Iraq and Afghanistan

David Brooks gives a reasoned argument in Tuesday’s paper for the Administration’s thesis (supported in other days by many academics) that elections (as a road to democracy) are the best solution for terrorism. His example is the election of Napoleon Duarte in El Salvador in the 1980s. There is no doubt that this did play a part in moving social conflict in the state from the jungle to the election booth. Brook’s message is that as soon as we bring democracy, the “insurgency buster” to Iraq and Afghanistan, there will be an end to violence and insurgency.

There are several reasons to doubt the analogy. First, El Salvador, like all Latin American countries had been working on making democracy work since the 1820s. The people were used to elections, parties, and freedom of expression. The fact that these features of their systems were often set aside by recurrent times of trouble and dictatorships does not vitiate this experience. So when the elections were held in the 1980s, most Salvadorans were ready for them in a sense that Iraqis are not. Second, although they have had much less experience with democracy than Latin Americans, the peoples surrounding Iraq and Afghanistan have had brief episodes of democracy. The Syrians and Iranians have both had short bouts with democracy. Afghanistan had a democratic opening in the 1920s and more serious experience with democracy in the 1960s. Pakistan has been an off and on again democracy since its creation. Unfortunately, violence and repression followed these experiments. Third, we should also remember the experience in Yugoslavia. For forty years Tito ruled the many peoples of the land with an iron hand. When this was removed, the successor states all intended and tried to be democracies. But except for relatively homogeneous Slovenia, the result was a bloodletting that has still not worked itself completely out. Several successor states remain relatively peaceful only with the help of the international community.

In Post-USSR and post-colonial lands, the institutions of democracy were established and elections held immediately after the attainment of independence. Yet the end result for most of the “successor states” was dictatorship in a new form, this time covered with the fig leaf of democratic forms. India, and Caribbean Islands largely escaped this experience, and today in some of these states democracy is having a rebirth. But the record hardly suggests that elections are a sovereign solution for violence in emerging societies.

Yes, elections might help to calm things down, especially in Afghanistan. But they could also be no more than a starting point for a new cycle of violence, an experience only too common in the modern world.