4/9/06

Democracy In Afghanistan: Conundrum of Regime Change

The case of the Afghan man who faced execution for converting to Christianity illustrates the conundrum of "regime change." OK, so your army has just rolled into a foreign capital. You can do whatever you want. However, if you interfere with the internal affairs of a liberated country, and you tell them what to do--you haven't liberated them at all. But if you can't change anything, what's the point?

So while prime minister Hamid Karzai cuts a dashing figure with his green Tajik robe and impeccable English, … U.S.-occupied Afghanistan has a 2004 Constitution that includes a key sentence: "No law can be contrary to the sacred religion of Islam." There's more paperwork, but nothing new: Sharia is still the law of the land.

[Related to this] article 2(1)(a) of Iraq’s new U.S.-backed constitution reads: "No law may be passed that contradicts the immutable rulings of Islam."

The neoconservative theorists who dreamed up America's regime change policy point to post-World War II Germany and Japan as successful precedents. But we didn't create democracy in Germany from scratch. Liberation works best when you kick a foreign army out of a country that had liberal values before its occupation.

After it came into possession of Afghanistan, with its long history of justice based on brutality and vengeance, the U.S. faced a choice between the harsh totalitarian Soviet and the hands-off "we liberated you, it's all yours" approaches. The Soviets sent girls to school and university, banned the burqa and prohibited the enforcement of Sharia law. We chose laissez-faire liberation, and spread theocracy instead of democracy.

[Excerpts of an editorial by Ted Rall, Yahoo News]

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