A letter to the new US president
This is a guest post by Orzala Ashraf Nemat
I witnessed a historical moment in Washington when I first learnt of Obama’s victory. I joined the crowed of victorious young and old on the streets of America’s capital that night, somehow with confusing feelings. I say confused because I felt so proud to be in America when it happened, but I was unsure whether I should also be happy with what he would do in Afghanistan. I had just – that same day – seen the shocking pictures of women and children injured by a US coalition-forces bombardment in Shah Wali Kot district of Kandahar province.
Would Obama be able to stop such atrocities? Would he be able to fight the war against terrorism with the social and economic means to oppose the military means?
These were the questions in my mind which caused my confusion and made me doubt whether or not to celebrate the moment. I joined the crowd because I saw, for the first time in the history of this land, that an African-American was elected as president; I did so because I had heard him speaking over the past three months about the working class, the middle class and I saw that he was their voice. Such words sounded very unfamiliar to me in the context of a capitalist country, so I thought at least that he is not trying to ‘rescue’ the rich, but that rather he was there also to help the poor and so on. So I joined the crowed. I saw him speaking: “If there is any one out there who still doubts that everything is possible, today is my answer. For those who want to tear this world up, we will defeat you. For those who are looking for peace and security, we will support you…”
I would like to offer, however, the expectations of the war generation and of all ordinary Afghan people who are neither part of the failed ruling government, nor are they terrorists or Taliban, and I do hope that these unheard voices have a space to be heard.
The ‘war on terror’ is a key issue in US foreign policy, and Afghanistan is one of the key battlefields for eliminating extremism and terrorism worldwide. Strengthening global security against terrorism must begin with an increased investment in the improvement of Afghan security forces. An increase in foreign military troops worries us – we are concerned that it just means more house raids and more bombing of civilians. This is not a war that can be fought by military means. Today everyone knows who the Taliban were/are and why they’re fighting. This war needs to be fought with a totally different approach.
We expect your support and investment in our local forces, while sending anti-corruption experts who ensure that the corruption is dealt with in a proper manner. This is essential for alleviating the responsibility from the international forces and will empower Afghans to defend their territory and fight against any kind of crimes on their own. Such a shift in security operations is important because the last seven years of military intervention is evidence for the failure to ensure overall security. Corruption is on the rise, the drug trade is booming and breaking world records, militants and warlords are violating the human rights of our most vulnerable citizens who have no avenues of recourse and still lack of basic social facilities. All this threatens the future of the country.
The militarization of development aid has jeopardized the work of civilian humanitarian assistance organizations, and as a result, hundreds and thousands of people are deprived of basic health and educational opportunities. A major lesson could be learned from the case of Afghanistan if the old-fashioned prescription of what is ‘good’ for the nation were put aside, and if instead the Afghan people were asked to define what they want and need.
Civil society, non-military political groups and tribal leaders are instrumental in maintaining support for a strong democratic Afghanistan that will deny terrorists a safe haven. However, such a strategy must and should not be considered ‘negotiations with the Taliban.’ The Taliban do not represent the Afghan communities. Should the US government and international community want to negotiate, it must be with the ones who have created this group – in other words, the intelligence services of Pakistan – because they have a big stake in directing master-minding the Taliban movement, not necessarily anyone in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan presents a tragic example of what cannot be achieved by compromising with and integrating warlords and drug-lords into the governing core of the nation. This much is clear, because at this point, seven years after the fall of the Taliban, the situation still deteriorates. The encouragement of some members of the international community that we should negotiate with those who behead civilians, use women and children as human shields, manipulate young people and brainwash them to become terrorists, cannot be accepted by Afghan people. The real end to the ‘war on terror’ can only be achieved if there is accountability for war and crimes committed during the recent upheavals and when an effective system of justice is established in the country. Only then can we begin to re-establish the infrastructure and make progress in basic economic development. Such investments will improve the Afghan economy and create opportunities for employment.
In the 21st century, the most important weapon to be given to Afghan people, of whom over 50% are youth, is the pen. More investment in education for a nation with a 71% illiteracy rate will significantly curb generations of prospective terrorist recruits against the West in general, and contribute to a sustainable peace in the region.
Women in Afghanistan, despite some claims to the contrary, are not liberated. Nor can an outside force liberate them. They are under-represented in the leadership and political decision-making processes; and moreover, the debates and discussions about negotiating with extremist groups such as Taliban and Hezb-e Islami are indeed endangering the status of women by limiting their access to education, jobs and political participation. The process of democratization and gender equality requires strengthening grass-roots initiatives working on such issues on the ground. Implying western models in a country where customary law holds sway over 90% of the territory will endanger the status of women further and will limit their full participation in the development and political decision-making.
I congratulate American women and men for electing a man of dignity, and one who is humble, an inspiring leader of our time and someone who walks to the White House with the idea of CHANGE. What we expect from you is to let the CHANGE for Afghanistan to be lead by Afghans and only support such CHANGE by supporting women and men, children and youth of Afghanistan with more economic development opportunities, more jobs, more education, and not by sending your troops and escalating the war. We need your help in fighting against corruption – the main cause of everything that you read in your newspapers or see on your television screen. Corruption has paved the ground for the re-organization of the Taliban; corruption is what opened the doors for the drug mafia, and indeed the larger global fight in Afghanistan should focus on corruption and ensuring rule of law.
We deeply respect the sacrifice America has made to end this war, and we also hope that you will consider the daily losses of common civilians – in particular those of women and children – due to the ‘war on terror.’ We hope that we will all look back with pride at this endeavor in which we undertake together to free the world of terrorism and sectarian strife.
Orzala Ashraf Nemat is currently a Yale World Fellow; she started first her career in helping journalists and foreign aid visitors to refugee communities that she was living in during the mid-1990s as a guide and translator. She is the founder of an Afghan women NGO and worked as executive director of this NGO between 1999 and 2007. Orzala has devoted ten years to establishing and delivering training programs to Afghan women and children in refugee communities in Pakistan and in Afghanistan. Often putting herself directly at risk under the Taliban regime, she launched underground literacy and health education programs for women and girls. Her organization initiated a programme for a Safe House for women and girls at risk which in present-day Afghanistan is a highly risky area of intervention. The organization under her leadership had significant achievements in creating nationwide mechanisms to deal with issues around violence against women. Orzala is increasingly involved in legal reform and advocacy for human rights and gender. Orzala has been awarded with several fellowships and has a Masters in Development Planning from the University of London. She has also worked with different international organizations working in Afghanistan as a consultant and officer, including Human Rights Watch, Swiss Development Cooperation, UNDP and UNIFEM. She is on the board of directors of the Afghan Women’s Network and other human rights networks in Afghanistan.
Comments
| 23 November 2008, 12:27 pm |
Quote: “. . . while sending anti-corruption experts who ensure that the corruption is dealt with in a proper manner.”
Are you seriously asking the U.S. government to stamp out corruption among the Afghan political class/ruling elite? Can you cite a precedent in any Third World country where the U.S. has successfully attempted such a feat?
| 23 November 2008, 1:08 pm |
The militarization of development aid has jeopardized the work of civilian humanitarian assistance organizations, and as a result, hundreds and thousands of people are deprived of basic health and educational opportunities. A major lesson could be learned from the case of Afghanistan if the old-fashioned prescription of what is ‘good’ for the nation were put aside, and if instead the Afghan people were asked to define what they want and need.
Before 2001, development aid was not militarized. The Taliban and other warlords were therefore free to steal as much aid (food, medical supplies) as they could get their hands on. That’s how violent armed groups maintain power, and there wasn’t a damn thing the humanitarians and the pen wielders could do about it.
When we rely on humanitarian aid, goodwill, peace, love, “social and economic means” and ‘the pen’ to maintain order in places like Afghanistan, the bad guys immediately take over and the area turns into a large-scale set of a Mad Max movie. And that’s the best case scenario for the peace option. The worst-case scenarios can be seen in Rwanda, the Congo and the Sudan.
| 23 November 2008, 1:44 pm |
I thought we still had the same American President
| 23 November 2008, 3:12 pm |
Can you cite a precedent in any Third World country where the U.S. has successfully attempted such a feat?
Since Orzala seems to be saying quite clearly that it was a mistake to (integrate) “warlords and drug-lords into the governing core of the nation” I rather suspect that he means those who mistakenly did this are best-placed (and also have the expertise) to undo the mistakes and repair the damage.
| 23 November 2008, 4:09 pm |
Look, there isn’t a SINGLE majority-Muslim country that is a healthy functioning democracy respecting basic human rights.
Foreign aid, economic aid, humanitarian aid, military aid…you name it…it’s all a waste because the source of all of this chaos, violence, backwardness and disorder, Islam, is never critically examined with an eye to reform.
To continue to pour billions, tens of billions in fact, into a backward and barbaric world that refuses to reform itself, that refuses to engage in critical self-examination, is just as stupid as bailing out a lazy, bloated, inefficient and outmoded auto industry.
To write a letter to B. Obama in an effort to resolve the problemes in ( insert-name of-any-country-stan) is about as effective as writing Santa.
What Muslims, even moderate Muslims can’t ( won’t?) understand is that there are no ‘external’ solutions to problemes of the Islamic world because those problemes are internally generated, being the product of a stubborn, supremacist mindset that is simply incapable of introspection.
| 23 November 2008, 5:14 pm |
John P
“those problemes (sic) are internally generated, being the product of a stubborn, supremacist mindset that is simply incapable of introspection.”
chortle
Physician heal thyself
| 23 November 2008, 6:23 pm |
John P
“those problemes (sic) are internally generated, being the product of a stubborn, supremacist mindset that is simply incapable of introspection.”
Well you can *chortle* all you want, but hundreds of billions have been spent on the Muslim world and nothing has come of it.
Pakistan, for instance, recently spent ALL of the 3.5 billion it had in its foreign reserves to purchase chinese nuclear technologies, and then promptly turned around and asked the IMF for twice that amount (some 7 billion) in order to buy basic foodstuffs to stave of starvation.
In other words, it needs a ‘bail out’ because its spent every last cent of its reserves indulging its Muslim-supremacist hatred of India, and it did so with the full knowledge that such actions could engender famine. And as with practically all the previous bail-outs, it’ll renege on its promise to repay.
Pakistan is like some drunken welfare case pawning foodstamps for money to buy booze.
| 24 November 2008, 12:35 am |
JP,
have you ever thought of having your own blog?
that way you could rage, vent and otherwise exercise your blood pressure, but spare the rest of us from your repetitive and predictable rants, which we’ve all heard about 200 times before, at the very least
| 24 November 2008, 1:26 am |
I want so desperately to be able to read this Guest piece and feel hope for a different answer to a terrible dilemma.
Unfortunately, I simply cannot reconcile the outcomes demanded with the policies suggested (or forbidden)…
Afghanistan presents a tragic example of what cannot be achieved by compromising with and integrating warlords and drug-lords into the governing core of the nation… The encouragement of some members of the international community that we should negotiate with those who behead civilians, use women and children as human shields, manipulate young people and brainwash them to become terrorists, cannot be accepted by Afghan people. The real end to the ‘war on terror’ can only be achieved if there is accountability for war and crimes committed during the recent upheavals and when an effective system of justice is established in the country.
So there’s no political solution to be pursued with the Taliban. And no end is conceivable without a justice system that will hold all to account for their crimes…
What we expect from you is to let the CHANGE for Afghanistan to be lead by Afghans and only support such CHANGE by supporting women and men, children and youth of Afghanistan with more economic development opportunities, more jobs, more education, and not by sending your troops and escalating the war.
I don’t understand. Are the Taliban simply going to lay down their arms – or are the Afghan security forces better prepared than I thought?
There’s billions of dollars in economic development funds that simply can’t be allocated to projects in Afghanistan because of the insurgency. Afghanistan can’t get the former unless the latter is nullified. How exactly does Orzala suggest this will happen?
I’ve no problem believing that there’s been strategic failures in Afghanistan – however, this post does nothing to explain those failures or what the better alternatives are.
Calling for no surrender/dialogue to the Taliban whilst simultaneously rejecting the use of military force is hopelessly contradictory. As is on one hand bemoaning “Western models” of democracy being “implied” because they lack cultural nuance – only to insist that those same models be applied to anti-corruption; education for women/children etc…
| 24 November 2008, 1:59 pm |
that way you could rage, vent and otherwise exercise your blood pressure, but spare the rest of us from your repetitive and predictable rants, which we’ve all heard about 200 times before, at the very least
You know Modernity, I rarely lace into personal rants about other commenters here.
I think it is appalling that intelligent people like you cannot the dots when it comes to violence and corruption endemic to nearly Muslim-marjority countries and to tie that back to Islam itself.
Orzala wants the troops out, but wants all the money to stay. Her posting does not mention Islam even once, and this despite the fact that all of her complaints about the violence, the corruption and the dysfunction all come down to religion.
So Afganistan’s salvation doesn’t lie in economic aid or humanitarian aid or education aid and any kind of aid; no that salvation lies in a mass conversion to another relgion, any religion but Islam.
There isn’t any point in attempting to win hearts and minds when every last square millimetre of those hearts and minds are completely, utterly and thoroughly occupied by an ideology that brokers no other views no other opinions and no competition, and this on pain of death.
I feel terribly sorry for Orzala and for the women and children of Afganistan and I do so because they’re all trapped in a religious prison from which the only exit is death.
| 24 November 2008, 5:11 pm |
The Muslim State Of Somalia
“Forty-three per cent of the country is in dire need of humanitarian assistance.” –from the article linked below
One hundred per cent of the country of Somalia, in fact, is in dire need of humanitarian assistance. And the very best, and in the end most effective, humanitarian assistance that the Infidels of the world can offer is to do nothing. For by doing nothing, by allowing chaos and confusion, by showing to the Muslims of Somalia, and to Muslims elsewhere, and to non-Muslims all over the world, that the natural condition of people raised in societies suffused with Islam, societies in which there is no non-Muslim population to exploit or from which to extort the jizyah, direct or disguised, and no outside Infidels to constantly rescue Muslims, through infusions of aid and a bringing of a semblance of good government and order (and sometimes this has been the legacy of the very brief period of what is called, quite inaccurately in the case of the Arab states,”Western imperialism”) the natural state of homo islamicus, which is despotism or incessant warfare, or sometimes both at the same time.
The best “humanitarian assistance” is to recognize that Islam is the problem, and that until Islam has been exposed, shown up, as the true source for the political, economic, social, intellectual, and moral failures, of Muslim states and societies, any attempt to rescue Muslim states from the consequences of Islam will only weaken the West (and use up its own money, and distract itself from a proper analysis of the threat of Islam) and do nothing, in the long run, to help rescue Muslims from Islam.
The distempers of Muslim states have in some cases, especially in the tiny sheikdoms and in Saudi Arabia, been kept at bay, or disguised, by the vast and unearned largesse that comes from oil and gas deposits. But there is nothing splendid, nothing heartening, nothing encouraging about these plutocracies, these absurd qatars and kuwaits and abu dhabis, or those who batten on their proximity to the oil, the bahrains and the dubais. They are comical in their pretensions, and not one of them could last for a minute without Western, non-Muslim experts, of every kind, nor could their rulers last without access to the West, to education and medical care that only the West provides, and where those assorted emirs and beglerbegs and pashas buy their hotels particuliers and their Plantagenet hunting-lodges, in what for them (forget about visits to museums and churches and libraries — that’s what those silly Americans, with their touching respect for cultural artifacts of older civilizations, like to do) the fun-fair-cum-brothel of Western Europe.
Be a true humanitarian. Do nothing, nothing at all, not a dollar in aid, not a soldier on the ground, to rescue any Muslim country from the consequences of its own political and economic and social and moral and intellectual failures. Let it stew, and stew.
Of course, we can’t prevent the rich Muslims — the Saudis, the Emiratians, the Kuwaitis, the Qataris, and all the others — from extending aid to Somalia or other poorer members of the Umma. But that’s their affair. So let’s give the rich members of the Umma the chance to show that famous Muslim solidarity that we hear so much about, but that seems to reveal itself only in a shared hatred of non-Muslims, not in any sharing among Muslims themselves.
| 24 November 2008, 7:57 pm |
John P’s rants against Islam reminds me of that vulger upstart Austrian corporal with the little Charlie Chaplin mustache. A bit unfair comparison I know, but close.
| 25 November 2008, 12:25 pm |
He’s more like the Italian chap in “The Great Dictator” if you ask me…
| 25 November 2008, 3:37 pm |
That’s true, Graham. I bet John P would be pretty good at making the trains run on time.
| 25 November 2008, 5:52 pm |
Christ on crutches. Godwin keep and protect us. Godwin’s pumps protect us.
Dear Orzala Ashraf Nemat,
Now I am elected you will see I have some different ideas. I’ve now seen the security briefings (and have asked for more details). To help me with foreign policy I have appointed Hillary Clinton who has met several World Leaders and who has a good grasp of foreign affairs. Like most of my administration she is a strong supporter of Israel and has said she would be prepared to bomb Iran if it threatened Israel. As you know her husband, President Clinton has also used missiles as surgical reminders of our intent, as well as not being shy to try and assasinate a rogue leader in order to save lives.
I am not sure to what degree whe supports my mini-surge in Afghanistan of 7,000 troops or an idea that we might tackle Pakistan if they continue to ignore the terrorists in their midsts.
Forgive me for a short answer as I have to meet with the company installing my basketball court at the White House.
Shalom,
Barack Hussein Obama (President Elect)