taliban in 1994 after the civil war and factional fighting. While ideology might have provided a tool, but the absence of governance and Soviets’ lack of understanding of Afghans and Afghanistan were the main drivers of the Mujahiden uprising, especially in the rural areas. In the present context, insurgency in Afghanistan derives its strength from the absence of governance and also the lack of cultural understanding of Afghanistan by the international community.
Recommendations
Both in the short and long-term, there is a strong need to focus on political transition leading up to 2014 to ensure that a smooth transition of power takes place, along with new momentum for better governance and accountability. The people of Afghanistan will not support a government which cannot defend the rights of all citizens equally. In order to pave the ground for smooth and peaceful transition of power in 2014, the space for positive political competition need to be made available for all the forces. Towards that end, the following steps need to be taken by the Afghan government and international community.
1. According to the constitution of Afghanistan, which is specific about the date of presidential and parliamentary elections, these dates need to be fixed in order to open space for healthy political competition.
2. Once the date of elections are fixed, it would guarantee that the transition is peaceful which in turn would open the space for many groups and individual to build their networks and coalition against each other.
3. By consultation of all political groups and potential individual contenders, a truly Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) should be appointed by the President of Afghanistan in order to guarantee credible election process.
4. The International Community, especially UN, EU, OIC and other regional organizations and civil society groups should be prepared and put in place a good mechanism for monitoring the elections.
5. Afghan experience has showed that holding the provincial election with the presidential election, has been the cause of fraud and creates enough opportunity for rigging of elections. It is strongly recommended that upcoming presidential and parliamentary election should not take place at the same time.
6. The government of Afghanistan and especially President Karzai has to guarantee that he is going to pave the way for peaceful and smooth transition and not interfere in the election process. A peaceful political transition is legacy President Karzai should leave behind. Since Amir Abur Rahman Kahn (1880-1910) Afghanistan has not witnessed a peaceful transition of power.
In the absence of these steps, the legitimacy of the government would remain an issue. Such a government would never command the support of the people and hence, its survivability would always be in doubt. In the worst case scenario, Afghanistan might be forced to witness another civil war.
https://www.amazon.com/Afghanistan-Transition-Beyond-Shanthie-D%60Souza/dp/8182746744