Afghanistan Needs Autonomy – OpEd
The story of poor governance, corruption, alien intrusion or missed chances is the modern tragedy of the state of Afghanistan that is generally told. Both are true, yet neither of them explains the recalcitrant tendency that is of the highest interest, that is, the tendency that almost all the regimes that seize Kabul continue in a confrontation with most of the same enemies, and most of the same motives. Kings tried to be uniting the country through compromises and coercions. By force and principles, Communists tried to re-equip the society. Battles were fought between the warring parties, when the common enemy was destroyed. Technocrats tried to establish a state when it comes to donor money and models imported. Taliban returned with a mission to restore, and they are still exposed to violence, opposition and the shaky economy. The question is not necessarily about leadership, as far as radically different rulers reach the same outcome. It’s design.
Afghanistan has not been a state that has been nurtured but built. It was characterized by its borders during an imperialistic competitive period when other countries were more concerned with buffers rather than membership. This was not always the death of the nation, but it was poor conditions on any political undertaking that followed it. The map was rich in the peoples with distinct languages, sects, histories, and local power outfits, and offered no general procedure through which such peoples would choose to become a part of a single system. It is possible to make the state a common home in the places where national identity is formed during the process of long bargaining, where the joint institutions, and gradual process of cultivating trust, is implemented. In Afghanistan, their state was typically represented as an above-down command which was backed by coercion and additionally by foreign funds. This difference does matter because a referee is never something that is imposed to. It becomes a prize.
The biggest flaw, which has been committed over the decades, is the fact that it is further centralization of the answer. Big centre has been the cure of disintegration by the Afghan governments but in fact it has mostly evolved to become the tool of subjugation. Who controls Kabul controls appointments, budgets, security forces, and the authority of determining what communities are loyal enough to be counted. This renders normal politics a zero-sum game. And, in case you win the centre, you will be able to give out jobs and protection to your network. Anything is possible to you like loss of body security. Compromise in such a case can be likened to capitulation and rebellion to insurance.
The centralization also introduces the predictability of social experience of the state. The state is not a service provider but an extractor to most of the Afghans who do not constitute the ruling core. It is expressed through taxation, conscription, police molestation, land disputes, predatory roadblocks or a governor who is reported to Kabul as local. The clinics, roads and schools would be provided through local brokers and armed patrons even in the instances that they had been donor funded. That did not build trust in a non-partial state. It provided a feeling of trust to whoever was armed and capable of saving the day of the other armed individual. This type of a system cannot be consolidated. It can only cycle.
Afghanistan has been already turned into more of a partitioned territory, even though the map may say the opposite. Power, the mastery of the security and the social loyalty are inclined to follow the ethnical geography, the local history. The south and the east have their networks, codes and war memories. The north too has power patterns. Their own account of not being included and surviving, is the central highlands. It is not such an invention of the last twenty years only. It is a protractedness that precedes the modern state and is predetermined by mountains, distance, the formations of communities which are not readily lent to capital dictates. The reality is there and cannot be dispelled by policy. It converts it into a battleground.
The saddest part is that there is a constant failure to protect minorities. Violence does not just take place as the non-dominating groups are displaced, locked out of the decision-making process and at times the non-dominant groups are even subjected to episodic violence. They are predictable outcomes of the system where the centre has been captured by one group and used to shut out other groups. When the rules do not get you a place in power, then you have no choice than to be at the mercies of whoever is in power. That is not citizenship. It is conditional tolerance. Communities evolve throughout history in the only logical way they can, they organize militias, seek outside sponsors or are the cheering section of the insurgents not because they are fond of war but because war is the lingua franca the system speaks.
This is among the factors that make the debate on the future of Afghanistan still failure. It is still trapped in personalities and denominations of regimes. Only unless it is the Taliban. Whether it be elections, or shuras. Is it sanctions or involvement. The questions are essential, but they are answer to a more fundamental one, which is to what kind of society such as this one can be, without being subject to active coercion. As long as the political ship keeps making groups be involved in existential conflicts over Kabul there will exist no regime, which will be running on an agenda of fear, favours, and brutality. You can change bosses as far as you like and have the same engine to operate.
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