|
 Framistan
was a made up word that our father would slip into his explanations when
he didn’t know
the real jargon, or when he tired of our incessant variations on "How?"
and "Why." It was especially likely to crop up in technical or mechanical
explanations, not Dad’s strong suit. If the car was knocking, it was
probably the framistan acting up. If the TV was on the fritz, it was
because the framistan had come loose from the grundling screw. Eventually
we came to understand that a framistan was an essential element in a
complicated and inexplicable process that worked.
While the world and
American public opinion have been mesmerized by the morass
in Iraq,
a
quiet revolution
of another sort is taking place in the original target of the war on
terrorism – Afghanistan. Somehow,
that rarest of modern chimeras, an incipient Islamic democracy, seems
to be forming from the fog of war and the quicksand of shifting tribal
alliances.
Despite 20 years of incessant warfare, predictions of
Holy War, the unfortunate quagmire that sank the Soviet Empire and a
great wild landscape largely beyond the control of the central government
in Kabul, they have successfully held elections, convened a constitutional
convention, and restored basic services to a level above where they were
before the intervention began.
Where are the mujadeen who threw out the Russians and
vowed to do the same with the Americans? Where are the roadside bombs,
the kidnappings and beheadings, the suicide murderers and death squads
that have turned Iraq into hell on earth? Could this gun-shy creature
carefully crawling from beneath the rubble actually be Peace? And how
did it happen, while our backs were turned, without sending 150,000 troops
and emptying the US treasury?
One explanation is that the great internal divide in
Afghan society is different than that in Iraq. In Iraq the internal struggle
is between Shiites and Sunni’s, with those incorrigible Kurds kicking
up dust on the fringes. The intracacies of Islamic internecine
warfare are so complex and foreign to our way of thinking that an entire
lifetime of research and practice are needed to even form an opinion,
let alone intervene. Religion has always been the stickiest wicket in
working out resources sharing arrangements, and when God gets involved
the quest for peace often ends up in the quest for a piece of the other
guy. When a minority sect has held ruthless sway for several generations,
there is some serious getting even to get our of the way before anything
else can get done.
In Afghanistan., the situation is quite different. Here
we have a split between the Mujahedeen, who have spent the last 20 years
with a hot carbine in their hands, eating dirt and fighting the British,
the Russians, the Americans and anyone else who didn’t look, talk and
think like them, and the educated technocrats, who have spent the same
20 years in exile, mostly in western democracies, in universities and
jobs, accumulating money and knowledge and waiting for the shooting to
stop so they could go home.
The two groups have been jousting for power since the
fall of the Taliban. The current crucible of conflict is the composition
of the Karzai cabinet. In an attempt to reach a functional compromise,
the two sides reached an ingenious and novel agreement. All cabinet members,
they decided, would have to have ONLY Afghan citizenship (no dual citizens),
and a college degree According
to today’s New
York Times:
The conditions set by the Constitution are the results
of intense rivalry among the main groups that have been vying for political
pre-eminence in Afghanistan in the past three years. They can be roughly
split into the mujahedeen, who fought in the wars of the past 20 years,
and the Westernized technocrats, who often spent the past 20 years abroad.
The mujahedeen sought to exclude many Westernized Afghans by banning
anyone holding dual citizenship, while the technocrats sought to exclude
the roughest mujahedeen by adding the condition relating to higher education.
According to these conditions, the majority of the present
cabinet are unqualified to hold their posts in the newly elected government. For
example, both the Minister of Education and the Minister of Higher Education
have to go; the former has no college degree and the later is a dual
citizen of Afghanistan. and the US. In addition, major cabinet
members with dual citizenship, often American, include Finance Minister
Ahraf
Ghani, Interior Minister Ahmed Ali Jalali, Information and Culture Minister
Sayed Makhdum Raheen, and the ministers of reconstruction, urban development
and higher education. The governor of the Central Bank would also be
required to have only Afghan citizenship. At least five members of the
current cabinet whom Mr. Karzai had considered keeping do not have enough
education to continue. Among them are Minister of Commerce
Sayed Mustafa Kazemi, Minster of Agriculture Sayed Hossein Anwari, Minister
of Education Ahmad Mushahid and Minister of Public Works Gul Agha Sherzai
and Defense Minister, Marshal Muhammad Qasim Fahim.
The bottom line seems to be that the only individuals
qualified to serve in the he new Afghan government are mujahedeen who
somehow managed to get a college education in between fighting foreign
invaders,
and technocrats who stayed in country for the duration or at least avoided
taking dual citizenship.
Almost despite themselves, they seem to have stumbled
on a formula to select the best of each group, and for the first time
in two generations hope seems to be rearing its hoary head in the blasted
landscape of Afghanistan. Of course, the perfidy of local warlords,
the greed of carpet bagging capitalists, the convoys of raw opium snaking
out of the hinterland’s inaccessible hills and the great games of international
intrigue all argue against a happy outcome.But compared to the living
nightmare that Iraq has become, the scene in Afghanistan. shines like
a beacon of hope and a dim distant light at the end of the tunnel. At
least as long as the framistan keeps working.
article from the New York Times
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