Election 2008: What’s At Stake?

Editor’s Note: Columbia News21 Fellow Don Duncan just returned from a two-week journey to Afghanistan, where he followed an Afghan refugee returning there to visit for the first time since being resettled in Phoenix, Ariz. Also see his earlier dispatch.

Mazar e Sharif, Afghanistan – Since the U.S.-led invasion by the coalition forces of Afghanistan in 2001, the country, one of the poorest in the world, has become almost completely dependent on the foreign aid that intervention has brought.

In the areas of the country that have been stabilized and allowed to develop, life in Afghanistan has radically changed since the ousting of the repressive Taliban regime in 2001. Now, as the United States – the key political actor in the Afghan intervention – prepares for its presidential election, many Afghans look on earnestly at a race that will end the administration that triggered the 2001 intervention and designed much of the continued military and development strategy there.

“The important issues to Afghans are Afghanistan - and Pakistan,” said 29 year-old Roya Aziz, an Afghan-American filmmaker who moved back to Kabul from California in 2005. “Afghans want a president who will lead the international community in maintaining its political will and aid assistance in rebuilding Afghanistan, and someone who will take a hard line towards the Pakistani regime because insurgents are enjoying logistical, moral and financial support from elements within Pakistan.”

Today, in a sense, there are two Afghanistans and two kinds of aid that are propping the country up:

• Military aid to the Afghanistan at war - those areas mostly to the south and particularly along the porous border with Pakistan in the provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, and
• Development aid to Afghanistan at peace - those areas which have been stabilized and progressively developed to varying degrees since 2001.

One such place is the city of Mazar e Sharif, the first Afghan city to fall to the Northern Alliance in the wake of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Since then, the city and region has experienced relative security and the development on the ground is tangible – new roads, improved sewage systems, more schooling for girls, a diversifying private media sector.

“America is a part of Afghanistan and Afghanistan is part of America,” says Shoib Najafizada, 25, a journalist who works for Western media outlets covering the Mazar e Sharif area. “We don’t follow the Chinese election and we don’t know who the Russian new president is because we don’t care.”

“Many people feel as if our own president is being elected because whatever the president of the U.S. wants the president of Afghanistan [Hamid Karzai] will do,” he says. “I sometimes wonder why America doesn’t install voting booths in Afghanistan so that we can vote too!”

The cardinal issue on Najafizada’s mind is a continued U.S. presence in Afghanistan. He has no allegiance to Democrats or Republicans but is behind the candidate that will keep the United States in Afghanistan the longest.

But talk on the campaign trail of pulling out of Iraq, by both the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, as well as by rival Sen. Hillary Clinton, gives some Afghans the jitters. For others, it emboldens them for the future.

Hassas Khyber, 28, a doctor who works for the Japanese International Cooperation Agency, believes that a drawdown of troops in Iraq would be good for Afghanistan. “Most Afghans now think that since the surge [of U.S. troops to Iraq in 2007], attention has decreased in Afghanistan… so therefore pulling out of Iraq might be good for Afghanistan.”

“Whoever wins the election should not leave Afghanistan in the cold as they did with the mujahideen in the 90s,” he says of the withdrawal of U.S. support in 1989 of the Afghan resistance against Soviet occupation following the Soviet invasion in 1979. Many blame the security vacuum that ensued for the rise of the Taliban.

“We are not in condition to do this job without the international community. If a new president comes and decides to isolate the [U.S.], this will create a problem. If you leave us alone once again, we will face the music again,” says Khyber.

There is a popular perception that hawkish neoconservative interventionism is exactly what Afghanistan needs to continue its path towards regaining the means to establish peace across its entire territory and regain a working, fully-sovereign democracy. For this reason, many people are suspicious of the Democratic candidates and are voicing support for McCain and the Republicans.

“There is some perception that a Democratic president will not be as involved as the Bush administration,” says Roya Aziz. “[But] many pundits also believe that regardless of which party wins the elections, the U.S. will not abandon [Afghanistan] because of the fear of international terrorism.”

America is important for Afghanistan. This is the message comes clearly through the opinions of these Afghans following the U.S. election from 7,000 miles away.

But Afghanistan, sandwiched between the ascendant powers Iran, China and Russia, and contiguous with America’s key yet fragile ally Pakistan, is also hugely important for America. This is borne out in the figures: 33,000 U.S. troops active in Afghanistan currently with a request for 7,000 winding its way through congress. The United States spent approximately $170 billion on Iraq and Afghanistan collectivity in 2007, according to the Department of Defense. In addition, the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, spent $1 billion in humanitarian and development aid in Afghanistan last year, according to the Department of State.

Overshadowed by the divisive issue of Iraq, Afghanistan has been largely absent from discussion of foreign policy on the various election campaigns. But while some see a drawdown in Iraq as a positive possibility for Afghanistan under a new president, others, like Kabul-based tour operator Muqim Jamshady, 28, sees disaster for his country in such a policy.

“If you pull out of Iraq, all the terrorists will be strengthened there and this may bolster terrorism in Afghanistan in the future,” Jamshady says. Afghanistan already has trouble containing the movement of Taliban and Al Qaeda agents across its border with Pakistan and, says Jamshady, the last thing it needs is another well of insurgency in Iraq.

“It’s like a virus in the body – a disease,” Jamshady says of instability and insurgent agents in his country. “If you don’t get enough antibiotics, the disease can take over the body. We need to figure out how much aid we need now for the situation here and react fast.”

A total of $24 billion has been pledged by foreign donors to Afghanistan in several donor conferences since 2002, although only $15 billion has been thus far delivered, according to some aid agencies.

Last Saturday, French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner said that those aid efforts to Afghanistan had not yet “fully yielded fruit.”

“We must review our tools and approach,” he said in a meeting with humanitarian organizations in Paris, France.

Next month, Afghanistan will ask international donors for a further $50 billion in a conference to be held in Paris.