The Afghan Quandry

Throughout his campaign, Barack Obama emphasized the importance of dealing with Afghanistan and making sure that it remained stable and democratic. Voters clearly appeared to agree with Obama, electing him to the presidency and expecting him to put his plans into action. Rasmussen Report polls revealed that 69% of Americans believe that the Taliban will return to power if the US does not succeed in Afghanistan, and interest in Afghanistan apparently still remains high, since most intelligence sources consider Osama Bin Laden to be hiding along the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Unfortunately, most of the news coming out of Afghanistan lately has been anything but encouraging. Afghan presidential elections have never been known for their transparency and smoothness, but this most recent election was especially controversial, with observers both in and outside of the country frustrated by charges of corruption, low voter turnout and poor security, issues that still remain largely unsolved or unmitigated. It’s also a clear sign that more and more people want significantly better results from incumbent president Hamid Karzai, who has been in office since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. Afghanistan has definitely made improvements since then, implementing a fledgling democratic republic, engaging in diplomacy and trade with foreign nations and attempting to rid itself of crime, poverty, corruption and Taliban resistance. After eight years, however, Afghanistan is still in a risky position, consistently on the brink of falling apart into chaos and becoming easy prey for the Taliban and their allies in al-Qaeda.

Karzai’s questionable victory is another wedge that is causing a rift to form between him and the Obama administration, but Afghanistan’s problems go much deeper than that. The Taliban continue to exist as powerful fringe groups and try to use all methods possible to undermine progress in Afghanistan, such as by bribing Afghan politicians and judges, fostering corruption at all levels of Afghan government, paying farmers enormous profits to grow poppies and contribute to the opium trade that enriches Islamic militants and damages legitimate economies and laws, and launching attacks on Afghans to intimidate them away from confrontation. The Afghan government is still highly vulnerable to unraveling due to massive corruption and lack of faith in the Afghan electorate, and the economy is stagnant and unbalanced, with as much as 1/3 of the GDP composed of opium.

For the sake of peace and stability in the Middle East and in order to make good on his campaign promises, Obama will have to act quickly and do something to improve the situation in Afghanistan. The first and foremost concern Obama should address is corruption, which adds insecurity and damage to Afghan society and robs people of their belief in the government’s legitimacy. Obama should make Afghanistan the central focus of his foreign policy by encouraging NATO and the UN to send more forces to combat the Taliban, disrupting the growth of opium by converting the opium to more legitimate and useful drugs like morphine and codeine instead of opium and heroin. In this way, the US will not have to force Afghan farmers to grow food crops, an effort that has been mostly unsuccessful so far, and will deprive the Taliban of a major method of earning money. This first step can pave the way for the US to take further action, such as training and equipping the Afghan military to become more adept at handling the Taliban, and launching an investigation of certain Afghan officials suspected of corruption. Unfortunately, the investigation will have will have plenty of ground to cover, since corruption is embedded so deeply in the government; Karzai’s own brother Ahmed Wali Karzai is a drug lord. Thus, it is absolutely essential that the US take action immediately in Afghanistan to ensure that the Taliban never have a chance to take back the country, and that Afghanistan can become a safer, wealthier and more productive nation in the future.

(Article by Derek Sun, email address dsun@artsci.wustl.edu.)