Love among the Ruins

As our own bona fides to claiming we are a functioning democracy unravel amidst a flurry of gerrymandering, special tax and regulatory breaks that only benefit the wealthy investing class of Americans and judicial decisions that effectively legalize levels of campaign contributions and media buying only affordable for the mega-wealthy that would be consider campaign fraud in most of the developed world, it is interesting to see how a "democratic" government we imposed on Afghanistan is doing as presidential elections approach.
 

Transparency International (April 4th) summarizes the issues in this rugged and violent country: "The Asia Foundation’s "Afghanistan in 2013: a Survey of Afghan People" found that the population sees corruption as the second biggest problem in the country after security issues, affecting all facets of life and all levels of government.
 

"According to Transparency International’s Global Corruption Barometer 2013, two out of three people who interacted with the Judiciary in Afghanistan reported being asked to pay bribes. Alarmingly, half of the people questioned also reported having to pay bribes to the police.

"Institutions, which are supposed to safeguard law and order in the country, are failing in their prime duties. As a result, the same survey reveals that nine out of 10 Afghans think the country is run by a few big entities acting in their own best interests.
 

"Many grand-scale corruption scandals have marred the country over the past few years and there is political apathy in resolving them. This, together with petty corruption – which robs people’s dignity as they try to access basic services – have clearly contributed to shaping the perception." Nepotism is a way of life, the report notes. The politicians at the top have been rocked by scandals and accusations of huge skimming and bribery profits siphoned off and deposited in anonymous bank accounts in countries, like Switzerland, with powerful banking secrecy laws. Out of 179 countries surveyed in their corruption index, Transparency notes: "Afghanistan, North Korea and Somalia once again cling to the bottom rung of the index."
 

With uber-corrupt President Hamid Karzai [pictured above] termed out (oh, he’s really not going to get go of his underlying power base), we have an election coming up on April 5th to determine his successor. Does this create ripples of excitement among the people? Does it matter that the "elected" government barely exercises sustain control of much more than the capital city and its environs?
 

"Polls show that [Ashraf] Ghani is one of the three most popular candidates, along with Abdullah Abdullah, a northerner who placed second in 2009, and Zalmay Rassoul, an unassuming bureaucrat widely considered to be Mr. Karzai’s favorite. All three regularly draw crowds of tens of thousands of people — whether attracted by the politics or the prospect of a free meal. In Kabul and other cities, a messy democratic process, skewed by violence and corruption, and fed as much by cynicism as enthusiasm, is underway.
 

"But this belies the reality of life in the war-torn countryside, where neither democracy nor development has found much success. Across the city from Ghazi Stadium, I visited the refugee camp at Charahi Qambar. Here, several thousand people live under mud huts and tarps on a plateau of packed mud crossed by refuse-clogged rivulets, almost all of them internally displaced refugees fleeing violence in the south. The camp has been in place for years, with Kabul expanding around it.

"There was little enthusiasm for the election there. I asked a group of men at the camp’s mosque if they planned to vote. ‘What difference does it make?’ Mohammed Fatih, a refugee from Helmand, replied. ‘We voted in 2004 and 2009, and we’re worse off than ever. Politics is for the rich and important people, not the landless and unfortunate.’ The others nodded in agreement.
 

"These men are representatives of the vast swaths of Afghanistan that have hardly benefited from the international intervention and the new democratic order it established. The rural-urban divide is stark: While the cities are vibrant, there is a full-blown and worsening humanitarian crisis in many conflict-affected areas. The United Nations reports, for example, that cases of severe malnutrition among children have increased by 50 percent since 2012. The number of internally displaced Afghans has been rising as well." Matthieu Aikins writing for the April 3rd New York Times.
 

Where is Mr. Karzai in all this… Mr. Corruption? "On [April 12], Afghans will vote in a presidential election that Mr. Karzai has shaped at every stage. He narrowed the candidate field, dissuading potential candidates from entering the race and forcing his brother Qayum to leave it. He handpicked the officials who will preside over any election disputes.
 

"Then he blessed two of the three leading contenders with tens of thousands of dollars from his office’s slush funds, hedging his bets that at least one candidate open to his influence will make it to a runoff, according to senior Afghan officials. It may be well into June before that second vote can be held, and Mr. Karzai will remain president in the meantime.
 

"Few who know Mr. Karzai personally, including some of his critics, see a naked power grab in the president’s maneuvering. They say Mr. Karzai is driven by a deep-seated belief that he is Afghanistan’s indispensable man, uniquely suited to guide the country through the tumultuous years of transition ahead. That starts with the election, but Mr. Karzai’s ultimate aim, the officials say, is to retain influence with the new Afghan administration." New York Times, April 3rd.
 

As the United States drops down in the corruption index, as recent trends suggest that our grade on institutional democracy would get a Dekom-rating of D-, it seems that the government we laid into Afghanistan get a pure "F." Standby for… no change in transparency and corruption, just a new class of the nepotistically-inclined.
 

I’m Peter Dekom, and while Americans usually have their hearts in the right place, our government seems to be moving very solidly in the wrong direction.