(Mods–the NY Times website only leaves full articles up for seven days, so I hope you don’t mind me posting the whole thing?)
I think an astounding thing is happening in Afghanistan. Contrary to what Chomsky feared, that genocide and mass starvation would occur following the US action there, three million refugees have returned to Afghanistan since 2001.
Wait a minute…I’m not sure the “anti-war” lefties quite understood that last part correctly, so let me repeat it:
Three million refugees have returned to Afghanistan following the fall of the Taliban.
This is what you might call, erm…good.
I’ll preempt the naysayers by stating that my rather congratulatory post does not imply blanket approval to all US foreign policy over the years, nor is it meant to convince objectors to the action in Iraq that many aspects of the aftermath of the war in Iraq have been handled scandalously badly by Bush et al.
Rather, I think the results of the war in Afghanistan are vindication for those who saw clearly that it was necessary and essential. Indeed, they should give pause to knee-jerk anti-American leftists who consider John Ashcroft to be a greater threat to world peace and stability than the nasties out there who brought this all on.
Think about it…three million.
[quote]OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Hope Amid the Rubble
By PETER BERGEN
Washington
Based on what Americans have been seeing in the news media about Afghanistan lately, there may not be many who believed President Bush on Tuesday when he told the United Nations that the “Afghan people are on the path to democracy and freedom.” But then again, not many Americans know what Afghanistan was like before the American-led invasion. Let me offer some perspective.
This summer I visited Kandahar, the former Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan, for the first time since the winter of 1999. Five years ago, the Taliban and its Al Qaeda allies were at the height of their power. They had turned Afghanistan into a terrorist state, with more than a dozen training camps churning out thousands of jihadist graduates every year.
The scene was very different this time around. The Kandahar airport, where I had once seen Taliban soldiers showing off their antiaircraft missiles, is now a vast American base with thousands of soldiers, as well as a 24-hour coffee shop, a North Face clothing store, a day spa and a PX the size of a Wal-Mart. Next door, what was once a base for Osama bin Laden is now an American shooting range. In downtown Kandahar, the gaudy compound of the Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, now houses United States Special Forces units.
As I toured other parts of the country, the image that I was prepared for - that of a nation wracked by competing warlords and in danger of degenerating into a Colombia-style narcostate - never materialized. Undeniably, the drug trade is a serious concern (it now compromises about a third of the country’s gross domestic product) and the slow pace of disarming the warlords is worrisome.
Over the last three years, however, most of the important militia leaders, like Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum of the Uzbek community in the country’s north, have shed their battle fatigues for the business attire of the politicians they hope to become. It’s also promising that some three million refugees have returned to Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban. Kabul, the capital, is now one of the fastest-growing cities in the world, with spectacular traffic jams and booming construction sites. And urban centers around the country are experiencing similar growth.
While two out of three Afghans cited security as their most pressing concern in a poll taken this summer by the International Republican Institute, four out of five respondents also said things are better than they were two years ago. Despite dire predictions from many Westerners, the presidential election, scheduled for Oct. 9, now looks promising. Ten million Afghans have registered to vote, far more than were anticipated, and almost half of those who have signed up are women. Indeed, one of the 18 candidates for president is a woman. Even in Kandahar, more then 60 percent of the population has registered to vote, while 45 percent have registered in Uruzgan Province, the birthplace of Mullah Omar. With these kinds of numbers registering, it seems possible that turnout will be higher than the one-third of eligible voters who have participated in recent American presidential elections.
According to a poll taken in July by the Asia Foundation, President Hamid Karzai is drawing substantial support around the country. He has emerged not only as a popular leader, but also as a shrewd player of the kind of hardball politics that would have warmed the heart of Lyndon Johnson. This summer he dropped his running mate, Mohammad Fahim, a power-hungry general who had pompously awarded himself the title of field marshal after the fall of the Taliban. And this month Mr. Karzai forced Ismail Khan, the governor of the western province of Herat, to resign. These moves not only neutralized two powerful rivals, men who could field their own private armies, but also increased the stability of the central government.
What we are seeing in Afghanistan is far from perfect, but it’s better than so-so. Disputes that would once have been settled with the barrel of a gun are now increasingly being dealt with politically. The remnants of the Taliban are doing what they can to disrupt the coming election, but their attacks, aimed at election officials, American forces and international aid workers, are sporadic and strategically ineffective.
If the elections are a success, it will send a powerful signal to neighboring countries like Pakistan, Iran, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, none of which can claim to be representative democracies. If so, the democratic domino effect, which was one of the Bush administration’s arguments for the Iraq war, may be more realistic in Central Asia than it has proved to be in the Middle East.
Peter Bergen is a fellow at the New America Foundation and an adjunct professor at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/23/opinion/23bergen.html
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