Depending on whose assessment you hear, the recent elections, although imperfect, at least allowed Afghans to make their choices known. An alternative view suggests, on the contrary, that the electoral process was so flawed that the results are all but irrelevant.Optimistic Western commentators choose to highlight recent research showing that school attendance has increased, for boys as well as for girls, despite a growing number of incidents involving resurgent Taliban forces seeking to intimidate pupils and their parents. A recent UN report, on the other hand, suggests that the situation of women, which had improved somewhat when the Taliban fell, is backsliding again. UNICEF also points to 5 million children still not registered in school.
What is not in dispute is that Afghanistan remains one of the poorest nations on earth. More than three-quarters of the population have no access to clean water. The level of literacy is one of the lowest in the world and 70 percent of the population lives in poverty. No wonder Afghans want change.
US President Barack Obama praised the voters who courageously turned up at the polls despite the threats issued by fundamentalist groups. The question is: Will their vote really make a difference?
If you see the glass half full, the fact that elections were held at all is in itself a sign that democracy is slowly and painfully taking roots. But President Hamid Karzai, once seen as a dashing figure and the darling of the West, is now widely acknowledged as a weak and ineffectual leader, presiding over a corrupt government composed of warlords, several of them involved in drug trafficking. It is not clear how much progress can be expected under his leadership. The country is fractured along ethnic lines and each warlord presides over his own fiefdom.
President Obama, who launched a surge in Afghanistan, has declared this war one of necessity, but public support for US involvement is decreasing. In Britain too, as British casualties -- now at more than 200 -- continue to mount, Gordon Brown is finding it harder to defend his country's involvement. Western leaders are struggling to come up with a coherent strategy and a clear definition of success, albeit limited.
Immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, the aim was to capture Osama Bin Laden and to oust the Taliban government. Fast forward a few years, and the former is all but forgotten while Western governments are now expected to negotiate with the latter, or at least the less radical among them. Inevitably, this will entail compromise on issues such as women's rights.
For the NATO-led forces, Afghanistan is a major headache. The goalpost is constantly being moved. Although international organizations and NGOs are investing human and financial resources into lifting the country out of poverty, their efforts are undermined by clashes with the Taliban. The lack of security has already driven out several major NGOs.
Talk of democracy and well-meaning aid efforts are further diluted by drone bombings that occasionally hit their militant targets but also cause many civilian casualties and do little to win the hearts and minds of Afghans.
Will the elections mark a milestone in Afghanistan's slow reconstruction? At this stage it appears unlikely. “Democracy will never come to Afghanistan through the barrel of a gun, or from the cluster bombs dropped by foreign forces,” recently wrote Malalai Joya, the youngest female member of the Afghan parliament. “The struggle will be long and difficult, but the values of real democracy, human rights and women's rights will only be won by the Afghan people themselves.”
