A rchive Date
[ 31-08-2002 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
|
[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/mansur_toronto.html
We can make a difference in Afghanistan
By SALIM MANSUR -- For the Toronto Sun
August 4, 2002
Canadians may take quiet pride in the professionalism and contribution of their soldiers returning from Afghanistan and the first combat mission for Canadian ground forces since Korea a half-century ago.
Forget the naysayers. This war on terrorism, presently centred on Afghanistan, was necessary. A year ago, Afghanistan was the staging ground for Osama bin Laden's international network of terror.
And the world had not witnessed such a mindlessly violent regime of ideologues as that of Mullah Omar and the Taliban since the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot in Cambodia.
The unholy alliance of Mullah Omar and bin Laden, supported by Muslim fundamentalists in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, compounded the misfortune of Afghanistan, brutalized by a decade-long war against Soviet communism. That war ended in 1989 without any reprieve for the Afghan people caught in the crossfire of warlords, and the later emergence of the Taliban seemingly sealed the fate of the country to a future that was a return to tyranny from a pre-medieval epoch.
The poison of Afghanistan under the Taliban was a contaminant for its neighbours. In the case of Pakistan, its military rulers had exported their version of a sectarian fundamentalist Islam into Kandahar and Kabul, and then imported that toxic brew to Talibanize their own country.
This Taliban version of Islam was anti-democratic, anti-women, anti-minorities, in effect militantly anti-modern as represented by Mullah Omar, bin Laden, and Muslim fundamentalists in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, contrary to the message and teachings of the Koran, Islam's sacred text.
History is full of ironies. Americans largely forgot about Afghanistan once the war against Soviet communism was over. The ills of that country mattered little until Sept. 11.
Then the war on terrorism liberated Afghanistan from the Taliban, as World War II liberated Germans and Japanese from their respective fascist and militarist rulers.
For the first time in more than a generation, the Afghans were given an opportunity to build a country for themselves in keeping with the values of the modern world. And the Afghans, despite predictable setbacks, have seized this opportunity.
Within the bounds of their traditions, Afghans have set forth to experiment with representative democracy of their own variety. The six months of interim rule after the Taliban collapse has been replaced with a government elected by a loya jirga, meaning grand council in Pashto, the language of the Pashtun majority ethnic community within Afghanistan.
The loya jirga of 1,500 delegates (including 160 women), nominated and elected by Afghans widely and meeting in June in Kabul, came out of the Bonn agreement of last December. The relative success of this loya jirga, the first since 1987 that sought to give legitimacy to the presidency of the late Najibullah backed by the former Soviet Union, is the promising sign of a new Afghanistan in the making.
The urgent task for Hamid Karzai, the leader elected for the next 18 months, is establishing law and order across the country. Its future depends on this minimal, but vital requirement.
Karzai needs to bring Afghan warlords to recognize the new authority in Kabul. The murders of his close associates, of Abdul Rahman, the minister of civil aviation and tourism, in February, and of Haji Abdul Qadir, the vice president and minister of public works, in July, are reminders of how delicate the situation remains and that the perils from the terror network of bin Laden and Mullah Omar have not completely receded.
Afghanistan, however, can leapfrog all its neighbours with the sustained help of the West, becoming a version of the Republic of Korea within the region politically and economically.
None imagined in the 1950s that a war-ravaged and divided Korea would emerge as a beacon of prosperity in the Far East within a generation. It did, and so may Afghanistan if its present leadership act wisely.
Canadian assistance, however small, should be provided unreservedly in helping Afghanistan realize that future.
Salim Mansur is a professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario. His column appears alternate Thursdays
Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@sunpub.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
|