Ghani’s Nightmare of Political Participation
Written by: Mohammad Naser Sidiqee – Development Expert
The Arg (Presidential Palace) is increasingly facing a political vacuum. President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani, head of the National Unity Government (NUG) raised, throughout his election campaign, the expectations of the political elite to share power and of the general populace to uproot the endemic corruption beyond a level he or his patron the United States could actually satisfy. He and his selected team of “a few good men” have ever since been overpromising and under-delivering.
Upon becoming the President after a highly disputed and rigged election and a U.S. brokered power-sharing in 2014 Ghani still seemed committed to fighting corruption. For example, immediately after assuming office, he designated Mr. Ahmad Zia Massoud (late Northern Alliance Commander Ahmad Shah Massoud’s brother and an influential Tajik politician) as his Special Representative for Good Governance and Reform; a nominal institution ran by a figurehead. President Ghani had also committed to establishing the Independent Anti-Corruption Commission to take the battle to corruption roots. On the contrary, not only he hasn’t established the commission, he has also initiated a number of ineffective anti-corruption programs, inter alia, Higher Council of Good Governance, Justice and Anti-Corruption, and Anti-Corruption Justice Center, and the now distrustful High Council of National Procurement, mostly to intimidate his political opponents. All of these initiatives fail to meet the minimum basic requirements of an independent, transparent and accountable anti-corruption institution.
Moreover, President Ghani’s policies for broadening the popular participation in governance have not only fared worse, but has also crippled the uniform functioning of the polity as a result of growing mistrust and mounting ethnic rift. The first Vice President, General Abdul Rashid Dostum, is currently in a self-imposed exile in Turkey and government negotiations with Atta Mohammad Noor, the strong governor of Balkh province, has yielded no result. However, these influential leaders have not seized to appear in the political limelight, challenging NUG’s authority and legitimacy. Consequently, the vulnerabilities of the government to internal political threats have swelled up and the prospects for the upcoming presidential elections in 2019 are becoming bleak.
Since his election campaigns, President Ghani has laid heavy emphasis on visual facets of ethnic identity, especially of non-Pashtun ethnic groups, and has directed his efforts to promote their cultural identity in order to win their political support. Upon his visits to regions with high concentration of ethnic Uzbeks, Hazaras, Baluchs, Turkmans, and Nuristanis he has donned attire identical to that of the locals. He has also attempted to attract the support of ethnic non-Pashtuns by organizing their cultural programs within the Presidential Palace and inviting their nominal representatives to the so-called “consensus building” meetings at Arg. Nevertheless, reflecting the social basis of the traditional Afghan community and loyalties to a kin-ordered mode of legitimization of authority, this approach is unlikely to gain President Ghani any political ground.
It is no secret that President Ghani’s government depends on highly visible military and financial foreign inputs, most notably from the United States. Although these inputs are needed for the government to operate, assert its control and expand its services. However, excessive reliance on foreign (military) assistance and their legion of advisors will further destroy people’s perception of Afghan state authority and fuel passionate resistance to foreign “occupation”.
President Ghani has also staffed key positions in the state apparatus with a new class of western educated Afghans whose knowledge of Afghan social institutions is zilch and whose political and economic ideas are shaped by western models. This new class of generation Xers and Millennials is poised to single-mindedly turn overnight Afghanistan into Switzerland while lacking the perseverance to go through the painful process of social change. In this process of creating a modern Afghan state, President Ghani has alienated the governing elite of the post-Soviet era some of whom are well-seasoned military commanders and others have stayed with the Afghan people through thick and thin. By allowing too much space for foreign assistance and advice to determine government policies, the President is also repeating the mistakes of his predecessors and is actually rejuvenating the patrimonial connection between Kabul and a world superpower, this time the United States.
President Ghani’s endeavors for fixing the “failed state”, as he co-authored a book with the same name, have met with mixed reactions. While the internationals have acclaimed his “overrated” achievements, internal responses have been ireful. His policies have generated popular outcry internally thus making it difficult for the government to build the foundations of a central state authority as well as negatively affected Afghanistan’s image in the region and beyond. An effective policy approach to overcome the domestic problems of Afghanistan is to embark on a more indigenously supported course; one that is less reliant on foreign ideas and more firmly established in Afghanistan’s socio-political culture. At the regional and international level, only policies which are more appealing and less threatening, particularly to our neighbors, can bring about the needed support for sustainable peace and security.
