Afghanistan (8 page)

The Soviets could never gain legitimacy. The pre-2001 Taliban was considered legitimate by most of Afghanistan’s Pushtuns—plus small numbers from other groups—and saw its legitimacy erode from a broad range of reasons, including their heavy-handed actions regarding Sharia law, gender relations and Islamic practice, their subservience to Al Qaeda, and their unwillingness to embrace the symbolic actions that legitimate Afghan governance and are important in a largely
nonliterate society as a demonstration of intent and respect. The result was the collapse of 2001. Only cornered-rat foreigners fought to the end for the Taliban. The majority of their Pushtun supporters cut a deal with the new government in Kabul, whose foreign support seemed then to usher in a new age for Afghanistan. The suspicion of the Taliban and the lasting goodwill toward those that helped remove them have only dissipated slowly with the repeated policy failures since then; polling shows that 87 percent of Afghans thought the ouster of the Taliban was a good thing in 2005, declining to 69 percent in 2009.
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They switched sides and went with the winners—the US-led coalition and the Afghan Northern Alliance—just as many had switched sides to join with the Taliban during their successes of 1994–96, when opportunistic advances brought them into occupation of Kandahar, Herat, Jalalabad, and eventually Kabul.

The dependence on Afghan perceptions of legitimacy to enlist and motivate supporters is critical to Afghan’s conflicts, kinetic and otherwise. The willingness to switch sides is a survival strategy, but it also reflects Afghan attitudes towards legitimacy. The importance of religion in Afghan daily life tends to accord success with the aura of a victory bestowed by the almighty. To try and regain this aura, Al Qaeda and the Afghan insurgents were, in 2008–10, recasting the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan as a conflict in which victory was bestowed for religious fanaticism and piety rather than earned through success and endurance. Similarly, the importance of patronage means that the Afghans will support a winner if it is thought that a larger patron is behind them. Afghans are hardly unique in that they like to follow and respect a winner. In resource-poor Afghanistan, political and military momentum is a powerful force, for there is likely to be little available to counter it. When the situation starts deteriorating in Afghanistan, it can do so with great speed and suddenness and with few stopping points before arriving at the bottom.

Similarly, the US and coalition partners often find it hard to recognize how difficult it is for them to legitimate their presence and interest in Afghanistan and Pakistan in humanitarian and security terms. In Afghanistan, it is hard to accept that a great power can be motivated to act except to further its own immediate advantage; second-order benefits such as preventing the destabilization likely to flow from renewed
civil war are not recognized. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, it is common knowledge—among government officials and illiterate farmers alike—that the US presence reflects a covert and subtle strategy rather than a desire to help the Afghans rebuild their country and lives. The US failure to capture Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar is seen as evidence that they have no desire to do so, but rather are looking for a justification to prolong their presence. The bribes paid to the Taliban in Pakistan to protect the coalition’s resupply trucks driving from Karachi to Kabul represent further proof. There is no agreement as to the strategy these policies are serving. Many believe that it is intended to be part of an unending war against Islam or to disarm and dismember Pakistan. Others point to US and western airbases in Afghanistan and central Asia and identify countering influence from Iran, Russia, or China as the real reason for the conflict.

Legitimacy in both Afghan and Islamic terms requires a degree of social justice. The Soviet-backed 1978–92 Afghan regimes were unable to provide it except in a few areas—including much of Kabul—where local alliances, subsidized bread, and make-work jobs could buy stability. That the mujahideen that took Kabul in 1992 failed to bring about the social justice that many of their constituents had actually been fighting for and dissolved in factional fighting enabled the rise of the Taliban.

For many Afghans, social justice is doing the right thing, following the tenets of Afghaniyat or Pushtowali. In the face of the culture of corruption that has become widespread in 2008–10, there has been widespread nostalgia among Pushtuns for the perceived Islamic rectitude of the pre-2001 Taliban. Mullah Omar’s simple lifestyle is often recalled fondly while the more complex reality, such as how the Taliban encouraged opium cultivation and then tried to manipulate the market to maximize its return on this crop of dubious Islamic legitimacy, tends to be forgotten.

An alternative view, also widespread, social justice is seen as equivalent to Sharia law and its administration through a juridical system. This is something the Taliban regime offered when they first came to power and one where its predecessors and successors have often been lacking. A strength of the Taliban in both Afghanistan and Pakistan is its identification with Sharia while both Afghanistan and Pakistan had state justice systems that proved incapable of meeting the needs of the population.

On both sides of the Durand Line—in southern Afghanistan in 1994–96 and in Pakistan post-2001—the rise of the Taliban was enabled because Pushtun secular elites—especially former mujahideen in Afghanistan and maliks in Pakistan—were not seen as delivering social justice. The perception was that many of the leadership figures were self-enriching, extractive, or were on someone’s payroll and were, in effect, representing them rather than their fellow tribesmen. Prior to 2001, many of the Taliban leadership and their Arab allies were seen as carrying out similar behavior, and despite their links to religious authority this did not prevent their legitimacy from eroding. In Pakistan, the secular Pushtun tribal leaders were seen as increasingly either self-interested or tools of a distant government (especially the malik system) at the same time as the government was weakening the support structure for them.

Support for Sharia, however, does not necessarily translate into support for the Afghan insurgents or anti-democratic politics. There was widespread resentment, even from many Pushtuns, of the way the Taliban acted to implement Sharia law in 1994–2001. Yet the promise of social justice inherent in the concept of living under Sharia law is still seen favorably by many Afghans. Those that have offered social justice but failed to deliver—the post-1992 mujahideen-based government in Kabul, the pre-2001 Taliban, leaders who appeared more interested in earning money than helping their brethren—lose legitimacy and support.

The failure of the current Afghan government to achieve social justice has made the insurgents’ offer to bring back Sharia law appealing to some Afghans. Afghan insurgents have used the appeal of social justice through Sharia to take advantage of the failure of the judicial system. The culture of corruption that has emerged throughout Afghanistan provides a further challenge and has focused resentment on the non-Muslim foreign presence that is widely seen as having created conditions that are the opposite of those inherent in Sharia.

Institutions and Power

Conflicts are about power. This makes the Afghan approach to power important—but not determinative—for understanding the institutions that shape the landscape of peoples and politics alike. Afghanistan has
historically been a country where personal links and loyalty, more so than an individual’s skills or abilities, determine ultimate success and failure in society. Afghanistan started to move away from the patrimonial model in the nineteenth century when Abdur Rahman started to develop a state, though even the “iron amir” did not aim to centralize all Afghans or create a cohesive national infrastructure.

The institutions of Afghan society are critical to the success or failure of any policy execution. These institutions are all-important for legitimating actions and decision-making undertaken by leadership or elite figures. A wide range of traditional Afghan institutions serve as interfaces between individual Afghans at the grassroots level and the official state. These include tribal, clan, or familial group leaders, especially among the tribally organized Pushtuns and, to a lesser extent, other groups including Uzbeks and Hazaras. Local councils of notables and elders, either ongoing or empaneled for a specific action, are shuras (Persian) and jirgas (Pushtu). While the two have been differentiated in that a shura is made up of elders and meets in response to a specific need, whereas a jirga is more egalitarian and meets on a consistent basis—which is why the Loya Jirga has become a national political structure, whereas the shura has not—in practice there is a wide variety of examples.
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The hoqooq is a specialist shura dealing with land and water rights, a vital concern in agricultural areas. The possibility of a large-scale assembly for ratifying change is represented by Loya jirgas and similar assemblies. A darbar, an audience for expression of loyalty and redress of grievances, results when a leadership figure meets the grassroots; it is an important ritual and Afghan leadership figures that fail to carry it out lose legitimacy. Councils of clergy (ulema) have, in recent decades, been increasingly involved in these actions.

A shura or jirga would draw on older, more experienced men, which in tribal areas would often be represented because of their hereditary authority. A shura may be more likely to include—or be dominated by—religious figures or local leaders that have not come out of traditional societal sources of authority. The 1978–2001 conflict saw shuras of guerilla commanders and religious leaders emerging to coordinate operations and fill the vacuum created by the lack of government; these
often superseded traditional shuras and jirga. Religious institutions such as the mosque and the madrassa provide moral authority in communities. Funding comes from trusts (
waqf
) and tithes (
zakat
). These have been local institutions, normally without support or hands-on involvement from the central governments. Afghan Islam is by itself not hostile to democracy, with its acceptance of shuras and jirgas (not limited to clergy) for decision-making and dispute resolution.

One of the reasons the political changes instituted in Afghanistan following the fall of the Taliban—although largely implemented by elites and foreigners—have been seen as legitimate, was the use of the Emergency Loya Jirga and the Constitutional Loya Jirga as a visible sign of mass support for consensus building. The Emergency and Constitutional Loya Jirgas proved a good tool to build on the work started in Bonn and partially “demilitarize” Afghan politics, rooted both in the Afghan jirga tradition and the Islamic mandate of majlis-e-shura (requiring that an Islamic government engage in consultation). The use of the Loya Jirga (Grand Council) is constitutionally provided for on issues of independence, national sovereignty, and territorial integrity; it can amend the provisions of the constitution and prosecute the president; it is made up of members of parliament and chairs of the provincial and district councils.

In addition to the institution of the president, the Constitution of Afghanistan provides for an upper house of the bicameral parliament consists of the Meshrano Jirga (House of Elders). It has 102 seats, one-third elected from provincial councils for four-year terms, one-third elected from local district councils for three-year terms, and one-third nominated by the president for five-year terms. Because elections for the district councils had not been held at the time of the 2005 parliamentary elections, each provincial council appointed one of its elected members to a seat in the upper house, which meant that a majority of this house is not elected. Half of the presidential nominees have to be women. This house has limited authority but can block legislation.

More power is held by the lower house, the Wolesi Jirga, the House of People, with 249 seats. The was initially directly elected using the non-partisan single non-transferable vote system—which is not
constitutionally mandated—for five-year terms in 2005. Members are elected by district. At least 64, two from each province, must be women. The next parliamentary election is scheduled for 2010.

Post-2001, there have been new provincial, district, and village councils established, with foreign assistance. All provincial and district governors and municipal mayors are appointed by the government in Kabul. There were elections for provincial councils in 2005 and September 2009, but planned elections for district and municipal or village councils have not taken place. Elections for district council are scheduled for 2010.

The elected provincial councils are without executive powers. The provincial councils have a largely symbolic function, aside from participation in development planning. They have no ability to hold Kabul ministries or provincial governors accountable. As a result, donors have been trying to provide the councils with the ability to make a positive contribution to Afghanistan’s subnational governance. “If I was a provincial counselor, I’d get fed up with that role” said Jim Drummond, director of the South Asia division of the UK’s Department for International Development (DfID).
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The provincial and district councils cannot levy taxes and are without real power (with exceptions being noted, such as the Kandahar provincial council where there have been family links between the leadership—it is headed by Walid Karzai, the president’s brother—and Kabul). The members of the Ghazni provincial council walked out in March 2009 in protest over their lack of authority.
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In the cases where they have been able to exercise authority, provincial governors have had to respond to the challenge. Despite the provincial councils’ weakness, the September 2009 elections saw widespread allegations of vote-rigging on behalf of council candidates, in many cases reflecting a desire to achieve greater potential access to corruption.

Subnational governance institutions include the Community Development Councils (CDCs) organized under the National Solidarity Program (NSP). These have, in practice, complemented rather than competed with traditional collective decision-making institutions, though this varies greatly throughout Afghanistan. “The NSP for the first time created a space for men and women to decide for themselves and to take an
active part in implementing their own decisions,” said Eshan Zia, Minister of Rural Rehabilitation and Development.
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