Failing in Afghanistan

Malalai Joya is a 28 year-old woman from Afghanistan who, since liberation from the Taliban, has run for parliament in Afghanistan.  The documentary of her difficult campaign, Enemies of Happiness,  won the World Cinema Jury Prize in Documentaries at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival.  You can hear a great interview with the film's director, and see some amazing clips from the film, on a recent edition of NOW with David Brancaccio.  She has amazing courage, but her conclusions about the possibility of democracy in Afghanistan are discouraging.

Here's a snippet from the transcript:

BRANCACCIO: But [Joya's] since moved to the Afghan capital, Kabul, where the new Parliament sits. And late this week, we got some email questions to Malalai Joya herself. And she sent her responses to us which we have posted in their entirety over on the PBS.org web site.

When we asked her a question, essentially "How are things going," and she responded in part that things are going terribly. She writes (quote) "The voice of me and a number of other democratic-minded members of Parliament is not heard, and we are not given time to speak." My microphone has been cut off a number of times when I criticize the situation and want to express my point of view. Once they even physically attacked me inside the Parliament and one of them called (quote) 'Take and rape this prostitute.' A shocking state of affairs for a Parliament that the Western community had so promoted in the wake of the war.

MULVAD: Well, it just shows that nothing has really changed. Like in the beginning of the film—you see that her microphone is turned off one of—in one of the meetings that leads up to the Parliamentary election. And it still goes on inside of the Parliament. And it's—difficult for Malalai Joya raise her voice because what she says is really—powerful and provoking.

BRANCACCIO: She writes, "I think that no nation can donate liberation to another nation. Liberation is not money to be donated. It should be achieved in a country by the people themselves." The ongoing developments in Afghanistan and Iraq prove this claim.

MULVAD: What she says is that we kind of support the bad guys being very powerful in Afghanistan now. And she often says that democracy's just another word for power. So nothing has changed really. Like it—it is a change that she has a—a seat in Parliament, but so many of the other seats have been taken by people who are responsible for all the crimes that have been committed in Afghanistan during the past years.

There are so many lessons to be taken here, one of which is that it takes time and blood to unseat years of enculturated injustice, discrimination, and hate.  And we might also conclude that (radical) Islam is just not compatible with western democracy.  Sigh.

Comments

[SilverHallide]

Seeker,

Once again you leap to generalizations and conclusions without merit based upon any fact.

There are so many lessons to be taken here, one of which is that it takes time and blood to unseat years of enculturated injustice, discrimination, and hate.

While is is true that it takes years to effect social change, this also ignores the fact that for the past 4 years the United States took its eye off the ball with respects to Afganistan by going after Iraq. Thus, removing resources, troops, etc from a very dangerous front with a true threat in the re-emergence of the Taliban, continuing dominance of the Opium trade and the warlords that run them.

Indeed, if we really cared about making a serious change in Afganistan, the US would have never gone into Iraq. How quickly we all forget how the Soviet Union lost in its war in Afganistan. We are so short-term focused and deluded by the rhetoric of the Administration that we ignore the real problem.

And we might also conclude that (radical) Islam is just not compatible with western democracy.

That is a pretty arrogant statement. It is so very American centric to think that everyone on the planet wants freedom as we have defined it and will naturally want a Western Pro-US Democracy. This sort of pre-ordained attitude is what gets the United States in trouble and in more cases than not does not deliver our predefined goals --stability in any given region.

Things are never as simple as you tend to make them Seeker. Everything is not tied to radical Islam. It has it's impact, sure. However, our failure in Afganistan is largely our own failure. The United States has proven that it cannot fight a war on two fronts at the same time with the current troop strength and short-attention span of the American public and the administration. In fact you need to go back to WWII to find a situation where America has been able to fight and win on two fronts, but we had a draft and national sacrifice to do it...but that is another story for another post.

I can go on, but this very narrow comment window you have on this site since you went to type pad makes that more difficult. Grumble.

Respectfully,

Silver.

[Cineaste]

"I can go on, but this very narrow comment window you have on this site since you went to type pad makes that more difficult. Grumble."

I want to also add to the "grumble" list...

1. The site logs you out automatically if you take too much time composing a post. Very annoying.

2. Where are the archives?

3. Can you put in a search box now?

4. Gravitars?

5. Narrow comment box (Silver Halide)

6. Difficult to differentiate between people's comments (Lawanda)

7. This theme does not seem as legible as your original one. Perhaps a 2 column fluid width rather than this narrow fixed width theme would be better.

8. What happened to the snap previews?

9. Constantly having to sign in discourages comments. Can't you just use Akismet?

10. Need Daleks to "exterminate, exterminate" unsound arguments.

[seeker]

1. Typekey is supposed to keep you logged in for two weeks. I'll look into it.

2. The archives are actually replaced by the Category Cloud - it is basically a Category list, with the size of the letters indicating how many posts are in that archive. There is, for now, no master archive with all posts listed.

3. Search done.

4. Researching avitars, not sure how easy that is with typepad.

5. Comment box wide.

6. Comments now have the underline again. I don't like it, but i guess it is better than nothing.

7. I widened it to 870px total, but did not do fluid because I would have to create a repeating background image for the header. No time now.

8. I'll put snap back in.

9. Akismet looks like an MT plugin. I don't have the access to change that on the server, since I'm using typepad.

10. Hmm. No Daleks on hand. Maybe a Wm. F. Buckley dalek that goes around shouting "non-sequitur" and "quid pro quo"?

[seeker]

Once again you leap to generalizations and conclusions without merit based upon any fact.

I did make some hasty ending generalizations, and I'm sorry that they caused you to miss the real focus of the article, which was the courage and travail of Ms. Joya, and the news of the interesting documentary.

While is is true that it takes years to effect social change, this also ignores the fact that for the past 4 years the United States took its eye off the ball with respects to Afganistan by going after Iraq.

Not only does it take years to make social change, the transcript of the interview quotes Ms. Joya as saying that the prevailing culture and traditions of Islam are what are preventing change - things like their low view of women.

Despite the fact that many libs want to chime in with our Islamic foes that the U.S. is the great Satan in Afghanistan, Ms. Joya makes no such overtures, but instead, is grateful for whatever change was begun by us, and places blame for resistance to modern human rights and freedoms where SHE seems to think it goes - on the culture itself.

Of course, she still considers herself Muslim, so does not blame Islam itself, but rather, the entrenched version of it in her country. Of course, I am of the opinion that Islam without Jihad and subjugation of women and unbelievers is like Christianity without repentance and faith towards God - a religion of it's own, no doubt, but certainly not faithful to it's founder or central themes.

That is a pretty arrogant statement. It is so very American centric to think that everyone on the planet wants freedom as we have defined it

I don't think so. While some of the particulars of how we implement freedom are negotiable, I am not saying that everyone should do all that we do, but I am claiming that Islam in it's current form worldwide is not compatible with basic human rights and freedoms.

The central human rights and freedom violations rampant in modern and historical Islam are not just subjective ideas that we can "humbly" oppose. Such claims as "we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal" are not arrogant statements unless we somehow think that they are merely subjective truths.

The rule of fear under Islam, honor killings, jihad, child and female chattel, oppression and murder of those of other religions and those who merely want to leave Islam, are not compatible with freedom, and it is cowardice to hide behind false humility because we (wimper) wouldn't want to impose our ideas on them. We certainly don't want to impose, and perhaps we have in our bumbling efforts, but that doesn't lessen the simple claim I suggested - that (radical) Islam MAY not be compatible with freedom.

Some ideas are worth proclaiming as true, and certain ideas are worth public condemnation, and the dictates and practices of Koranic Islam (as opposed to liberalized or nominal Islam), as often seen in Shariah law, which even many Muslims here in North America push for, are worthy of our condemnation.

My statement that "radical Islam may not be compatible with democracy" not only contains the qualifier "may" to make it less than dogmatic, it is certainly a fair observation to make after seeing how NO modern Islamic state is free or democratic. Try being a non-Muslim in Saudi Arabia.

While the peoples of Afghanistan and Iran (not to mention the former Soviet Union) might want freedom, they may not be ready for it, and the ideologies that still hold sway over them (Islam and Communism) most certainly do appear to be incompatible with democracy, while being VERY compatible with totalitarianism. Just open your eyes and you'll see what I mean. Even Turkey has real problems with Islam and persecution of other faiths.

Things are never as simple as you tend to make them Seeker. Everything is not tied to radical Islam.

True enough, and in this case, my hasty generalizations probably did narrow the lessons learned too much. However, I do believe that I am not just demonizing or looking for a focal point for fear and hate, but rather, have identified one of the primary enemies of modern humanity.

Just as the nuclear and communist threats (remember the millions killed by Communism and Socialism? Just because they never nuked us doesn't mean they weren't catastrophic for other humans) were real and imminent, so is the threat of Islam. It is not just another friendly religion, it is an ideology of hate, murder, subjugation, and fear. Religion of peace is a misnomer, if not an outright lie.

[Cineaste]

Ah Seeker this is much much nicer. I especially like the new search box so I can reference my old posts and I also like the full width 1 column comments that you have on the We are all "Jesus of Suburbia". You will make comments like this on all posts? As you know, our comments can get lengthy and having them the occupy the full width of the page cuts down on the scrolling. The wide comment box also aids composing comments. Well done! I also like your new header image. Over all, 2 or 3 has much more utility than before. Good job addressing everyones concerns.

[Cineaste]

And we might also conclude that (radical) Islam is just not compatible with western democracy. Sigh.

Perhaps you are correct about radical Islam, but there is a Muslim Movement underway now to Secularize Islam.

A call to reason!

An international forum for secularists of Islamic societies

In the last decade we have increasingly heard calls for a "reformation," a new Enlightenment, or a secularization and liberalization of Islamic thought and practice. And yet there is to this day no organized international response. At the same time, a growing number of secular Muslims and secularists from majority Muslim countries have been undertaking these intellectual and strategic challenges independently (here “secularists” includes both those who embrace a thoroughly non-religious worldview, as well as those committed to separation of religion from overnment and robust freedom of conscience).

The purpose of the Secular Islam Summit is to bring together these thinkers and activists in an ongoing cross-cultural forum and clearinghouse to generate and share new practical strategies and disseminate these to the public and opinion-makers worldwide.

Speakers include Shaker al-Nabulsi, Nonie Darwish, Afshin Ellian, Hasan Mahmud, Tawfik Hamid, Shahriar Kabir, Nibras Kazimi, Irshad Manji, Salameh Nematt, Walid Phares, Tashbih Sayyed, Wafa Sultan, Amir Taheri, Ibn Warraq, Manda Zand Ervin, among others. Click here to see their bios.