Can Afghans govern themselves?

Great Debates
1

We like to think peoples around the world would be happy if they could just have democracy and Cocacola. I was reading in the news how the Afghan negotiators in Germany cannot reach an agreement and they are bickering over who gets what. They all want a bigger share of the worthless pie. Also, as the Northern Alliance were attacking Kunduz two warlords were racing each other to see who would get to the spoils first.

Twenty two years of civil war, the Taliban, American bombing the country the country to shreds… you’d think these guys would be ready for peace. As further incentive the UN is offering millions to rebuild the country as soon as they can get their act together. You’d think they would be clamoring for peace but nooooooooo. They want to continue to squable over the partitioning of that piece of shit they call their country.

I’ve come to the conclusion that they are hopeless. They will never learn to live in peace. And so, the only solution is that the UN mandate that for a period of 7 years, the men in Afghanistan shut up and wear burkhas while the women run the country. It is the only solution which may help. Everything else is a waste of time. If a man dares take the burkha off or speaks to a woman without being spoken to, let him get seven lashes to teach him humility.

It is obvious those guys cannot govern themselves. They couldn’t one hundred years ago and they still can’t. Rudyard Kipling wrote a story called Her Majesty’s Servants and it is a story about animals serving in the army but it is the ending which has been a favorite of mine for many years now.

A great military exercise and parade take place in honor of the emir of Afghanistan who has come to visit the British Viceroy in India. We are at the end of the exercise:

Oh how little have things changed in the building trade since time began!

So what do you think? Can they govern themselves? Should the country be occupied? What is the solution?

2

Which would have some relevance if it had a basis in history or fact, rather than Kipling’s imagination and the chosen world view of the British Empire.

The Afghanis are a fractious and tribal people. Nevertheless, they were able to put aside enough differences to remain a cohesive nation for around 200 years, surviving multiple invasions from both Russia and Great Britain.

The fact that at the initial meeting of the tribal leaders after 22 years of occupation and civil war, they have not all rallied around crying “Here, you take my share of the power.” simply indicates that they are human.

I am under no delusion that they will simply come to an accord in the next three days and go home to share the ruling over the peaceable kingdom of Afghanistan. However, dismissive claims that the country is worthless or that the people are incapable of self-government are not consistent with a fight against ignorance.

3

I say put the women over there in charge.

4

Hehe, I can just see the warlords and other current leaders swallow that=)

5

At the current meeting in Germany, there are several women participants.

6

Kipling was a racist. A friendly smiling racist with a nice turn of phrase, but a racist. Ever here of “The White Man’s Burden”? Kipling wrote a nice long poem about how those poor non-white people couldn’t govern themselves so it was the Christianity duty of the superior white race to govern them. Using him to support your argument about who the Afghanis are incapable of governing themselves has nasty overtones. I’m not saying you are racist, but it doesn’t look good, see?

–John

7

When I posted the OP I knew there was a debate lurking in there somewhere… I just couldn’t quite find it. Maybe we are getting closer to it now.

To say Kipling was a racist is to denigrate him with an insulting label which is quite meaningless. He lived in other times, with very different values. My great-grandmother died when a doctor did something which today we know to be very wrong but I would hardly call him a murderer. He did what at that time was thought to be good and today we are lucky we know more.

Too many people misunderstand “The White Man’s Burden” and “The Ballad of East and West” mostly because they have not bothered to read them and understand them.

Kipling had great admiration for those native cultures as he grew up among them. If you read his works you will see that. he also had great admiration for his native English culture and there’s nothing wrong with that. You only have to read “The Ballad of East and West” to see his admiration for the natives and their culture but it is so often quoted as meaning the exact opposite of what it means that I get tired of correcting people. In general I have found most people who denigrate Kipling have not read his works in any depth and they are playing by ear.

The White Man’s Burden is IMHO a very disinterested piece which says pretty much the rich countries have an obligation to teach the primitive countries civilization. It is no different from those in rich countries who today say we have an obligation to help poor countries. You may find this “racist” but that is pretty ignorant. To begin with Afghans are not any different race, so you can save your ignorant labels. They are probably as close as you can get to the label “caucasian”. (BTW, I have seen threads here and heard women elsewhere commenting how good looking those Afghan men are.) And I can’t see how saying we have the obligation, the burden, to help others is racist.

Yue Han, I am not saying you are ignorant, but it doesn’t look good, see? :wink:

That today we might see things somewhat differently is not a reason to judge Kipling, who lived 100 years ago, by our standards. You can easily condemn anything as imperialist. People who try to help poor countries are always criticized no matter what they do. If you try to implement a democratic government you are a cultural imperialist. If you send them food you are keeping them in that state by not building the infrastraucture they need to make a living for themselves. If you build the infrastructure you are telling them what to do and just giving contracts to western companies. If you lend money to their governments you are just supporting an oppresive government. If you put conditions you are imposing your culture on them. If you do nothing and leave them alone you are guilty of exploiting them anyway. You can’t win no matter what you do.

That the Afghans have not been able to give themselves a stable system of government is a fact. The question is: do we just let them continue in their mess without imposing our ideas on them or do we somehow force them to accept things which are not native to their culture so that they can get some stability?

8

If that is a fact, it is a fact that has not been demonstrated, here. There is currently a thread, started by Hazel, 11/09/01: U.S. Chickens Coming Home to Roost?, that provides an opinion supported by a certain amount of evidence that the only reason that Afghanistan is in chaos, now, has been outside intervention–particularly between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. A study of Afghanistan’s actual history (rather than Op-Ed declarations) suggests that Afghanistan did not have significant problems with a stable government for years. Certainly, their “instability” has been no worse than that of Argentina, Venezuela, Brazil, Columbia, or a number of other countries for which I do not hear cries for a U.N. mandate.

I certainly support the notion of a U.N. peacekeeping force to reduce the possibility of one large group trying to make an overwhelming power grab while the Afghanis work out their situation. Calls to put the country under U.N. “control” for long periods of time, however, are insulting to the Afghan people and lacking in historical evidence for a need.

9

What about mandating that each ethnic group govern their own territory and staying out of each other’s business? I think it would be a good idea to keep Afghanistan as a collection of loosely allied clans rather than as a nation where all the ethnic types govern. It seems each ethnic group can’t stand to give up any power.

10

Ok, call me naive, or a little bit underinformed on this whole crisis…But, to my understanding, this whole “jihad” all boils down to the Muslims being angry & violated that we helped to give Isreal to the Jews…although I think in their eyes is was a U.S. effort alone, at this they are wrong!!!
That being the case, I think the Jews deserved it first of all, secondly, the land was owned by the Brits…The Palestine people were just there…So…
MY SOLUTION…may sound simple…and as I said naive…There is probably 1000 reasons why it would never work…Oh if things were this easy…

Can’t we section off 1/2 of Afganistan, and call it Palestinistan, or something like that. Then, have all the disgruntled Palestines move there…It would have to be a very monitored situation, and it would be with the understanding that the Afgans would not have to take the abuse that Isreal has had to endure for the past 50 years…

Then the Palestinian people could have a place they could call their own…They would hopefully leave the Jews alone, as they’ve had enough crap, and it would be a way to govern at least 1/2 of that Godforsaken mess of a country…As it stands the Northern Alliance aka Laurel & Hardy’s of war, will have to attend some sort of training on how to govern & keep their land safe from Taliban (or other freakish group) takeover…

Doesn’t that sound passable? Palestinistan?

11

pati12812, I’m afraid you need to read up on quite a bit of history.

The aggression by bin Laden and company has very little to sdo with the Israeli/Palestinian situation. bin Laden is upset that the U.S. troops are quartered in Saudi Arabia (location of two very holy cities for Islam, Mecca and Medina). After 10 or 12 years of raging against the U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia (and initiating several attacks on U.S. citizens and property), bin Laden began talking about the Israeli/Palestinian situation only in the last 18 months or so as a way to recruit more Muslims to his cause.

This war is not “about” the Palestinians (although that situation is now included in the rhetoric).

The United Kingdom managed a (self-selected) “mandate” in the Middle East that included Palestine after they took it away from the Ottoman Empire in 1918 because the Turks had sided with Germany in WWI. That does not make them the “owners” in any way. (And since they recruited many Arab groups to help them fight the Turks, with vague promises to help the Arabs achieve independence, it can be argued that their “mandate” was built on deception, anyway.)

There are already people living in Afganistan. They are the people whom we have been bombing around for the last few weeks. They are already a poor nation with a broken economy and a heavily damaged agricultural base (in the midst of a drouth). They are also not Arabs (as the Palestinians tend to be) and their religion is a different branch of Islam than that practiced by the Palestinians.

So you are going to forcibly move millions of people to live on a poverty-stricken, parched land among people who are already there who do not share the language, culture, or religion of those you have dumped in their midst.
Might I suggest that this is not the best solution that I have seen proposed?

12

No. A friend of mine had four or five Afghans and when he went on holiday he left them with us. We had no problem as long as we were around but if we went out for any length of time and appointed one dog as “in charge” for the afternoon, on our return we were invariably unimpressed by the results. They’d all be lounging aroun…

::sailor discreetly has a word with Ross:

Ah. Sorry.

I’ll get my coat.

13

I cut this down from a longer post…

Sailor, you are quite right that Kipling’s (racist) values stemmed from the times he lived in. As you said, we don’t blame doctors for things they did in the past. But at the same time, we don’t use those methods anymore.

By using Kipling to bloster your argument, you imply that you think his values are still applicable today.

No one has brought up the Ballad of East and West, so I don’t know why you keep talking about it. “The White Man’s Burden” is racist. It’s not about how rich countries have an obligation to help poor countries who can’t take care of themselves. It’s about how white people have an obligation to rule foreign countries that are incapable of ruling themselves because they are ignorant savages. That’s why it’s called “The White Man’s Burden” and not “The Rich Man’s Burden.”

–John

14

Ok, if you want to call that LIVING…

But, As for my uneducated viewpoint…I know that I need some more facts to back my ideas, I get all my info from my friends who know & or claim to know…So I admitted from the beginning that I wasn’t too informed…It sounded like a good idea to me…I may me uneducated about the matter, but not stupid, I just thought I’d throw that out!!

15

go gotta admit though, Palestinistan does have a ring to it… It’s better than bin Ladenistan,

16

pati, I never suggested that you were stupid. Ignorance, unlike stupidity, is curable. If you click on this link:

you will find most of the national and international news services. Most of the big ones (such as the BBC) currently have fixed links on their home pages giving background information on the whole mess.

You’ll probably find them more informative (and more accurate) than your “friends who know & or claim to know” what is going on.

Happy reading.

17

well thank you!!! I can always use knowledge…I like to hang around w/some smart people & listen, because well hey, free knowledge…The bummer is sometimes they’re wrong…OR their opinions on the matter outweigh the facts! (very common problem). Thanks for the link…next time you see me perhaps I’ll have something more informative to say!

18

pati, the ‘solution’ you mention would not work for many reasons but mainly because both the Palestinians and the Afghans would never go for it. You cannot kick the Afghans out of their home and the Palestinians believe they have a home, they want that home, not another home.

Yue Han, whether Kipling was racist, homophobic, homosexual, communist or child molester is quite irrelevant here. The point of his story is a general one which I think is as valid today as the day it was written: people without discipline and self-control are bound to be subject to others. That is the moral of the story and I think it is very valid.

Then the fact is Kipling chose the Afghans when he had to choose an example of lawlessness. To me it indicates 100 years ago the Afghans were perceived that way but you are welcome to prove otherwise and show they had a sophisticated form of government which rivaled Rome and Greece in their heyday. That is the only thing to do, the rest is beside the point.

>> No one has brought up the Ballad of East and West, so I don’t know why you keep talking about it.

Because you blame Kipling of racism and I think it is very valid for me to mention his works where you can clearly see his appreciation for those cultures. How can it not be relevant to show this?

>>“The White Man’s Burden” is racist. It’s not about how rich countries have an obligation to help poor countries who can’t take care of themselves. It’s about how white people have an obligation to rule foreign countries that are incapable of ruling themselves because they are ignorant savages. That’s why it’s called “The White Man’s Burden” and not “The Rich Man’s Burden.”

Of course if you are looking for racism you will find it everywhere just like 50 years ago you would have found communism. “White Man” is a generic term for what he had in mind because “those developed countries with a high domestic product” just does not make for good poetry. You have to understand it in the context of the times. The word is “burden”. He says civilized people have an obligation, a burden, to improve the life of those less fortunate. That you may disagree with the particulars does not change the fact that he believes those who are better off have a duty to help those who are worse off and I think this is a pretty noble ideal. You can be sure 100 years from now (or much sooner) people will be criticising anything we do today but what counts is whether the intention was good.

At any rate, as I have said, whether Kipling was racist or enjoyed torturing insects is quite irrelevant to this thread. The point is that I believe the Afghans have shown a tradition of dis-government. If you want to show that is wrong then be my guest, that is the purpose of this thread. But if I say “X is true” responding with “That’s what Hitler said” is not a valid rebuttal. Not everything Hitler said was wrong so I believe not everything Kipling said was wrong either. Now, If he enjoyed the abomination of pouring milk in his tea, that is part of his private life among consenting adults and does not concern the argument.

19

When Kipling specifically says ‘white man’ he doesn’t mean white man. And I’m the one who’s interpretation is reaching??

But you’re the one who brought up Kipling.

This thread is not:

It’s:

Perceived that way by someone who wrote a poem about how non-Westerners are all incapable of self-governance. Kipling was a racist, ergo his perception of the Afghanis was flawed by his racism and what he wrote about them cannot be used to support your argument.

–John

20

[/hijack]This thread is going off on a tangent. But I have to stand up to someone tossing out a “fact” that Kipling was a racist. Sure he was a product of his times, and thus the vocabulary he used wasn’t politically correct late 20th century. My own view is that Kipling was being very sarcastic and critical of colonial British out to rule the world.

I’ll admit to not being a Kipling scholar, but he is perhaps my favorite author. Jungle Book, Plain Tales of the Hills, Captain’s Courageous, Just So Stories, Puck of Pook’s Hill and Kim are all sitting on my bookshelf. I recently re-read Kim looking for examples of the racist colonial supremist author with a message, and excepting the use of words acceptable-at-the-time but now un-PC like “asiatic” and phrases such as “lie like an Oriental”, I just don’t see the lurking racist. For each of those so-called racist terms, there are plenty more where Kipling takes the piss out of the colonialists. And I just read White Man’s Burden for probably the first time, and see it as a very acerbic and sarcastic indictment of colonialists and colonialism. A theme that recurs in much of Kiplings work.

This has little pertinance to the OP, but I don’t like to see such a good author slagged as a racist and disagree with such a premise. Perhaps another thread should be started to debate this issue. [/end hijack]