In the aftermath of the events of this past Tuesday, we are learning, all over again, why Afghanistan poses such a difficult and complex challenge. A police official says as many as 14 suicide bombers were involved in attacks Tuesday that killed at least 27 people in relatively peaceful southwestern Afghanistan.
The deputy police chief of Nimroz province says not all the bombers detonated their explosives. Police captured or killed several of them. Abdul Majid Latifa (the deputy police chief), goes on to say that at least 14 attackers with explosives were involved —- another official put the number of bombers at 11.
Taliban insurgents, as well as their allies, have been increasing their attacks as international troops hand over security to Afghan forces. NATO plans to withdraw most of its troops by the end of 2014.
This chain of events becomes all the more troubling in light of Monday’s assault against NATO and Afghan troops by an Afghan policeman. The shooting is the fifth apparent attack in a week by Afghan security forces on their international partners.
At least seven American service members have been killed in the past week by either their Afghan counterparts or attackers wearing their uniforms. We are approximately 12 years into this conflict and it still seems that a cohesive, comprehensive and coherent strategy eludes coalition military and diplomatic forces.
The problem may lie, however, in a lack of understanding of basic political development theory. Political scientists have constructed what is called the Sequential Model of Political Development. The SMPD identifies five “crises” that nation’s generally go through in sequence as they develop: 1. identity, 2. legitimacy, 3. penetration, 4. participation, 5. distribution.
What does it mean to be an Afghan?
Identity is a complex issue even in the most, seemingly, homogeneous societies, but in a country full of tribal loyalties and differing regions, it can be extremely problematic in forging a united nation. The SMPD identity theory posits that people develop a national identity over and above their local, regional, tribal, etc. identities. People come to think of themselves, for example, as Germans rather than Bavarians, Americans rather than Northerners, etc.
Afghanistan is a multiethnic society. The population of the country is divided into a wide variety of ethnolinguistic groups. The ethnic groups of the country are: Pashtun, Tajik, Hazara, Uzbek, Aimak, Turkmen, Baloch, Pashai, Nuristani, Arab, Brahui, Pamiri and some others. The Afghan National Anthem mentions 14 of the ethnic groups.
CIA World Factbook further breaks down the various ethnic groups as follows: Pashtun 42 percent, Tajik 27 percent, Hazara 9 percent, Uzbek 9 percent, Aimak 4 percent, Turkmen 3 percent, Baloch 2 percent and other 4 percent.
Although an ABC News poll from 2009 stated that 72 percent of the population labeled their identity as Afghan first, before ethnicity, it is not clear as to what the various individuals surveyed thought about what it meant to be an Afghan.
For example, if we were to conduct a poll in America and find that an overwhelming majority of people identified themselves as Americans, it would only tell us the label used and not what the label means to the range of individuals that use it.
Until a more interconnected answer to the question of what it means to be an Afghan or what does it mean to be a citizen of Afghanistan, the uncertainty and instability is likely to continue. One should not expect that answer to be monolithic, but there should be enough points of agreement to begin to develop a truly democratic and governable society.
A question of legitimacy
We now come to the legitimacy aspect of SMPD and here we see that people begin to feel that an administration’s right to govern is legitimate (or justified) and therefore should be followed. As system legitimacy increases, the need for coercion to keep the country together decreases.
In Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai runs a country that Transparency International ranks as the second most corrupt in the world. One of Karzai’s brothers orchestrated a deal that eventually led to the collapse of Afghanistan’s largest bank and another brother, who has since been killed, was reported to be involved in drug deals with the Taliban.
Additionally, thanks to reported and documented fraud in the elections that made him president, many Afghans rightly see Karzai as an illegitimate president. With American and NATO forces occupying their country, many Afghans view Karzai as a puppet and tool of the West as well.
At any rate, these realities breed insecurity in the authority of the central government. The spike in recent violence in Afghanistan seems to bear out, to a certain extent, the aforementioned need for military coercion (that SMPD speaks of) when system legitimacy is absent.
Competence of the central government is central to democracy
The principle of penetration states that as the central government expands its power throughout the country, it encounters resistance since many see the central government as distant and far away. Local rebellions are pacified and military might is brought in to enforce national authority.
With either footholds or strongholds in Kandahar, Kurram, Paktika and Zabul, to name a few, the Taliban has made it extremely difficult for Afghan and foreign forces to have much of an impact. Because of the general distrust of the Afghan government, there are some villages that turn to the Taliban for protection and/or direction.
Further, sometimes even within the same families, you will have a Taliban fighter and a member of the ANA (Afghan National Army). In the past week we have seen how that dynamic plays out on the ground — loyalty to a central government is tenuous at best.
Also, what doesn’t help in this regard is the vast amount of misinformation and deception by U.S. officials. Anthony Cordesman, on behalf of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote that ISAF and the U.S. leadership failed to report accurately on the reality of the situation in Afghanistan.
“Since June 2010, the unclassified reporting the U.S. does provide has steadily shrunk in content, effectively ‘spinning’ the road to victory by eliminating content that illustrates the full scale of the challenges ahead,” Cordesman wrote. “They also, however, were driven by political decisions to ignore or understate Taliban and insurgent gains from 2002 to 2009, to ignore the problems caused by weak and corrupt Afghan governance, to understate the risks posed by sanctuaries in Pakistan, and to ‘spin’ the value of tactical ISAF victories while ignoring the steady growth of Taliban influence and control.”
We now come to the area of participation. The SMPD participation theory tells us that after the first three are accomplished, people begin to want to participate in the governance of their nation. There is usually a struggle to expand the electoral franchise.
The widespread and gross fraud and abuse in the electoral process in Afghanistan has been well-documented. The recent elections have been notoriously marred by logistical problems, fraud and low turnout, undermining the citizens’ of Afghanistan confidence in the process and the “elected” official that process produced.
Although, the first round of split elections in 2004 and 2005 were relatively successful: Afghans turned out to vote in large numbers and the results were widely accepted, the subsequent ones of 2009 and 2010 were administered in confusion and were confirmed under a cloud of suspicion.
Conclusion
Lastly, we address the SMPD precept of distribution that simply addresses how the economic and resource pie is divided. The notion is: With a central government dominating resources, once parties represent all of the interests in society, people begin to see parties as one of the keys to the distribution of things of value.
Political parties exist in Afghanistan, in theory. But they play no role in the political system, thanks to the peculiar voting system that President Karzai settled on in the Electoral Law in May 2004. The system, called the single non-transferable vote (SNTV).
It is used in just three other states (Indonesia, Jordan and Thailand) use versions of it for part or all of their legislative elections. The reason is that it is blatantly undemocratic and hostile to political parties.
In a standard parliamentary system, seats are allocated to parties in proportion to their share of the vote: If a party wins 35 percent of the vote, it is awarded 35 percent of seats.
In the SNTV system, by contrast, the individual who wins the most votes in a given constituency is awarded the first seat; the candidate with the second-highest vote tally is awarded the next seat, and so on down the line until all seats are awarded.
Regardless of how many votes the candidate wins, they are awarded one seat. For example, the top candidate could win 75 percent of the vote and win one seat, while the fifth-place candidate might win 2 percent of the vote, and also win one seat.
The distribution of goods, services and resources, even in a somewhat functional representative government, is a pretty delicate dance of competing interests. In Afghanistan, that dance is horribly out of step.
In a recent report, it was found that the United States has wasted millions of dollars in poorly run reconstruction projects in Afghanistan. A report from the U.S. inspector general for Afghanistan says a “significant portion” of the $400 million in infrastructure spending for Afghanistan last year may be wasted “due to weaknesses in planning, coordination and execution.
“The squandered projects include U.S.-funded bases for the Afghan border police, many of which have already been left abandoned. In one case, Afghan officers left the base because it had no water supply.”
The report says Afghan projects will require years of increased funding, warning, “The U.S. risks wasting billions of dollars if U.S.-funded development programs cannot be sustained, either by the Afghan government or by continued donor support.”
Needless to say, this poses obvious problems to the cause of democracy. In a country where the will of people is routinely ignored — where life and livelihood are constantly under attack — the fundamental need of knowing that your vote counts is essential to the future health and stability of Afghanistan.
Military might, as we have witnessed, can only go so far and trying to craft an Afghan democracy that looks like America’s has failed. Afghanistan must begin where SMPD begins: What does it mean to be an Afghan? Their life, liberty and pursuit of happiness depends on how well that question is answered.