Politics in Afghanistan has been based on exclusion and elimination of the rivals. This political tradition has often been a cause of bloody conflicts and bloodshed that erupted whenever a group attempted to eliminate or exclude others. There have been brutal and tyrant rulers abusing their power and authority to oppress the people, often selectively. The Taliban for instance ruled the country brutally and massacred innocent people just because they were not buying their destructive ideology.

Unfortunately, at that time the world would just express their concern at the grave violation of human rights, discrimination and genocide by the Taliban without any action to interfere humanitarianly until the tragic events of 9/11 occurred to shock the entire world. After the fall of the Taliban regime in late 2001, with the help of US-led international community, Afghan people began to breathe in a relatively open air.

But unfortunately President Hamid Karzai appears to be following the advices provided by some ethnocentric circles that have gathered around him. There seems to be a relapse into a politics of dominance through threat of punishing those who are simply not loyal to the ruling clique and its policies, and call for political reforms for the sake of a peaceful coexistence of diverse social groups and a better future for the country. When a system or a policy is criticized, there should be a willingness to listen to the arguments behind the criticism in order to adjust the system or the policy.

Afghanistan has had a system and a policy put in place and implemented for the last one decade. Both Afghan leadership and international officials admit that the situation in the country is not desirable, and in the way it was expected. But unfortunately they have been involved in an open-ended and inconclusive game of blaming each other.

President Karzai blames international community- in particular the US- for the failure to make Afghanistan better and international community blames President Karzai for running an extremely corrupt government. This might be true but the real problem lies in the system and policies pursued.

When President Karzai faces criticisms from the international community officials, who face growing pressure from their people for providing aid out of their taxpayers' money to a corrupt government right in this troubled part of the world, he is quick enough to accuse them of interfering in internal affairs of the country. When political parties and coalitions of the country reveal inefficiency and corruption in the administration under his leadership, he leans towards pursuing a policy of intimidation and threat to punishment.

This kind of politics- that appears to be pursued by the ruling clique- will be extremely treacherous and could lead to a bloodier infighting. The era of politics of intimidation and threatening to silence is over. Such a politics is now too costly and can easily lead to elimination of those who exercise such politics from the political scene.