Editor in Chief: Moh. Reza Huwaida Thursday, April 25th, 2024

The Basic Requirements of political development in Afghanistan

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The Basic Requirements of political development  in Afghanistan

One of the most important factors for survival of social, cultural and political life is adaptability with demand or requirements of time; even those animals such as dinosaur that failed to adapt the requirement of nature was extinct and now no more exist on surface of the planet. So, living in twenty first century requires us to egress from tribal or ethnical requirement of life. Undoubtedly, we cannot reach political development with old and traditional requirement of life. Politically, the very basic requirement of modern political life is to change our mentality towards political development. Many people think that political development is necessarily a process of westernization.
This hostile view not only prevents from political development but also cause a serious confrontation between technocrat and religious groups in the country.  The religious groups of society blame technocrats as westernized people who have no deep understanding about culture and spiritual life. On the other hand, the modernist people called traditionalists as resilient or ignorant factors that play a hindering role against modernization and development. This issues will become more serious when we look at Salafist or Talibanist interpretation of Islam and Islamic culture. That’s why massacring people for Taliban is easy but joining  Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is hard.
The second requirement of political development is truly recognition of  equality, social justice, meritocracy, participation and so on. because political development depends on national unity while national unity is not achievable without  equality, social justice, meritocracy, political participation and so on. According to Huntington, no nation can reach political development unless cross from six political crisis: identity crisis, legitimacy crisis, influence crisis, participation crisis, unity crisis and power distribution crisis.  Obviously, without reaching to political development no nation would be able to overcome the political crisis and so no way to escape from the fate of dinosaur as abovementioned. Political development enhances the state’s capacity to mobilize and allocate resources, and process policy inputs into implementable outputs.
The contemporary notion of good governance directly dwells on efficient, effective, and non-corrupt public administration. In short, without political development we would not be able to move towards a better life and sound human relations.
The third requirement of political development is political awareness. In Afghanistan, many of the traditional political leaders have no clear understanding about political development, indicators and theories of political development in the country. Therefore, they have never been able to initiate any political programs in past two decades except insisting on their personal and ethnical demands. As a result, the ethnical neither was able to gain the trust of people and nor was able to contribute to state building process. Unfortunately, some of the technocrat groups of society have also followed the footsteps of the traditional leaders because of not believing in political development. Though they have a very clean appearance such as businesslike suits and ties, cleanly shaved beards and even graduated from a well-known university, their monopolistic mentalities have not changed yet. Therefore, we need to understand and also believe in political development discourse in Afghanistan. Theoretically, it is not possible to realize political development without understanding and believing in modernization.
The fourth requirement of political development is adaptation of modern political culture. In multi-cultural society such as Afghanistan, it is obvious that people are loyal to their traditional and cultural values. So, when one tribe wants to impose its values, it activates some social gap and social hatreds in the country. Unfortunately, many of the third world countries that have not crossed the tribal barriers attempting to monopolize economic and political power within specific ethnical circles. As a result, the energy and talents of young intellectuals are largely wasted on how to knock out their ethnical rivals instead of addressing social and economic issues of the country. Fortunately, this issue is, somewhat, decreased in modern Afghanistan as all major branches of ruling religion and language are legally recognized by national constitution, but the return of Islamic Emirate has seriously created fears and worries in the country.  the people of Afghanistan have no good memory from dogmatic approach of Taliban during their rule two decades ago.
The last requirement of political development is peace and putting an end to senseless war. However, sometimes war is inevitable to reaching peace and removal of terrorists.  Without peace and security talking about political and economic development is a senseless dream.  The reasons for insecurity can be divided into two separate categories in the country: managerial reasons and political reasons. In regard to managerial reasons, there are several weaknesses and gapes which let the terrorists easily penetrate into the country or  security system. These weaknesses and gapes include lack of using modern technology in screening highways and byways, lack of serious law enforcement, unregistered SIM Cards and weapons, misusing Afghan Identity card (Tazakera), lack of Special Forces against terrorist attackers, limited capacity of the National Security Directorate and so on. Given the nature of insecurity in Afghanistan, the National Security Directorate should be expanded to Ministry of National Security with developing various layers of security group in the country and beyond.
In regard to political reasons of insecurity, we need to find out why the neighboring countries interfere in political affairs of Afghanistan.  For example, this is everyone’s questions why Pakistan never desist Afghanistan? What is behind the unannounced war? If Pakistan has a legitimate demand or concern, we have to respect it as a good neighbor, but if it has an illegitimate demand we must willy-nilly convince them.

Mohammad Zahir Akbari is the permanent writer of the Daily Outlook Afghanistan. He can be reached at mohammadzahirakbari@gmail.com

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