Afghanistan: "The opposite of everything we consider to be democracy"
By Steve Hynd Sunday Dec 21, 2008 10:00am
Sarah Chayes went to Afghanistan to report for National Public Radio just a few weeks after 9/11, then stayed to become one of the few Westerners running a business there. In a recent op-ed for the Washington Post she wrote that the big problem in Afghanistan isn't the resurgence of the Taliban. That's just a symptom of an epidemic of government corruption and the consequent failure of the rule of law, a gap which the Taliban are doing a better job of filling than either Karzai's government or US-led military forces.
In an interview with Bill Moyers on Friday, she expanded on her article.
SARAH CHAYES: Our democracy is famous for one thing in particular, checks and balances. That was the genius of the American system.
BILL MOYERS: Rule of law.
SARAH CHAYES: Rule of law but also recourse. If one branch of government is abusing you, you've got other branches of government that you can turn to.
BILL MOYERS: And Afghanistan?
SARAH CHAYES: Doesn't. So what we've really done is set up a kind of monopoly on the exercise of power. I mean, it's the opposite of what everything that we consider to be democracy, we've allowed an abusive concentration of power in the hands of, in particular, the executives, be it, in particular, on a local level like the provincial governors and their acolytes. Because we've convinced ourselves and often we have to - by "we" I mean us and our NATO allies - convince our own public opinion that this is a democratically elected representative government of Afghanistan in order to justify the sacrifices in money and troops and things like that. But the Afghans see it differently. The Afghans say you brought these people in here. We repudiated-
... SARAH CHAYES: The ordinary population. The people I work with are villagers. They're semi-literate, illiterate, these are really ordinary men and women. And they all are telling me, "You brought these people back into Afghanistan. We had repudiated them in the early 1990s. We knew what these people are. They're"-
BILL MOYERS: Warlords, right?
SARAH CHAYES: Yes. Yes.
BILL MOYERS: The criminal class.
SARAH CHAYES: Exactly. So you brought them in and now you're backing them up. And you are making it impossible for us to make our voices heard and to have any leverage on the behavior of these people.
The Obama administration has said that it will dramatically increase the US military presence in Afghanistan, and Admiral Mike Mullen told reporters in Kabul on Saturday that there will be up to 30,000 more US troops in the country by midsummer. Which will go some way to treating the symptom - that resurgent Taliban presence - but won't get at the underlying causes at all. Instead, those troops will help prop up the criminals and warlords currently in charge of the official Afghan government (even President Karzai's brother is widely accused of being heavily involved in the opium trade but protected by the government) while continuing to alienate the common Afghan people through indiscriminate attacks on civilians. In turn, the Taliban's hand will continue to strengthen as people turn to what is actually the lesser of two evils - and the whole cycle renews itself indefinitely.
Thanks as ever, to Heather for the vid clips.
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LMAO. Sarah, if you are a banker or a corporate entity, the check you speak of is in the mail.
... and that was supposed to be the GOOD war, remember?
Sarah Chayes is a treasure. We need to listen to her.
into Afghanistan while the U.S. struggles with deep recession, he'll be a one-term president.
I hope for everyone's sake he's smarter than that, but I'm not hopeful.
Hopefully he'll stop listening tot he same idiots who keep thinking the best was to fight terrorism is by using the military. It's like using amputation to fight an infection.
You can't win the hearts and minds by killing the family and friends of the ones we are "helping".
Afghanistan and the economy, Obama's fate has already been sealed. He will be a one term prez. It's too bad, especially if he really is about change.
i beg to differ. being handed these challenges vs. being the cause if you will are very different. the
damage to this country by wall street and a unitarian/authoritarian executive branch will take years to
reverse/heal. i believe he will do two terms.
Obama is a rock-solid corporatist/Council of Foreign Relations creature. At most crucial junctures, you are going to see him back-pedal and do many things that don't make any sense at all, except when viewed from the perspective of what serves the interests of corporatism and the criminals-in-suits class, and all of it will be backed up by very polished and intricate excuses.
I am not one usually given to hyperbole but this is simply an excellent post, in particular when Cernig writes of "those troops ... while continuing to alienate the common Afghan people through indiscriminate attacks on civilians." What cannot be stressed enough is that when these additional soldiers are sent into Afghanistan to carry out their ubiquitous and deadly attacks to allegedly ferret out the Taliban, they will be given air support in connection with their missions. When that happens, more innocent Afghan civilians and children will continue to be slaughtered by 500 lb. American bombs.
To paraphrase Max Clelland, I have seen this movie before those many years ago when the United States attempted to justify their aggression against Vietnam. Liberal hawks from Woodrow Wilson to JFK to LBJ and now Obama always attempt to rationalize their actions by claiming that what they are doing is being done for "humanitarian reasons." It is extremely doubtful if the families who have been murdered by America's bombs will feel much solace by the fact that their loved ones died because the United States was being kind to them.
It would be wonderful if one day the voices against aggression were taken as seriously as the hawks.
America is always about putting a band-aid over a gushing arterial wound.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Everyone is telling Obama what he should do but not one person spoke up to tell Bush. This lady isn't telling Military Families anything they don't know about Afganitan or it's President. While Bush/Cheney were feeding propaganda for Iraq oil and land Military Family heard from troops about Afghanistan. Little is said on the Media that Michelle Obama has been visiting Military Families for over 2 years and learning the truth. She even got to read emails sent to Families with what is really going on over there. The White House is using the money for blackmail and pay offs not for the Afghanistan people. The Afganistan President was appointed by Bush/Cheney and now isn't interested in staying there. Yes we know his brother and others in the Goverment are working closely with the Taliban. Even some powerful Law Makers and Generals are getting a kick back on the poppy sale profit. Look in Iraq we stole Oil and in Afghanistan we take a cut of the poppy sale. Greed is good for US White House and Law Makers who pay to play the game.
We shouldn't have gone there in the first place. The whole war thing was a sham from beginning to end, and done at the pleasure of CheneyBushCo
I'm sorry... Rule of Law? Democracy?!
HAHahahahaha haha haahahahahhaahahahaha
Oh that was rich. My sides are hurting. Maybe if you didn't have a country run by WARCRIMINALS then maybe that would mean something...
However everything you are saying here IS the opposite of what PEBO has been saying he plans on doing. Yes, he said we needed more troops, BUT he also said it was going to take replacing the Poppy crops with something else, and training them to grow something profitable, building schools, all kinds of things, also working with Pakistan to help them and build a relationship with that government so that we had a chance to work with them to get al Quaeda and the Taliban out of there.
So, remember he is CiC, yes the Generals may say what they want, but he has the final word.
Is this really a surprise to anyone? After all, given the track record of American liberation of countries, and who they put in as leaders, we should fully expect people being put in power that support the US, while destroying their own people. If you question what I am saying, look at the history of Latin America during the Cold War. Same thing happened then.
GW Bush - Our WarLord President
Afghanistan has ALWAYS been run by warlords.
"Afghanistan" exists as a "nation" only in the minds of the Colonial Powers who have attempted to occupy and rule.
The "problem" with the Taliban was their success in eliminating the Opium Trade, an integral part of the Bush Crime Family's Syndicate.
Now the WarLords again rule "Afghanistan" outside of Kabul and the Opium Trade is thriving.
Mission Accomplished.
Well of course we need another 30,000 troops in Afghanistan! You think propping up a corrupt hated government run by criminals is easy?
I believe Indian economist Amyarta Sen won the Nobel pize in part as a result of his advancing the idea that the relative efficacy of any democracy is measured not so much on what rights and protections are enshrined in its laws and its constitution, but rather on to what degree the populace has access to the mechanisms for the enforcement of those rights.
There was never a chance of Afghanistan becoming a true functioning democracy under the US plan. Never a real desire on the part of the neocon gang for such a democracy to take hold there in the first place.
democracy or resources....many say the later. natural gas,oil(pipelines), cheap labor,minerals and of course all the major pharma companies have major interest in the poppy/opioid cultivation industry.
"major pharma companies have major interest in the poppy/opioid cultivation industry."
Papaver somniferum grows in any garden. I grow it. Opiates are cheap unpatented drugs. Molecular engineering has given big pharma synthetic opiates, much more powerful and patentable.
I'll tell you who I think wants the poppy farms -- the CIA or some other nefarious alphabet soup named bullshit agency with too much power and too much time on their bloody hands.
i will look into that. i'm interested in knowing. my understanding was and i could be wrong this is from a while ago, that the climate is perfect for poppy and the amount of land avaiable in that climate is relatively large. i thought the natural source was/is superior to synthetic forms. i know a few people to ask.
i do know there are several pharma companies their. i just spoke to an Afghan gentleman who has friends and family in the country. he told me they're all their.
Morphine is great, but Fentanyl, a synthetic opiate is about 80 times greater, both in enjoyment and efficacy.
Percocet, percodan, the oxy twins Vicodin and dilaudid are all examples of synthetic opiates.
Codeine, Perigoric, laudanum and morphine (as well a heroin, its illegal cousin) are natural opiates. Perigoric costs about $5 for 8 doses. Not a big money maker.
The difference is length of time the drug lasts. Fentanyl makes you feel well a lot longer (you have to agree not to sign legal papers for 24 hours after being dosed) than morphine, which starts to lose strength almost immediately after administration.
Along with elements of intelligence and military organizations in Turkey and Pakistan. Big, big money in heroin, and putting the warlords back in power has made it a lawless paradise for drug smugglers. I'm still wondering if Obama's going to lift the gag order on Sibel Edmonds; she got to know a good bit about drug smuggling and American corruption.
Isn't it interesting that Karzai worked for the infamous Union Oil Company of California, aka Unocal, (now defunct) prior to our placement of him and his puppet government in Afghanistan?
And what about that pipeline we started working on running into the Caspian Sea area with all of that untapped oil immediately after our invasion of Afghanistan?
Isn't it interesting that Condi Rice served on the board of Chevron?
http://www.newhumanist.com/oil.html
The oil behind Bush and Son's campaigns
http://www.atimes.com/global-econ/CJ06Dj01.html
You can expect that things will be messed up in everything republicans do because they always come at a problem from the same direction, GREED.
Anytime a republican gets involved in anything you can expect it to be messed up because they are always looking to do something for themselves, never to be a help to someone else.
It is the only reason they have for living.
The eat breath drink and sleep greed.
Any thing they can do is fine if they can make a few dollars at it and if they can make some money it doesn't matter what happens to you as long as they make money!
I'm not sure most people have a real "holistic" view of what's going on over there... the truth is so incredibly complicated. For an insight into the mentoring of the ANA, and the ridiculousness that is a modern military apparatus, read "Don't Clean the Table with a Floor Mop," by a Naval officer who spent a year mentoring the Afghan National Army.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1440493987?tag=hubp0...
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