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While Hamid Karzai frantically shuffles the deck chairs on his sinking ship of state, an initiative whose success could well have rescued his presidency is also slipping silently beneath the waves of official corruption and negligence.
The Action Plan for Truth, Justice and Reconciliation – also known as “transitional justice” – was launched last year in hopes of redressing past wrongs and setting to rights the country’s struggling system of law and order. But according to a leading human rights officer responsible to both the UN and the Afghan authorities, the action plan has been “a complete failure.”
Nader Nasery, of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, says: "Due to a lack of political commitment in the government, the action plan has been sidelined."
Nasery says there’s been virtually no progress on key goals such as truth-seeking and documentation of past crimes, improving accountability in the justice system, promoting reconciliation and unity, and repairing corrupt or incapable institutions of state.
International legal aid specialists in Kabul echo Nasery’s observations with blistering frankness. And it’s not only Karzai, his ministers and functionaries that are to blame, they say. The regime’s foreign sponsors bear great responsibility for letting the transitional justice initiative flounder.
“The internationals shouldn’t just think about how much taking on a greater role in fixing the justice system might cost them,” says one lawyer. “They’ve got to weigh that against the costs of inaction, which will be huge if this government fails.
“What we have now is a bunch of foreign politicos looking at transitional justice and envisioning a worst case scenario, which makes their ties curl and their coffee sour.
“But to do something pro-active? To make real changes in the justice system? No, no, they say: it's too sensitive. We have our national interests to deal with and we don't want the Afghans to perceive this as an internationally driven process.”
But this, according to more than one frustrated legal advisor in Kabul, reveals the fraud and fallacy of the sponsor-governments’ thinking.
“It’s the international community and their processes that brought us to where we stand today,” says an American consultant who asked that his name not be published. “There's no way in hell that anything will change without those same parties becoming a part of the solution.”
Skyreporter has encountered more than a few Western diplomats, politicians and generals who hide behind the perception argument – that as a democratically elected government, it should be up to Afghan lawmakers, after all, to reform their own system. What they fail to say, however, is that foreign powers, chiefly the Bush administration, chained Afghanistan’s fledgling institutions to the old warlords and criminals chosen as America's proxies following the collapse of the Taliban regime.
“We drive the process in Afghanistan,” the consultant says. “We drive corruption and we drive accountability, we drive the security sector and we drive instability in doing so, we drive the economic growth and we drive the disparities in wealth created here. Through the incredible demand in western countries, we drive the explosive growth of Afghanistan's opium industry.
“It's exactly because the international community drives processes that we have a legitimate mandate, and a responsibility, to 'rebuild' this country.”
A responsibility that is not being met – to the detriment both of the Afghan people and the people of Western nations, who can only pray their political leaders might one day accomplish something substantial in Southwest Asia. Other than creating another Titanic of client regimes.
" Support our troops " Every Member of the Canadian Parliament that is sitting on their hands re: Afghanistan should be impeached .
Wonderful speaches made on trade friendship inititives in our own hemisphere belie our New Governments non-military actions in Afghanistan .
It does seem odd, doesn't it Keith, that while soldiers risk their lives for the Afghanistan initiative, politicians sit idly by, fretting about opinion polls and their "legacies." It's a strange world when NATO's supposed statesmen and women either defer completely to the Bush administration's abortive policies in southwest Asia, or simply turn away. The concept of showing a little leadership of their own just doesn't seem to enter their minds.
Arthur, thank you for opening my eyes to all of this. I believe that we, in the U.S., should start impeaching our Congress men and women, if they don't start doing their jobs. We should tell them that if they don't impeach cheney and bush, we'll push to have them impeached.
As always your informative posts shed much needed light on the issues the MSM in Canada simply chooses to ignore.The troops really believe their presence can make a postive difference supporting this alledged democratic government.But I,m certain when they hear of what's actually going on inside this corrupt regime the reality of it all must surely be dishearting.
For Bonny.Nancy Pelosi has been told that if she doesn't set the framework for impeachment.Cindy Sheehan will run against her next time round.And in an area where constitutents are pretty close to 90% against war in general and with the support of anti war citizens world wide she just might get the necessary funds to accomplish it.
Meanwhile in Iraq the government has gone on vacation for a month while the troops there swelter it out in a 130 degree hell created by Bush and his tribe.The insanity of it all is intensely overwhelming.
Bonny, you are right on as always. We need to hold our representatives and senators accountable, just as we need to do with the executive branch. I think a letter writing campaign is in order. Snail mail anyone?
Ted, the American Congress is about to have a monthlong recess as well. Quite frankly I don't think they deserve it. The mess here in the states and abroad is horrifying.
Cathy,either snail mail or a petition. I've been lighting fires under my friends to get them motivated. We sit and talk about how we are losing "our" country, but we don't do anything except send email. Email apparently isn't working. Its time to get loud with Congress. It's our Country, not just theirs. Also, I think that Congress needs to earn their vacation time like we do. Start with one week per year and work their way up to a maximum of four weeks per year. Maybe they'd get something accomplished!
Bonny & Cathy, I've just checked out the Slate Magazine site:
http://slate.com
which has an article by Bruce Fein (June 27/07) on Cheney and how Bush ceded executive powers to him, and Fein's call for Cheney's impeachment. As a Canadian I found the information stunning, the power that Cheney has. The site is:
http://slate.com/id/2169292/pagenum/2/
There are many other articles with links to various U.S. newspapers. I shall be visiting this site often!
Having spent a year in Kabul trying to assist legal reform, I think that you underestimate the difficulty of trying to create a legal system where there are no lawyers, no courts, no prisons, no police and where there are two law schools - one teaching civil law and one teaching Shari'a (both of which are fundamental components of the legal system - which do not work together.
Also, your remarks about the war lords are way off the money. We ousted the Taliban with their help and they far outnumbered the foreign forces. We coopted them into working for the Karzai Government and have been stripping them of their power ever since. Without any overt acts against them, we have been taking away their armies and moving them from governorships, where they can be dangerous, to the cabinet, where they have been emasculated. In a complex tribal society where tribes often identify with the local warlord, this strategy has been nothing short of brilliant.