....LMB: "The Freedom Sunrise Spreading Thingy"....

October 10, 2004

Afghanistan held its first ever elections last week. It will apparently take weeks to count all the ballots, but I'll be shocked if Hamid Karzai doesn't win.

As Donald Rumsfeld has reminded us, "democracy is messy." For example, according to the UN team coordinating the Afghan elections, around 9.5 million Afghans are eligible to vote. But 10.5 million Afghans are registered. And in a country of 28 million, with many people living in distant deserts and mountains, I'm very skeptical of the accuracy of those registrations.

Second, we've got a potential voter fraud issue. Apparently each voter was supposed to have their hand marked with indelible ink, so that vote officials could prevent people from voting more than once. But apparently, the officials are instead used ink that easily washes off. Are people voting more times than they're allowed? No one knows. Because of this, all of Hamid Karzai's opponents are boycotting the election, claiming that it is not legitmate and they won't honor the results (or, they might possibly be using this as an excuse, as they are all likely to be defeated in the vote).

Then you've got the issue of intimidation of women. Much of the country still seems to hold values in which women should be powerless and invisible. For example, some of the provinces of southern Afghanistan women, who make up around half the population, only make up about 10% of the registered voters. Human Rights Watch argues that this is due to women fearing for their lives and safety if they tried to vote.

And finally, we've got good old warlord intimidation. It seemed very likely that the Men With Guns who are the de facto rulers of much of Afghanistan, would tell their "subjects" who to vote for. I haven't dug around much, but this example of a southern tribal leader telling his tribe to vote for Karzai or have their homes burned down, really stands out.

Is it a bit much to expect Afghanistan to become a smooth-functioning democracy only three years after a US invasion, and 20 years of catastrophic civil war before that? Yeah, it probably is. I'm trying to play Nation-Building Savior in my head, but I'm not sure how one transforms a brutalized land which is still largely tribal in nature, into a thriving egalitarian democracy.

I don't know if the nation's of the world are particularly concerned about an Afghan democracy or the Afghan people themselves. This could very easily be play-acting, so that the world can turn away with clear conscience while pantomime-president Karzai rakes in the foreign aid to assemble a nice, unifying iron fist. Actually, that's what I'd bet my money on. If Karzai can get "Democracy" embroidered on his swell wooly hat, and then work out some deal with the warlords to share rule over the suffering millions, everyone willing to turn a blind eye is happy.

But let's say that you actually care about what happens to Afghanistan, what the hell would you do? Part of me thinks that the UN's got the cart before the horse, working on ballots and constitutions while the country's citizens are imprisoned by Kalishnikovs and burqas. Maybe democracy should take a back seat to food programs and public safety. Maybe a traumatized people needs to get some of the basics down before worrying about self-rule.

But I don't think that's true either. Many of the world's most deprived and oppressed fight for freedom and democracy, and fight hard. Who am I to pretend that democracy only matters when you've got a full belly and a front door?

I think that maybe you can only have democracy if you really want it. Maybe you really are only as free as you fight to be, and you get the democracy you deserve (that might explain a few things about democracy in the US of A).

Maybe somebody ought to ask the Afghan people what they want, and how we can help them. Maybe Father doesn't always know best.