Reality in Afghanistan not as hopeful as vote (Palm Beach)

[struggle4progress]

By Palm Beach Post Editorial
HASH(0x5e3034)
Thursday, October 14, 2004

<snip> During Friday's second debate, President Bush cited the Saturday vote as proof that his decision to invade had been correct. Actually, most Americans and most other countries supported military action just weeks after 9/11 to overthrow the Taliban leadership that had harbored Al-Qaeda. In Afghanistan with 18,000 United States forces, for example, are 9,000 NATO troops. Had Mr. Bush kept the focus on Afghanistan rather than Iraq, the election might have taken place sooner because the country would have been more stable.

Heartening as the vote was — the images of people getting to the polls should shame any American who thinks that casting a ballot is too much bother — Mr. Bush vastly overstated the progress in Afghanistan. For starters, President Hamid Karzai, who claims to have won, hardly could campaign outside the capital of Kabul because the country remains so dangerous. Though the president spoke of nearly 10 million Afghans registered to vote, non-governmental organizations have undercut the credibility of that number. For one thing, only about 9.8 million Afghans are eligible to vote. Reports are that many people registered multiple times, which also weakens Mr. Bush's claim that 41 percent of the registered voters are women. Human rights groups found that women registered over and over in the belief that selling voting cards might get them goods and services, since only about 3 percent of the aid to Afghanistan has gone to programs for women. Finally, the country still has to hold parliamentary elections.

Unlike Iraq, Afghanistan has no oil around which to build an economy. Instead, the economic engine is opium, from which heroin is produced. Though it has been three years since the Taliban government fell, opium production continues. As the United Nations reported, farmers can't make money any other way. Warlords who control many parts of the country levy a tax on opium in exchange for security. Narco-traffickers become patron saints of rural areas because they spread the money around.

To change things, the U.N. concludes, will require development of alternative crops from which farmers can make a living, creation of non-farm jobs, education — especially for women and girls — loan programs to substitute for the loan sharking that makes money for drug traffickers and tougher law enforcement. There would be progress in these areas if the Bush administration had not been planning for Iraq during the campaign in Afghanistan. But Afghanistan remains a comparative afterthought. This week, our NATO ambassador suggested that the organization could take over the whole military mission by next year. <snip>

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/opinion/epaper/2004/10/14/m18a_afghanvotedit_1014.html