A government maligned


Written by Abdulhadi Hairan • Region • November 2010

This is the real problem in this country,’ one of my friends commented when we heard the news that former jihadi warlord, Burhanduddin Rabbani, was appointed head of President Karzai’s so-called High Council for Peace, inaugurated in October 2010. ‘If warlords wanted to bring peace, they would not have been warlords in the first place.’ He was right! More than half of the 70 members of the council were part of the civil war that greatly damaged the country in every aspect: hundreds of thousands of people were killed and millions displaced; the entire infrastructure was destroyed and everything valuable looted. They have been accused of war crimes by human rights organizations around the world. Worse, they are still part of the corrupt set-up and have been involved in illegal activities such as running drug businesses and sponsoring armed groups.

In his inauguration speech, President Karzai called the council a ‘source of hope.’ He might not know that the Afghans despise all these warlords and the mere appearing of them or their names in any process makes them extremely hopeless and frustrated. The widespread fraud in the last presidential and parliamentarian elections, the increasing corruption in his government institutions and the incapability of the administration to serve the nation lead the Afghans to think that the future is bleak. Hence, they no longer believe in any peace process.

To further analyze this, we need to compare the change of Afghan perceptions about democracy. In 2001, Afghans reckoned the newly arrived democratic system as a ‘source of hope.’ They expected it will bring peace, order and progress. They wanted to see the warlords be brought to justice. They hoped the war will end. Unfortunately it did not happen. Now you ask any Afghan about their perception of democracy, and the answer will be ‘fraud and corruption.’

This disenchantment led people to side with the insurgents or at least alienate themselves from the government and try to find solutions in the old tribal customs and informal set-ups. Now they don’t care if the country has an army, it has courts, and the government infrastructure does exist. Many people now think Afghanistan has become a Karzai family kingdom, a Taliban state, an American enterprise.

Just to receive or send a parcel in Kabul, you have to go through at least five officers and clerks in the Ministry of Communication building. You have to bribe each of them and spend the whole day there. To get a driving license, you go through about 30 offices and waste hundreds of hours’ time, bribing officers and uselessly waiting outside offices. On the higher level, millions of dollars are stolen in major construction contracts, even Taliban were paid, according to some reports, to attack or not to attack military convoys. Courts, where one expects justice, are the most corrupt places in the country.

This situation helps the insurgency to grow and strengthen itself. Understandably, as long as they [insurgents] are strong and supported, they will never surrender or come to talks. And if the council and its warlord members succeed to negotiate with the insurgents, and bring them into the government, it will not automatically end corruption and fraud. The Karzai-led warlords will try to find solutions in fraud elections while the extremist Taliban will want to impose a strict form of sharia law. The real problems – fraud, corruption and extremism – will prevail and the country will end up in another quagmire, more serious and dangerous.

But if corruption is eliminated, which Karzai has to start from his own family and close aides, and the warlords brought to trial, it will not only make people jubilant and hopeful for a bright future, they will also support the government and that will inevitably weaken the insurgency. A weak and desperate insurgent group is easier to bring to talks or sidelined.