Editor in Chief: Moh. Reza Huwaida Friday, March 29th, 2024

An Approach That Rebounded on the Goal

Violent political competition over scarce resources has been at the heart of the conflicts and wars over the last thirty years in Afghanistan. This in turn has originated from the exclusionary structures prevailing in the country. The Bonn Agreement in late 2001 laid the foundation for emergence of an inclusive and development-oriented state in Afghanistan that had to be built upon to achieve the goal of a developed pluralistic Afghanistan free from violence and infiltration of terrorists and fanatic fringes.

Since there was not an effective, competent and efficient leadership team to continue the process that started with the Bonn agreement, a catastrophic deviation has taken place that makes the future course of peace and development extremely gloomy.

The leadership team from the very beginning tried to put in place a power structure that would stall and block the emergence of an inclusive government needed to accommodate the diverse interests of the various identity groups in the country.

In the meanwhile, there was an extremely scant attention to the development of political parties. Or it should rather be said that political parties were seen as a destructive force that had to be sidelined so as not to slow the progress that had to be make in transitioning into a modern democratic state.

This approach rebounded on the goal of installing a functioning democracy in Afghanistan, which has been under an authoritarian and autocratic political culture and where individual people could easily begin to take the path of authoritarianism. As a result, the individuals that were seen as engines for brining changes and establishing democracy became obstacles to rule of law, institution-building.

There is a fractious parliament unable to check the government agencies for accountability. There is an executive plagued by rampant corruption, and too inefficient to deliver services to the people. There is a judiciary that has alienated ordinary Afghans who now prefer an informal justice system over a formal court of law.

The unwelcome consequence is public disaffection and dwindling of public support for the government and its decisions. Nonetheless, there is still a room to salvage democracy in Afghanistan from this condition and prevent the country from declining into a state of extreme anarchy. That room lies in reviewing the architecture of political system and administrative processes to create effective check and balance systems.