Editor in Chief: Moh. Reza Huwaida Thursday, March 28th, 2024

Time to Outmaneuver the Enemy

One of the tools for the success of a new system or government is justification. There should be psychological and cognitive motives for the people to support and defend the system and government. There is no doubt that a government and system will collapse as soon as it loses popular support. There are a lot of philosophical and pragmatic reasons why the democratic system should be espoused and defended in Afghanistan.

It is the way for managing an ethnically cleaved and politically fragmented society and Afghanistan is. But there has not been enough attention and effort to justify and promote it.

Even those who are ruling have sometimes appeared to be perplexed as though they are not convinced enough that we need to institutionalize the current democratic system to transition to the phase of democratic consolidation. Afghanistan has made the democratic transition but it is yet to go through the democratic consolidation and there is more extremism emerging out in the fields.

On Monday, October 17, the National Security Advisor to President Hamid Karzai, Rangin Dadfar Spanta, said that the reasons for this emerging extremism are inadequate regard for religious and national values, nighttime raids, lawlessness and corruption.

He told it to a three conference aimed at analyzing the causes of extremism in the country. The conference itself is a unique initiative and even it is coming very late but what the presidential advisor lists as the causes of extremism and public disenchantment and disaffection is are not indicative of honest evaluation. It is rather suggestive of the old habit that Afghan government has been showing to make international community as a scapegoat for its own shortcomings and defects.

There are more fundamental causes that bring about this gap between the government and people. In a sense they all relate to justice and service delivery. If the government fails to provide justice and if it fails to deliver services to the people who need them urgently and vitally, it brings about public discontent and the government has failed time and again to do so.

Taliban is now trying to widen this gap and instead close the gap that exists between them and Afghan people. On Sunday this week, it was reported that the Taliban launched their FM radio in Ghazni province.

This is called the Voice of Shariah and its transmissions are now aired in different districts of the province. Taliban are emerging to be outwitting the government at least at the propaganda level for their violent and inhuman ideology.

But Afghan government is failing in terms of both justification and practicality and efficiency ensuring justice and delivering services. Afghan government must take necessary measures to dismantle Taliban's ability to spread violence by launching their own radio transmissions or other outlets. At the time the government is corrupt and there is a high rate of illiteracy, the government should expect the people not to listen to Taliban's propaganda.