IN THE 1960s, US Defence Secretary Robert S McNamara, called the quantifier for his penchant for statistics, once sent all his number-crunchers for a long weekend retreat to generate a ?Dow Jones average? of Vietnam war indicators to see if his ?market? demand was going up or down. They tried, for one day, and, according to an American commentator, ?then they drank?.
Any ?Dow Jones average? on Afghanistan today should occasion tall drinks as many.
A summary recent events in Afghanistan makes sober reading for those nations involved in stabilising the country. Everyday, evidence mounts that an ugly war is turning uglier. US and coalition troop losses, which have again spiked, provide one measure of that ugliness. From a light military footprint in 2002 to an increasingly heavy one at present, every tactic tried in Afghanistan has failed to scale back violence and lawlessness or stamp out the narcotics trade. The climbing toll of Afghans casualties, many of them civilians, provides the second measure. The third is that, despite large amounts of foreign aid, almost none of the money spent on civic services and institutions has made any real difference. But there is a fourth measure, perhaps the most troubling of all: something has gone awry with the rule of law and nation-building in Afghanistan. Any doubt on this score is put to rest by the deeply tainted presidential election in the country last month. Fraud was so widespread and irrefutable that a recount is necessary, and maybe even a run-off. But the damage has already been done. The question many in the West ask is, how much more discredited and corrupt can the Hamid Karzai led government get now.
It’s absolutely impossible, but it has possibilities, as Samuel Goldwyn would have it.
Yet, it?s hard not to be taken aback by the reality that Karzai, who once resonated with the spirit of democratic state-building, has descended to the sorry pass of alleged vote-rigging to retain office. ?This was fraud en masse,? one western diplomat told The New York Times on September 7, saying that Karzai?s supporters put up hundreds of fictitious polling stations that registered hundreds of thousands of ballots in his favour. He and other western diplomats and officials also allege that Karzai?s poll managers took over around 800 legitimate stations, kept out citizens and stuffed boxes with fake votes. People belonging to one tribal group told reporters how the local jirga had decided to support Abdullah Abdullah, Karzai?s main challenger, but when they arrived at the polling station, they found it locked and officials inside busy filling the boxes with votes, no prizes for guessing for whom. Vote manipulation was so rampant that in some Pushtun-dominated areas of the east and south where officials said the turnout was exceptionally low because of the Taliban threat, the number of votes polled for Karzai was ten times as many as those who actually turned up to vote.
The sheer scale and audacity of the manipulation have overwhelmed the country?s Electoral Complaints Commission, the monitoring body mainly appointed by the UN. As the election returns put Karzai on course for a single-round victory, winning over 50% of votes, the commission said it had found ?clear and convincing evidence of fraud?.
In a world made skittish by the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the international community?sceptical of the outcome of an election it paid for?has every reason to be alarmed at the way ?nation-building? is progressing there. For the US, especially, aspects of the August 20 election are too murky for comfort. Such unease presents blunt challenges for President Barack Obama. Could Afghanistan do to his presidency what Iraq did to his predecessor? To his credit, high-ranking officials of his administration have been consistent in saying that there is a ?deterioration in the security situation? in Afghanistan and ?the stakes are high, [and] the situation is extremely challenging?. Obama has ordered 21,000 more troops to Afghanistan?making US troops level at 68,000 by December?since taking office and is considering sending still more following the strategic assessment conducted by Gen Stanley McChrystal, the top US commander in Afghanistan. But he must sell his reworked strategy to a war-weary public or risk waging war without the public?s support at a time parallels are being drawn between the current Afghan mission and the US debacle in Vietnam.
There are many lessons the US can draw from its failure in Vietnam, but probably the most important among them is the credibility is the local leader you support. Throughout its involvement in Vietnam, the US propped up mainly two tyrants (?our bastards?, in Cold War parlance) in Saigon?both equally corrupt, impotent and deeply unpopular: first Ngo Dinh Diem and then Nguyen Van Thieu. Incidentally, off the battlefield, as Vietcong guerillas edged ever closer to South Vietnamese cities, the one remarkable episode that doomed the American mission in Vietnam forever was the stage-managed presidential election that took place in South Vietnam in 1971, as the US looked the other way and prepared to engage the North Vietnamese in separate talks in Paris. Three years after the Tet Offensive turned the tide of public perception decisively against the war in America, the US leadership was all washed up in the battle for hearts and minds on the political front, too, in Vietnam.
Unveiling his AfPak policy in March, President Obama, while calling for improved governance in Afghanistan, has publicly suggested that the US adopt a ?very limited goal? of ensuring that ?Afghanistan cannot be used as a base for launching terrorist attacks? against the US. However, despite eight years of American and Nato efforts, Afghanistan still remains an ungovernable nation on every reckoning.
With a scandalous presidential election, the ?Dow Jones average? of indicators, to borrow that phrase attributed to McNamara, has hit a new low in Afghanistan.
Reason enough to throw back tall drinks in despair.
rajiv.jayaram@expressindia.com