People's Democracy

  ECONOMIC NOTES

The Sad Story Of Afghanistan

Jayati Ghosh

SUPPOSE the unthinkable does occur. Suppose the US and UK governments, defying opposition across the world and protests by their own people, go ahead and wage war on Iraq. Suppose, in the process, several million innocent Iraqis are killed, maimed, physically and psychologically damaged. Suppose that towns and cities are flattened by the bombing, or at the very least that all sorts of basic infrastructure essential for modern life are destroyed, making survival difficult for inhabitants.

  There are some proponents of the war who argue that all this will be justified, because it will apparently also be associated with “democracy” which will be very generously brought to the people of Iraq by the new American invaders. And that all the destruction will be compensated for by the rebuilding of the country with US assistance.

 Of course this argument is both disgusting and immoral, but a further point to note about it is that it is also completely implausible. To see why, consider the fate of Afghanistan, which faced a war and destruction slightly more than a year ago, and was also promised not only democracy but also huge quantities of physical and financial help by the same US government as well as even the United Nations.

  PLIGHT OF THE PEOPLE

The plight of the citizens of Afghanistan may be slightly better now than it was under the Taliban, which was no doubt an obnoxious regime. But for most of the citizens, in fact very little has changed and several things have worsened. Outside of Kabul, the country is still run by warlords who control different bits of territory and exercise whatever sort of governance they see fit.

 Hamid Karzai, the puppet president installed by the US, is little more than the mayor of Kabul, and has so little control even in that city that he has to be constantly surrounded by the American bodyguards who serve as a wall between him and his people. The ruling powers, having claimed to have eliminated the Taliban, have conveniently forgotten about Afghanistan and left it to its plight, since the problem is turning out to be more complicated than they expected.

 More significantly, the imperialist powers, and especially the United States, have been remarkably stingy with the promised financial help. In all this time, Afghanistan has received little more than $2 billion in all, and most of this has gone towards military spending or paying for foreign aid workers. Reconstruction itself is estimated to have received a paltry few hundred million dollars. This is hardly enough to rebuild a fraction of the bridges and roads that were destroyed during the US attack, and nothing near what is required to bring the country back to a minimum degree of normalcy.

  KARZAI THE US SERVANT

Hamid Karzai was an unknown Afghan expatriate working for the Texan oil company Unocal (which has close links with the Bush administration) when he was conveniently discovered and made into the puppet ruler for the US. The poor man is now discovering what a crown of thorns such a job is.

On a visit to Washington, D C this week, he was quickly made aware of his lack of importance, in stark contrast to his previous visit. When Karzai travelled to the US capital last year he was an honoured guest and a media sensation. He was a guest of honour at the State of the Union speech where Bush declared war on the “axis of evil.” He was on every TV channel, where all the commentators waxed eloquent about his excellent spoken English, his perfect manners, his statesman-like qualities.

This time round, Karzai was still very much the grateful servant of the US administration, but unfortunately it won him few takers. The government’s attitude to him was perfunctory at best, and the media almost ignored him. He is, after all, yesterday’s man, the result of yesterday’s war. And now the US media is too busy to waste much time on him, because they are busy hinting for the next puppet who will ostensibly head the Iraqi regime after Saddam Hussein has been “taken out” by Bush.

When Karzai met the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he had to make do with a public hearing, rather than the informal closed session that is usual for visiting heads of state. He was treated with impatience by senators who grilled him about the state of human rights in most of the country (ignoring the fact that the man is actually quite powerless and has no real authority).

But there was good reason for the Afghan president to come rushing to Washington despite the shabby treatment he received. He came to beg, plead, implore for more money, for aid to rebuild his shattered nation. He came with a shopping list, asking aid for rebuilding irrigation systems, power plants, dams, canals, roads and other infrastructure.

He had to do this, because only weeks before his arrival, the Bush administration “forgot” to include any aid to Afghanistan in its proposed budget. The omission was blamed on a clerical error. But of course, it meant that there was simply no money for the reconstruction of Afghanistan that was envisaged before the war.

Instead of keeping to its promises, there are those in the US who are balming the Karzai regime for not delivering as it was expected to. Not a single house has been rebuilt in Kabul since the new regime was installed in power nearly 15 months ago. Religious police continue to enforce Islamic criminal laws, including those calling for the imprisonment of women for alleged adultery and prescribing stoning and amputation as penalties for other offenses.

So while life goes on as before in Afghanistan, it is business as usual in Washington, as it prepares for the destruction of another country, which it can then forget about as it moves to the next hot spot in the world after the damage is done.