The Problems of Introducing Alien Concepts Like Democracy
There are so many agencies operating here, and so much cloak and dagger posturing, that it is quite easy for such a character to act with impunity. Nobody will ask a Westerner in fatigues who is carrying a machine gun what he is up to on the streets of Kabul. Even ISAF didn't check up on Idema for weeks. The Afghan authorities rarely, if ever, question the actions of the international forces here, so a man who talks the talk can bluff his way almost anywhere. Idema traveled, heavily armed, all over the city, snatching "suspects" and bringing them back to his rented house for questioning. It was only when a member of ISAF grew suspicious that the Afghan police swooped down and arrested him. He and the other two Americans arrested with him now face up to 20 years in an Afghan jail.
I visited one of the people Idema had detained, Mohammed Hanif, a 19-year-old mechanic who was doing masonry work at a house Idema raided. He says he was kept hooded, soaked with water, and not fed for a week. He was then inexplicably released by Idema and threatened with arrest if he told anyone. He looked shaken, sitting in his shop by the banks of the waterless Kabul River. He told me that "Jack," as he knew Idema, should be treated the way he had treated his prisoners. The experience had made Mohammed afraid of Americans. The story, too murky to explain away to the Afghan people, has been taken as a huge violation of trust at the worst possible moment.
Women in burqas hold up their voter registration cards
Trying to figure out the truth of a story through the web of agendas in Afghanistan is nearly impossible. I visited a voter registration site, one of hundreds that have been set up around the country in a massive effort to register the country's 10.5 million eligible voters. It is historic and unprecedented, trying to shift a tribal system to a democratic one, and I felt like I was witnessing an extraordinary display of civic virtue. The walls of the center were festooned with cartoon posters showing men and women balanced on a scale, women lining up to vote, various ethnic groups smiling broadly as they dropped their ballots into locked boxes. A line of women in burqas waited to have Polaroids snapped for their voter ID cards, and I left the room while they lifted the blue, pleated cloth to have their photographs taken, many for the first time. Some refused to be photographed, so they were issued blank ID cards with thumbprints. It was deeply moving, despite the burqas, to see all these women preparing to vote for the first time in their lives.
Later, I heard some details that complicated matters. The presidential elections have already been delayed by four months. The parliamentary elections, commonly expected to cause factional bloodshed across the country, have been delayed even further. The central government, which claims to have registered 7 million voters, is widely believed to be inflating those figures. Last month, three female voter registration workers were killed by a bomb near Jalalabad. Many women, especially in rural districts, are not allowed to leave their compounds, and a debate has arisen about whether their husbands will be permitted to cast their votes for them. There is no mechanism to prevent people from registering multiple times at different sites, and warlords/aspiring politicians (who need to collect 10,000 registration cards to be included on the ballot) are reported to be purchasing registration cards for 10 afghanis each, about 20 cents.
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http://slate.msn.com/id/2104119/entry/2104186/