Why Was There Such an Emphasis on the Afghan Elections?

In Afghanistan we are witnessing war profiteering. Not in a manner that Tom Friedman recently suggested highlighting his lack of understanding of U.S. expeditionary deployment logistics, but on the Afghan side. The two groups to profit most from this current phase in the 30 year Afghan Civil War are the Taliban and the Karzai government. Steven Pressfield is continuing his series on interviews with a tribal chief. This week's is both enlightening and disturbing.

Chief Zazai: We are up against a level of corruption that the Coalition commanders still can’t or won’t understand. You cannot imagine the pressure I, Amir Mohammad [commander of the fledgling 80-man Tribal Police in Chief Zazai's home district] and our Chiefs are under. The TPF guys worked for five months and only received one month’s salary. The Tribal Police are totally under-resourced, no weapons [other than their own] or proper clothing. Can you imagine how we are surviving?

SP: Who exactly is the enemy? I don’t mean the “far enemy,” I mean the “near enemy.”

Chief Zazai: The Afghan people ask over and over, “Why don’t the Americans do something?” The answer is the Americans’ hands are tied by the need to support a corrupt and hopelessly compromised regime. Here is what I mean: in my district, a new border Police Chief has been appointed. This man has been on the payroll of the ISI Pakistani military for 30 years. Two weeks ago the Zazi Chiefs protested against this appointment. About 20 elders went to Kabul to meet with the Interior Minister. He refused to even see them!

The greatest difficulty any military can face is finding itself fighting as a third party counterinsurgent with a Host Nation government equally as destabilizing as the insurgents. Due to U.S. support for other corrupt and authoritarian regimes, opportunists see a potential fortune in collaborating with the United States and NATO. American values over democratic elections have been mistakenly projected onto the Afghan public. The Afghans want justice and security, not a corrupt government. NATO did not overthrow the last corrupt Afghan government by holding elections, but rather requests to step aside, then escalation to violence.

Stabilization for Afghanistan requires overthrowing the "democratically elected" government. The infrastructure, economy, and education environments are not suited for democracy at this time. Countries in such poor conditions are breeding grounds for corruption and authoritarianism. Just look at the democratic elections held in Germany giving rise to the Nazis, or the democratic elections in Lebanon that made Hizballah a legitimate political party. More recently we can look at the democratically elected government lead by HAMAS in the Palestinian Territories. I will skip over the democratic elections in Iraq that brought into power a virtual Shia theocracy and proxy government of Iran.

Why was there such an emphasis on the Afghan elections? The U.S. wanted to peacefully overthrow a corrupt government. Should NATO leave and the Karzai government remain, what leads us to believe that Karzai would not come to an accommodation that allows al Qaeda to re-establish camps in Afghanistan? If the U.S. wants to win, they must overthrow the government they helped establish. And this time, let the real Afghan elites determine their form of government.

You can read his latest Pressfield entry here.