Afghans Emerge In A Grey Democracy, With Warlords Having Graduated As Civic Chiefs.

*** Like The Baath Analysts Of Saddam In Iraq Before March 2003, Assad's Regime In Syria Is Surrounded By Wishful Thinkers Who Have Never Told Him That He Lacked A Chapeau Of Legitimacy Which Should Have Been Put On His Head When He Took Over From His Dead Father In Mid-2000; By Then Israel Had Pulled Out Of S. Lebanon And Hizbollah Had Lost Its Chapeau, As The Lebanese Had Stopped Believing In What They Could Not See Or Feel

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NICOSIA - With poor civic education, Afghanistan is emerging from the Sept. 18 elections for parliament as a grey democracy in which central authority will be vacillating between the white of good governance and the black of corruption. Many of the corrupt elements will be veered by former warlords playing key roles in regional affairs.

Most of the powerful candidates are former warlords and well-known faces from the country's turbulent past. They include former allies of the Taliban, who ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, and of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar - the fellow Pashtun warlord who is trying to terrorise the Kabul government and the US-led coalition of foreign forces (see overleaf).

There is a race for democratisation between Afghanistan and Iraq, a race the final outcome of which will affect important parts of the world. This is because the fate of the US as the economic and geo-political leader of the world is at stake.

The most troubling factor in this race is the fascist neo-Salafism, which is the most fanatic and deadliest strain in Sunni Islam. Neo-Salafis are influenced by the non-Iraqi volunteers of Osama bin Laden's trans-national network al-Qaeda. Like the neo-Wahhabi radicals of Saudi Arabia, they want to see all current regimes in the Muslim world toppled and all united under a universal Sunni caliphate which will uphold "the rule of God on earth" - which to them literally means the whole world. To these people, who will never hesitate to kill anyone on their path to that objective, all means justify their end, including tattarrus, rape, sodomy, etc. (see rim3bbIraqWarSep26-05).

The winners and losers of the landmark Sept. 18 elections in Afghanistan will remain a mystery for weeks. Whoever makes it to the legislature will very quickly be tested against the universal axiom of democracy: political issues are local, and the main issue in the regions will be reconstruction.

Amid frustration over Kabul's slowness in extending the benefits of rebuilding aid to the provinces, the test of credibility for the new parliament will be its ability to deliver on reconstruction.

Speaking to reporters on Sept. 19, the US Ambassador to Afghanistan, Ronald Neumann, acknowledged that expectations ran high among the citizenry to avail themselves of internationally funded rebuilding projects, on everything from the country's infrastructure to a functional justice system. "These expectations of the people will have to be met", Neumann said, adding: "What the election does is give the Afghan people a new channel to voice their opinions and demands".

Neumann took pains to point out that the US in particular and other foreign donors would stay the course in Afghanistan's recovery, saying: "It's going to be long term. This job is not done. For Afghanistan to be stable and peaceful the international community is going to have to stay involved for a long time".

In the elections, in which Afghans voted to select members of a 249-seat lower house of parliament as well as provincial councils for its 34 provinces, about 6m people voted, a turnout of about 50%, far lower than expected.

The provincial councils and the president will in turn select members of the 51-seat upper house of the National Assembly. There will be former warlords in both the lower and the upper houses. Official results are expected by Oct. 22, and the parliament is scheduled to convene in mid-December.

The US envoy, as well as European election observers and Afghan election officials, have said that, despite threats from the Taliban-led insurgents, violence was scattered and lower in intensity than had been feared.

The head of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, Jean Arnault, on Sept. 19 said that both the executive and legislative branches, in order to maintain their credibility, would have to answer to a public increasingly frustrated about the lack of visible improvements. He said: "One of the very, very widespread complaints about the reconstruction process today is where the money is going. There is a sense out there that resources are not fairly allocated".

An elected parliament, Arnault pointed out, is likely to prompt accountability on the part of President Hamid Karzai's central administration and his international backers. He said: "The National Assembly may prod everyone to do things differently". A preliminary assessment of reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, based in Washington, has found that while security had improved in the last four years, since the fall of the Taliban and US-led military intervention, good governance, a working criminal justice system and economic development remained dangerously lacking. "A broad foundation for success is being built, but too few needs have been met in Afghans' day-to-day-lives", the report said.

Peter Erben, head of the UN-assisted Joint Election Management Board, said the turnout was "satisfactory", considering that post-conflict elections usually begin with high participation and then level off. But in Afghanistan, there were other explanations as well for the low turnout.

Voters and election observers said the ballot was confusing. Voters in Kabul, for example, had to sift through a list of about 400 parliamentary candidates to make their one selection. Also, some voters appeared not to understand the function of a parliament, a problem which critics blamed on weak civic education.