Afghanistan’s ill-defined chaos

Abdullah Abdullah decided not to participate in the upcoming Afghan elections. All of his proposals to make sure the elections would be at least fairer than last time were rejected out of hand, and he seems not to be interested in another campaign.

In any other country this would be a severe blow to basis democratic values or principles. But the deteriorated state of Afghanistan is impervious to this, since it is, in my view, quite clear that whatever happened, Abdullah would never be able to win the battle against Karzai. Winning the battle means attracting more than 50% of votes, which is by law the minimum a candidate needs to get in order to become president. And that, even if the August elections were as fraudulent so as to be worthy of Soviet-history, does seem all but likely.

And of course we cannot speak of a situation in which democracy did not receive a blow. By any means it did. What is now being experience however is an on lingering effect of elections that now seem to have been much more important relative to the efforts that were put into them. It is not the Afghan people that committed fraud to the elections; it’s the political establishment that did it. And the United Nations and States were unable to prevent this. The result is that Afghanistan will have a president without legitimacy, backed by an unknown part of its people, or that some alternative solution will need to be sought. What the latter can be without becoming as illegitimate as Mr. Karzai himself is an open question though. By sketching weird scenarios of interim-presidents you cannot possibly legitimize power any more than you can do at this very moment, especially not when Abdullah’s name is in the air (no supporter of Mr. Karzai will give his/her support to this in any case).

I also see the role of the Western countries as something that is hard to define. Any stances that are more than those of polite interest will all too quickly be interpreted as “Western imperialism”.  As an alternative way of wishful thinking we might suppose that there is one last straw op hope we can grab hold of. Presidents are important in power and prestige from our Western point of perspective, but to the Afghan people, the regional scene of politics is much more important. The far cry that national policy making is to daily affairs, makes sure that they are much more interested in regional politics, because these get much closer to touching people’s needs and desires.

But as I said, despite its partial truth, it remains wishful thinking. Surely it is better and more enduring to build or re-create a society from bottom to top, but that is just not what’s happening here. The fraudulent ways walked by politicians have made people skeptics about trustworthiness and integrity. Recent times have proved their point.