Last year, full of dudgeon, Thus posted a modest and moderate commentary on the 2009 Afghan ‘election’ http://thusmagazine.com/2009/11/afghan-democracy-postponed-in-an-orgy-of-hypocrisy/. Read it and weep – or laugh sardonically, depending upon your smug levels. I’m certainly not proud of stating the obvious, then or now.

The ‘war’ (called, with no hint of irony ‘Operation Enduring Freedom‘ intensified following the ‘surge’ – which in Orwellian fashion was designed to lower the threat of continued violence by killing and maiming as many ‘insurgents’ as possible and winning hearts and minds by drone bombing civilian populations. General Stanley McChrystal, reluctant figurehead of this thinly-disguised ‘shoot-em-up-and-get-the-hell-out-of-here’ attempt to plait sawdust and sell it as a counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy, was allegedly none-too-keen in the first place but refused to take the blame for what he and others saw as desperation tactics on the part of certain Obama administration figures. His ‘unwise’ comments to Rolling Stone magazine in July got him carpeted and fired by Nobel Peace Laureate Obama. His replacement, saintly General Petraeus, ‘inventor’ of COIN’s Iraq surge strategy has had the lasting benefit of a recent increase in violence and an effective caliphate of Shia militias, despite the continued presence of over 65,000 US troops and $7 billion spend on ‘aid’ per month (2009).

The McChrystal-led strategy depended upon legitimising the position of Karzai, whom most of the Afghani population and anyone else with a grain of intelligence knows – not including the US and UK governments of the time – presided over an endemically corrupt, kleptocratic regime which was ‘re-elected’ in a fraudulent pantomime of ‘democracy.’ Petraeus will need to work with the same materials. Over 80% of the enormous Afghan ‘aid’ budget is administered by the Afghan government. As the US continues to ‘devolve responsibility to the Afghan people’ Karzai’s extended family will have correspondingly greater access and even less accountability, I’d say the winner of the Afghan conflict/war/insurgency/Jihad – call it what you will –  is none other than His Excellency President Hamid Karzai, dead heating with the Mullah Omar, whose Taleban Ulema will be ‘allowed’ to lark around chopping off heads and hands, tearing out hearts and warping minds in their own special playground in the south – or wherever they like, given the ‘strength’ of the Afghan forces.

At the risk of sounding unfashionably contrarian, I’d advocate making moderate elements of the Taleban – like the IRA, such people do exist – custodians of civilian-targeted regional aid rather than hand it all to the incumbent narco-kleptocrats. Or withdraw all the aid, 80% of which is stolen anyway. Even though former Thus favourite Ashraf Ghani, now on speaking terms with Karzai in what is presumably an attempted reprise of his time as Finance Minister from 2001-4 is there to keep an eye on the US cash, I doubt he will be capable of keeping Karzai under control as the ‘handover process’ accelerates – with increasing velocity as the next US elections approach – which Obama may lose, especially if the US is still in Afghanistan, now America’s longest war after Vietnam, and, like Vietnam (and Iraq), an ideological shitfight which it has clearly lost at huge cost.

John J Kelly

PS. Funny how we don’t hear much about al Qaeda , much less Osama Bin Laden, nowadays. Does anyone know why?

Thus predicted that widespread fraud would take place in the Afghan elections, based on first source analysis on the ground allied to the hunch that the occupation forces would allow blind faith, optimism, expediency and an ideological fundamentalist belief in ‘democracy’ to triumph over common sense.  Kai Eide, Ostrich-in-Chief of  UNAMA and the EU clown troupe observers decreed the elections ‘fair but not necessarily free‘ before any votes had been counted. On the grounds alone that UNAMA spent an improbable $250 million engineering the mechanisms for this danse macabre on the grave of democracy in a failed state, Mr Eide and his money eaters should be declared unfit for purpose. Expecting the current process to produce a team with the credibility to tackle the insurgency and restore stability is, therefore, not realistic. It is more likely that a disenchanted population that now feels disenfranchised will tolerate an expanded insurgency, thereby endangering allied lives and assets, and significantly increasing the nature and dimensions of the challenge to NATO.

Should the election process be validated and the results accepted, the following consequences are probable: First, the government will become more predatory as the officials who committed fraud will feel emboldened by getting away with large scale corruption. Favours promised will be called in. Second, the population would be disenchanted with the process, the integrity and intentions of the Allied and international mission, and the new government, and withdraw further into devising ways to protect themselves from all sides.   Third, the insurgency, facing an openly illegitimate government, will have a renewed rallying cry and cause for recruitment. Fourth, the neighbours, particularly Iran, will become more assertive in Afghan affairs, and the struggle between intelligence services, particularly that of India, Pakistan and Russia, will increase significantly. Fifth, a weaker international community will not be able to take a strong posture vis-à-vis the government.

Richard Holbrooke, US ambassador to Afghanistan, is meanwhile trying to backstop the mess by engineering a runoff between Hamid Karzai and ex-foreign minister, Abdullah Abdullah (who declared the election fraudulent at an early stage). This is unlikely to enhance the legitimacy of the outcome, as corrupt chains of entrenched interests allied to both Karzai and Abdullah have already mobilized and near term measures will not suffice to loosen their grip on the levers of power and money. A rerun could consolidate and embolden those interests. Furthermore, an election in October will face major logistical obstacles. Given the discredit brought both on IEC and the UN agencies, proceeding with round 2 is likely to perpetuate some of the same symptoms. Moreover, according to complaints submitted to the Afghan Independent Election Commission, both candidates have engaged in widespread ballot rigging. Afghan sources speculate that if Karzai is disqualified (a big if) then the US should shift its backing to Abdullah on the basis that because he is weak he would be easier to control. The flaw in this twisted logic is that Abdullah has neither the strength, popular mandate nor ethnicity to keep the key warlords in check, his corruption might increase if mandated and once support was withdrawn he would be vaporised. Another option is a Karzai-Abdullah coalition – an infernal tag team if ever there was one.

Ashraf Ghani, whom, like Bashardost, ran on the anti-corruption ticket (as did Abdullah when he saw its potential) has proven experience in establishing governance and financial controls – he was finance minister in the last transitional government – has no presidential mandate (and originally stood reluctantly) but could play a key role as mediator, intermediary and Grand Vizier in a government of national unity, embracing all stakeholders, governed under strict, designed to restore sovereignty to the Afghans – an ostensibly ‘weak’ coalition, but infinitely preferable to a licence to steal for the next five years.

Thus has so far been the only site to point out the seeming anomaly between Karzai’s declaration of dubiously modest assets of $1000.00 plus $10,200 in family jewels‘ and his officially declared campaign war chest of a $2 million dollar interest free loan from the Bank of Ghazanhar. This sum represents 20% of the funds of this ‘bank,’ a philanthropic institution founded and run by the Ghazanfar family. How and when is this modest unassuming man on a salary of $487 per month going to repay the generosity of his altruistic supporters? Rather like the eponymous Producers in the Mel Brooks movie, he has already promised more seats in the new cabinet than currently available, to lovely men such as Dostum (Thus passim). He has polled 3000 votes in stations where observers only recorded 30 people voting. His brother Walid coincidentally hangs out with folks who allegedly control the opium trade while other family members, through sheer hard work no doubt, appear to run the country’s most  lucrative business franchises. He talks of having no truck with the Taliban but shamelessly passed the notorious wife-starving law shortly before the election. Is this a man ‘we’ can do business with? Though it pains me to say it, we have little choice. The most expedient figurehead leader would be Karzai, supported but not endorsed by the international community under strict and irreversible terms of conditionality.

The Taliban, meanwhile, have sat on their hands – having threatened to cut off the hands of anyone who voted – and shrewdly allowed the forces of ‘democracy’ to do their heavy lifting for them. They stand to gain from the continued uncertainty of a protracted runoff, a popular insurrection resulting from forcing through a blatantly corrupt result and a turf war between Tajik, Uzbek and Pashtun forces which would erupt if Abdullah is awarded the paper crown. Time is short: the results will be final on 17 September. So what to do? Clare Lockhart, of the Institute for State Effectiveness, summarises four options thus:

1. Accommodation with Mujahadeen: Accept Karzai’s claim of victory, and put together a Karzai-Abdullah coalition. This government could be stable in the short term, but is likely to be highly corrupt and unstable in the medium term. Some concessions could be extracted, including the inclusion of technocratic positions and commitment to the US 5-point agenda already discussed with candidates and the restoration of Afghan sovereignty. It is questionable as to whether concessions would be agreed upon or adhered to.

2. Formation of a national government headed by Karzai: Instead of waiting for implosion, action is taken now to put together a national government, with inclusion of broad stakeholder interest groups. A set of benchmarks and processes could be followed and the international community and the Afghan government could sign a binding compact.

3. Formation of a Transitional Government for a two to three year period: The election is deemed fatally flawed and the International Community declare it invalid and disqualify Mr Karzai. A Transitional Government is put together, along the lines of the Bonn Agreement 2002-4, with the key change that key figures will commit not to run for elected office in future. This Administration would be tasked with stabilizing the country and building the basic institutions that would allow for exit of the international presence.

4. Form a quasi-protectorate under an US/international driven agenda, creating governance bottom up, and marginalize the Afghan institutions for a period of time.

Option 2 is the most likely and the most expedient. The loser in this entire sorry process has been the notion of democracy, at least in its US interpretation. The bigger loser could be Barack Obama, who will be a one term President if his administration allows Afghanistan to become his Vietnam.

]]> http://thusmagazine.com/2009/09/a-government-of-national-unity-is-the-least-worst-option-for-afghanistan/feed/ 0 http://thusmagazine.com/2009/08/one-two-three-four-what-are-we-fighting-for/ http://thusmagazine.com/2009/08/one-two-three-four-what-are-we-fighting-for/#comments Mon, 17 Aug 2009 16:32:07 +0000 John Kelly http://thusmagazine.com/?p=3734 Whatever it is, it isn’t a free and fair Afghan election. At least the media are finally admitting it (Thus passim) even if the reason is largely the upsurge in military casualties. Saturday’s lethal car bomb outside NATO headquarters in Kabul was a cynical signal from the Taliban that they can more or less get to whomsoever they choose. The British army death toll stands at 204, most killed by improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and the US death toll is approaching 800 since hostilities commenced in 2001. Last month, military deaths doubled to 78. In common with the ‘policy’ in Iraq, nobody is officially counting civilian casualties but it is estimated by UNAMA and Human Rights Watch that nearly 6000 have died as a direct result of the fighting while over 11,000 Afghani troops have died. (Both these figures seem low to me, but I’m happy to admit my ignorance and stand corrected either way).

We don’t know how many ‘enemy’ combatants have been killed and most people cynically couldn’t care less – the Taliban are less than human, after all. Except they’re not. Most of these ‘insurgents’ are farmers by day and are only doing what any British or American citizen or yeoman would do if a foreign army invaded. What we do know, despite the froth from British military figures and the preposterous Hitler-moustached UK Defence Secretary, Bob Ainsworth, is that the much-vaunted ‘surge’ clearly has failed. ‘Operation Enduring Freedom‘ is more about enduring and nothing to do with freedom.

But the election, a foregone conclusion, will be spun as a victory for democracy, despite the overwhelming evidence of corruption, bribery, intimidation – by the Karzai government, much less the Taliban – and a full-blown insurgency which ensures that the turnout will be skewed, to put it politely. The UN, having spent an estimated USD 150 million on organising the election, have little option but to declare it a success, despite some cack-handed and counter-productive arrangements. For example, to avoid multiple polling, voters will be marked with indelible ink on their fingers. The Taliban have promised to cut off the fingers of anyone with inky fingers. There will be allegedly ‘thousands’ of election monitors, but already there is evidence of fraud – improbable numbers of people appear to have registered to vote, especially in Karzai-controlled regions.

Ashraf Ghani

Miracles notwithstanding (Ashraf Ghani, inshallah), Karzai will ‘win’ on Thursday. Unless he gains more than 50% of the vote, there will be a runoff, most likely against Abdullah, if opinion polls are to be believed (and undemocratic tribalism prevails). This will postpone the result – and probably guarantee increased violence and mayhem – until November. Victory for Abdullah would ‘unacceptable’ to Pakistan, on account of his historic connections with the Northern Alliance, to the Pashtuns and, obviously, to the Taliban. So if Karzai has to win, he might as well do so outright. Having done so, he should seriously consider forming a government of national unity including his main challengers and dedicated to addressing the root causes of the past and present preconditions for a failed state which make Afghanistan not worth fighting for. Unless he agrees, tacit and explicit support from the US and ‘NATO’ for his regime should be withdrawn.

Whatever the eventual result, one lesson to be learned from this deadly misadventure, which has yet again cost so many lives in the pursuit of ‘managed’ democracy, is that the UN should never again be given a mandate to organise and run an election. Incompetence, self-interest and pomposity have endangered the lives of those who are brave enough to vote, increased the possibility of fraud and wasted many tens of millions of dollars, not to mention the lives of soldiers and civilians. Last time I looked, the UN was established to do exactly the opposite.

John J Kelly

Despite the glaring evidence that Afghanistan is a failed state whose conditions have significantly worsened under the Karzai regime, and his abysmal popularity ratings, apathy abroad may assure his victory. There is an undeniable imbalance in the reporting of the campaign. According to the Ghani campaigners: “While the international community considers the race for president to be wide open, even bringing top officials to meet individually with leading candidates, the international media relies on weak tools to support its conclusion that Hamid Karzai will win. This is the first election where an incumbent is being challenged an election in Afghanistan. “Statistical” data is weak. The voting “behavior” of Afghans is not parallel to other countries. Polling is notoriously difficult and unreliable. Yet still many in the media are taking Hamid Karzai and his bought-off “analysts” at their word that he is certain to win.”

There is genuine reason to fear that after over 30 years of occupation by foreign forces intent on imposing overweening ideologies – Soviet Totalitarianism and the tragically-tainted version of US Democracy – by military might, to the despair and radicalisation of the suffering population, Afghanistan is too far gone and that occupation worsens the situation. This view was eloquently argued by Rory Stewart, on a BBC Newsnight special last Monday. Stewart, a patrician Old Etonian, follows the time-honoured English patrician penchant of wearing flowing robes at every possible opportunity and mucking in with the natives. For this reason he has acquired the title “Lawrence of Belgravia.” He now lectures at Harvard, but lived in Kabul for several years and thus speaks from experience – something which I for one don’t possess. He argued earlier this year that the Afghan military surge ‘option’ would fail (as it failed in Iraq, unless the definition of success is cementing the position of the militias). The Russians, arguably masters of ‘surging’ – throwing vast amounts of troops and armament into hopeless situations with scant regard for civilians – lost in excess of 35,000 soldiers in Afghanistan by their own (understated) reckoning. Yet they trounced Georgia in a week, despite the US-appointed ‘strongman’ Saakashvili’s supporting cast of Israeli advisors and US arms and subdued Chechnya in a vicious attritional campaign (where they installed their own bonkers warlord strongman). I’m certainly not endorsing Russian aggression in Georgia, much less Chechnya – another failed state. My point is that the Russians aren’t dummies and they certainly fought dirtier than the Nato forces, yet they failed in Afghanistan. The current occupiers will fare no better.

‘Imposing’ democracy on Afghanistan through the military might of an occupying force can only make a bad situation worse. Ashraf Ghani is right to assert that supporting an endemically corrupt regime in the name of ‘democracy’ is criminally counter-productive. Until and unless the foundations of a civil society are put in place, democracy stands no chance. Neither do the supporting cast in the Afghan elections if the international media persists in reporting the election as if the choice of Leader is a side issue on a chessboard where warring rooks, knights and bishops play centre stage, the pawns are sacrificed and the king is a cypher. That’s OK as a representation of Medieval feudal statesmanship, but no model of democracy.

John J Kelly

Drone bombing insurgents, much less civilians, will not win the ‘war on terror’ in Afghanistan, which has now spread to Pakistan, enabling the possibility of a nuclear-resourced Taliban. Former Pakistani SIS head, Lt-Gen Hameed Gul has been himself allegedly blacklisted as a terrorist by the UN for advocating dialogue with moderate elements of the Taliban and for stating the obvious. Gul was and is no angel. He masterminded US support for the Mujaheddin, who later became the Taliban, at a time when the US were primarily concerned with pissing off the Russians – but he is right to state that Afghans see any occupying force as a prime enemy, and thus that the US and Britain are as bad as the Russians in their eyes. Warlords expediently unite to repulse foreign occupiers. Invaders cannot and will not win a conventional war against guerillas in hostile terrain, fought against a backdrop of justifiable civilian outrage at ‘collateral damage,’ without huge attrition. Afghanistan could prove as costly to the US and its allies as it was to the end-of-empire Soviets. The only ‘winners’ are those who stand to gain from fanning the flames of Islamophobia and keeping the US committed to a bellicose policy.

Mission Accomplished. Democracy has triumphed. Mahdi Army rules OK.

Even if we acknowledge that US Middle East policy is modelled on the Keystone Cops, it is extraordinary that absolutely no lessons have been learned from history, or benchmarks taken from the Iraq farrago, where not only has the ‘surge’ failed to establish peace or a democratic mandate – civilian casualties have largely returned to pre-surge levels – but the entire 8 year multi trillion dollar misadventure has left the country infinitely worse off whilst empowering clan-led militias. Some, such as the Mahdi Army, are bent on establishing a version of Shiite fundamentalism and general extortion along the way. Others are simply motivated by the opportunities of corruption on a grand scale in a failed state. Al Qaida, the Taleban and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalyse have never been in ruder health.

Afghanistan, arguably the epicentre of the original problem, has fallen off a cliff. Puppet President, Pashtun warlord Hameed Karzai, whose credentials stem largely from his Mujaheddin past and US links stemming from the anti-Soviet insurgency period, has a brother Ahmed Wali Karzai who allegedly controls the largest syndicate in a country which supplies 93% of the world’s heroin-grade opium – infinitely more damaging to the West than the export of Islamic fundamentalism. On his chaotic watch a violent variant of rule of law is enforced in Taleban-controlled districts and US bombs are directed at his enemies while corruption is endemic. According to the New York Times: “kept afloat by billions of dollars in American and other foreign aid, the government of Afghanistan is shot through with corruption and graft. From the lowliest traffic policeman to the family of President Hamid Karzai himself, the state built on the ruins of the Taliban government seven years ago now often seems to exist for little more than the enrichment of those who run it.” (Bribes Corrode Afghans’ Trust in Government, New York Times, 1/01/08).

Ashraf Ghani. All he is saying, is give peace a chance. And stop stealing from the people. And give the stage over to civil society, not war and criminality.

I’m no expert on Afghanistan, but I know a failing state, and I know a man who knows a lot about both. I have a high personal regard for Ashraf Ghani, Finance Minister of Afghanistan from 2001-4, founder of The Institute for State Effectiveness and co-author, with Clare Lockhart, of ‘Fixing Failed States. Dr Ghani, a previous candidate for the role of UN Secretary General is also a member of the UNDP Commission of the Legal Empowerment of the Poor. As Finance Minister he was widely credited with restoring the country’s pillaged treasury to some form of accountability before he fell out with Karzai. Though highly connected, he is anything but a warlord, which admittedly has a downside of reducing his chances of success unless he has strong international support (not based on military threats). He has also urged a pragmatic dialogue with moderate elements of the Taliban, and has been fiercely critical of the vast waste of aid money on consultants and NGOs, which has not endeared him to the Powers that Be. But he has everything to play for. Last November, before Dr Ghani entered the fray, a poll gave Karzai a 25% popularity rating. ‘Nobody’ with 22%, came second.

Transparency International rank the Karzai administration as the fifth most corrupt government in the world. Last year only 40 billion Afghanis (approximately USD 800 million), were reported as revenues. In March this year the Finance Ministy estimated that 2/3rd of the government’s annual revenues, amounting to USD 1.6 billion, were ‘lost’ to waste and corruption, indicating potential annual revenues of USD 2.4 billion USD. According to Ghani’s campaign team: “the Karzai government has repeatedly expressed its inability to increase the salaries of civil servants, teachers or address the needs of the disabled, widows, and other vulnerable segments of our society. Lack of financial resources and dependence on donors who are unwilling to support these expenditures has been used as an excuse.” Ghani’s economic platform is based upon the simple expedient of establishing fiscal propriety and using the $US 1.6 billion additional revenues currently lost through corruption and waste to provide salaries and services to the most vulnerable groups of Afghani society. The extremist Taliban elements, meanwhile, draw power from the fact that there is seemingly no alternative between fanatic relgious law upheld by voilence or corruption and criminality, again upheld by violence. Ghani represents a thinking middle path.

According to Dr Ghani: “Citizen awareness of the cost of corruption and mobilization against it has been critical to promoting good governance from the early 20th century United States to Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa. We must address corruption as citizens. When citizens can count the cost of corruption on their wellbeing, and the loss of opportunities for their children and grandchildren, then they can transform their individual frustrations into a collective force for change.”

Bombing wedding parties in the name of the war on terror, propping up drug lords and radicalising a ferociously independent population by settling an army of occupation among them has proved a recipe for failure and misery for the past 35 years or more, not to mention several centuries. Afghanistan could become Obama’s Vietnam, if it isn’t already. Powerful people in the US and elsewhere would be delighted for that to happen, the same people, dare I say it, who convinced Bush to focus his misguided efforts on Iraq. While it is highly unlikely that the Afghan elections in August will be fair or democratic, Ashraf Ghani represents a better than outside chance of establishing a civil society and saving the US and Britain from another humiliating misadventure in the neo-colonial Great Game, which we shouldn’t be playing in the first place, to the detriment of world peace and the enrichment of arms dealers, drug dealers and fundamentalists of all stripes. He deserves a fair go. So does Afghanistan.

John J Kelly