Let’s hear your best Marshall plan for the post-Taliban Afghanistan. The general consensus here seems to be that we had better not just “make like a tree” once we’re done cutting out the malignant cells in that region. I’ve heard everything from “we need to build them an infrastructure” to “we need to occupy that god-forsaken wasteland”.
I don’t think occupation will get us anything except for our own little landlocked Isreal, and we wouldn’t want to piss off what few Arab allies we have. But if we want to start making amends with the Afghan people by helping them build water plants, we need to have some kind of military occupation while we have hundreds of our architects & engineers in their capital city.
So what’s your plan? If you don’t have one, feel free to shoot holes in mine:
Bring back former King Mohammad Zahir Shah & officially make peace with the new government.
As the terrorist threat has largely been removed, begin feeding, clothing and whatever other -ings are likely to bring immediate comfort to the local population.
Starting with Kabul, begin laying the groundwork for water & sanitation system. I have no idea what the cost is with something like this, probably hugely expensive. Hopefully we won’t be the only country to chip in. If we can give them flush toilets, we’ll win their hearts
After plumbing, electricity would seem to be the next logical step, but with the serious lack of VCRs (and everything else) from Taliban rule, there may be very little need for such an expensive commodity.
Begin patching the 20-year old holes in the city. Build a brick-making factory so they have something other than mud to build their homes with.
We need to give them their very own “Statue of Liberty”, that is a gift for the sake of gift-giving. Yes, taking out the Taliban is already a huge gift, but we need to make sure that future generations of Afghanis know what we did for them. I feel very strongly about this. Perhaps a huge Muslim shrine that would make the Taj Mahal turn green with envy. This would have a secondary benefit in showing the Muslim people (especially the extremists) that we embrace the fundamental right of a people to practice their religion, hopefully throwing water on the idea that the Christian/Zionist pigs are hell bent on ruling the world.
Putting on my rosiest colored glasses, I even see the posibility of a close Arab ally in Afghanistan.
I just wonder how the whole post-Taliban government issue will be worked out. It seems likely that the Civil War of Afghanistan might well continue out of force of habit, if for no other reason. It is difficult to convince people who have made fighting a way of life to lay down their arms unless they get what they want. Without a tradition of democracy or pluralism in place, we have to try to start a pluralistic, democratic government (in the Islamic world). Rub the ol’ rabbit’s foot for this one.
I would add:
7. Get rid of some of the millions of old Soviet mines that litter Afghanistan.
8. Collect some of the heavy weapons from the people. I believe in right to bear arms, but I draw the line at RPGs, Stingers, and anti-tank weapons. Especially Stingers, since those menace any altruistic air lifts we might try to fly in there. Stingers don’t care if the helicopter is a gunship or a medical chopper.
9. Oh yes, and NO MISSIONARIES! No “Crusades: Part Deux, The Annoying Christian Buttinskis” If any charity is lacking a purely secular motive for going over there, no dice. The “Muslim Shrine” idea would help as a confidence building measure on this score.
Is there some reason we can’t just hand it over to the Northern Alliance, give them a blank check, and get out of the way? Why the need for Uncle Sam to micro-manage it? They must know what they need better than we could.
Although, granted, it is fun to put in all those water mains and subways…I vote we give them a couple of fusion power plants, free, and $500,000 in their budget to start.
Because the Northern Alliance is pretty much only united by a shared dislike for the Taliban. If we were to leave them in charge without any help, they would most likely resume fighting against each other. Also, we probably know more about the infrastructure needs of a modern country than the Northern Alliance does. Also about running a decent and effective government.
What waterj2 said, plus our newfound allies the Pakistanis detest the Northern Alliance. Old ethnic differences, I’m afraid. That’s also a big part of why they were so keen on the Taliban until recently.
Oh, and I think Beagle has it right that the civil wars will just continue. It’s not a real peaceful history for the last couple decades, everybody hates everybody else, and there’s no way we’re going to hang around as peacekeepers like in Bosnia and Kosovo. The future does not look bright for Afghanistan.
It’s really simple, actually. I’m not going to limit my sights on just Afghanistan though, why not show some ambition?
Vic’s Fifty Year Plan
Step 1: Convince everyone on earth that the only proven road to wealth is mutual cooperation, free trade and government managed capitalism.
Step 2: Get the people of the world to elect non-corrupt and peaceful governments.
Step 3: Have the western world give the IMF a few hundred billion dollars to loan out.
Step 4: Crack open a beer and let the free markets work their magic. It’ll take a while, but we’ll all be living in condos and making fun of the really rich people in no time.
Whoops, I shouldn’t have used the IMF in step 3. It’s reputation is too bad. We’ll create a new lending institution that operates transparently and provides incentives for environmentally friendly development.
So, we can’t just give them some books? I had a civics textbook in high school that explained how to run a government in words of one syllable. I don’t think the Afghans are too dumb to figure that out.
It’s not like they’ve had no experience at all with democracy. Afghanistan had its first constitution in 1923.
Granted, it’s kind of a Cliff’s Notes version of the U.S. Constitution, and it basically vests all power in the King, who appoints a Council of Ministers. But still it was a start. At least it was acknowledging that Afghanistan ought to conform in some ways to what the rest of the civilized world was doing.
Sorry about the caps, that just C & P from the website. Anyway, it sounds like a consitutional monarchy (I’m not good at the various flavors of government). The King can dissolve Parliament and call for new elections. Here’s the most important part:
So there’s your basic “government of the people”, way back in 1963.
The coup in 1973 had its own constitution, too, in which the rights and duties of the King are conspicuous by their absence.
So up till 1978, they were plugging away at the “constitutional monarchy/democracy thing”, and I don’t see why they’d need more than a nudge in the right direction to get back on track. Certainly they wouldn’t need more than a bit of hand-holding and fiscal support from Uncle Sam/Daddy Deep-Pockets.
So they’re one up on the Russians there, who had never had a democracy to begin with, and the Russians aren’t doing too badly–okay, economy aside, I mean that at least the Russians haven’t had a coup d’etat forcing them back into Soviet-dom. They’re still plugging away at the “democracy thing”.
The Afghan “civil wars” have only been going on for 25 years. That’s considerably less than the one that’s been going on in Northern Ireland, or Serbia. I don’t see why, given a little encouragement, they couldn’t resolve it. I think it would be a shame for the First World to simply shrug and say, “Well, they’ve been at it for generations, what can you do?” and walk away. They haven’t been at it for generations, and I think that now is an ideal time to put them on the path the Phillipines and Indonesia and others have been walking recently, albeit on tiptoes.
I’m with Vic–money talks. Let them see how much fun it is to be capitalist members of the First World, playing at the poker table with the Big Boys, and watch how fast the “ethnic differences” become not something to shoot at with muskets, but something to celebrate in front of cameramen from CNN and PBS.
Even if we assume that the 15-64 group is evenly spread over that range (I suspect that it’s probably skewed towards the lower end) that would mean that more than 50% of the population has had no experience with democracy in their lifetime. Furthermore, bear in mind that they didn’t even have contact with successful democracies during that period. Northern Ireland and Serbia both had close cultural contact with many other models of democratic government.
For comparison, the US figures are:
Fusion plant? No no no no! They blow up after 50 years. Instead, take one of those huge mountains in the country, turn it into waterfall tiles (only $100 per acre!), and then build hydroelectric power plants on each waterfall tile. They don’t produce as much electricity as fusion plants do, but they literally last forever.
There is a world of difference between knowing how to run a country in theory and being able to do it for real. As you noted, Afghanistan has had several constitutions during the last seventy years. However, during that time, they have had several civil wars, it seems.
We really simply can’t get rid of the Taliban and hand the country over to the Northern Alliance and expect that there will not be more violence as the alliance falls apart. I think one of the biggest hurdles will be getting the people of Afghanistan to accept that people of other ethnicities are aqual to themselves. This isn’t something you can just read in a book.
I guess I just have more faith in human nature than you do, especially in an age of the Internet and global satellite communications, where anybody with a $50 black and white TV set and a used satellite dish can find out for himself what’s really happening in the outside world.
But anyway, I’m not requiring the Afghanis to put aside all their ethnic differences–I agree that’s not likely to happen. But I do think they can learn to work together. Places like Malaysia, the Philippines, and India have a population with sizeable ethnic differences, but they’re all still plugging away at the “democracy thing”, without Uncle Sam peering over their shoulders and micromanaging everything.
A $50 television would represent about 12.5% of the average Afghani’s yearly income, if I read the abovementioned World Factbook right.
These are fiercely independent people, and a great many of them still live in tribal relations. That makes for a tricky situation, because aiding any one group brings the approbation of others. Anything that we do to improve the lot of Afghanis will have to be done on an enormous scale, because distribution and sharing of aid will likely be confined to each individual faction.
One thing I can see these folks falling in love with is GPS. They’re realatively cheap now, and could probably be of great value as an all-weather navigational aid in the high plains and mountains. GPS might eventually be used to agree upon the borders between factions, which might help reduce infighting once the inevitable territorial wars are fought out. Once internal borders are agreed upon, the chances of forming a working central government are much greater.
Of course, it won’t be long before someone figures out how to use a GPS tablet as a timing device for bombs, but that’s probably par for the course. I’m sure someone somewhere has been beaten to death with a bag of U.N. rice, too.
