Summary
The Future of Afghanistan
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Extract
Rethinking governance in Afghanistan.
Any future government in Afghanistan will have to resolve the problem of representation in a government based on population, and most importantly, on territorial representation that will accommodate most major ethnic groups and regional alignments.
********** One year after the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom, Afghanistan is, relatively speaking, a peaceful place. For a country in the throes of civil wars since the early 1970s, there is a sense that placidity reigns. The central government is weak, and frankly, this is welcome. For decades, external donors promoted an ineffective Pashtun hegemony in Kabul while they disregarded outlying areas. Yet the question remains: Can Afghanistan's regional powers, now backed by individual or multilateral external reconstruction agencies and security forces, sustain this relative peace? Answering this question requires delving into a matter often overlooked in the literature on Afghanistan: the strong link between ethnicity and territory. An investigation into the ethnic territorial situation in Afghanistan suggests a potential path towards successful governance in the country The overwhelming issue facing a new Afghanistan is not security per se, nor is it, as others have claimed, the creation of a central government with a standing army. The challenge is balancing regional powers--the new khans, or warlords, as they are pejoratively described in the Western press--with their assumed right to govern their supporters and territory in a mann...See the full content of this document
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