Iraq and Afghanistan

The election in Afghanistan seems to have been a resounding success. The promised attacks by the Taliban were few and far between. This would indicate that they are weaker than we would have thought and/or that the security forces (American, NATO, and Afghan) are more effective than observers would have expected. All this is promising. The opposition claims that they were cheated, that the ink did not work and so on. In nearly every “third-world” election I have been involved in these claims have been made. There is usually something in them, but not much. The counting will take a long time. If the combined opposition gets near to 50%, then the criticisms should be looked at carefully. But if not, probably not. One must understand that in a society such as the Afghan people generally do what they are told. Even if the election is ostensibly free and secret, voters will fear that they will be found out if they go against the local consensus. For most local leaders, on the other hand, power relations and the possibility of future favors reach back to Kabul and Karzai. He has the power now; he will probably have it in the future; it is safer to have one’s people vote for him. It is also true that most of the other candidates had a very difficult time getting known. Some voters evidently did not even know what Karzai looked, let alone any other candidate (they voted by picture as well as written name). One can assume that in Kabul itself the more educated and individualized population will have voted with more understanding.

Many Afghans appear to have voted for Karzai because of the relative peace they have enjoyed since he came to power. Beyond security, they see real improvement in a number of areas (education, transportation etc.) It is nothing like what they want and expect, but compared with what they had before they welcome it. This again leaves a positive feeling for what has been accomplished there — and contrasts rather dramatically with the reactions reported in Iraq to the Americans and the interim government.

As to the future, it is well to remember that in spite of repeated assurances in the papers that this was the first election in Afghanistan, there were earlier elections in the 1960s. Over two million voters participated in one; not too bad a turnout in a country with less than half its present population. That “democratic system” and its king (Zahir Shah, now back in Kabul in an anomalous role) were soon overthrown, leading to a spiral down into violence, local communism and then Soviet invasion. I also remember going to two elections in Zimbabwe. Both led to large turnouts. In the first the people overwhelmingly voted in an anti-insurgency leader. The second had an even larger turnout and voted in the insurgent leader, Mugabe, with an even larger majority. Over the next twenty years Mugabe succeeded in eroding democratic rights of all kinds to the point that it would be hard to imagine a fair election that would reverse the process. One Swallow does not make a spring.