I admit I went full Jim Jones back when the unity government deal was first announced. In my youth those many weeks ago, I drank deeply and early at the fount of Kerry Will Fix All the Things. The alternative was a country divided, and any agreement that would keep that at bay was something everyone wanted.
Then reality set in faster than the effects of a Barry Bonds B12 shot. No matter what Kerry could do, it’s politics, and it’s Afghanistan. Whatever this process was going to be, easy wasn’t in the cards. So the deal was shuffled and reshuffled again, and the voting public was left with fading hopes for real democracy.
This week the deal got signed in a ceremony that lasted about as long and felt as genuine as a Joaquin Phoenix hip hop tour. Since then, president-elect Ghani has been getting his message out, while Abdullah’s been working on his impression of a candidate gracious in defeat. Spoiler: He doesn’t do impressions well.
The deal is the least bad of options that ran from awful to terrible. But the optics of the Ghani victory lap interview aside, there’s more to this deal that makes it a bad one for Afghanistan. And despite Kerry’s best efforts, what’s bad for Afghans is ultimately bad for the Americans.
Afghans have about as much confidence in the government in Kabul as Britney had at the 2007 VMAs. Tired pop star memes aside, this election had the chance to change all that. There was a sense in the first round of voting that real change might come. Instead this deal is more of the same for the people of Afghanistan.
While Karzai has his supporters, most Afghans headed to the polls for a chance to vote for someone else. Anyone else. The Western construct was that this was stand against the Taliban. That was certainly part of the calculus, but on the whole Afghan voters wanted a chance at something different.
I have to emphasize to you that if you do not have an agreement, if you do not move to a unity government, the United States will not be able to support Afghanistan. — Kerry to candidates
What happened this week was done without those voters. That more than anything threatens to derail this experiment in democracy before it gets any real traction. What Afghans have seen for years was their future decided by those in power, and this deal is no different.
By putting together a deal behind closed doors, the new government took that hope away. What makes that even worse is that this was done at the Americans’ behest. For most Afghans, that alone would be enough to discount the deal outright.
It was crucial that this deal be on Afghan terms. Of the people, by the people…that sort of thing. Instead, what Kerry did was more Godfather than Gandhi, and Abdullah took the offer no one would refuse. American pragmatism trumped Afghan interests, and the winner wins very little.
[Tweet “We’d come to expect this back when Dick Cheney’s house was invisible. “]We’d come to expect this back when Dick Cheney’s house was invisible. While the US took tremendous pains to step away from this election, the fact remains that this was the kind of process Max Boot hoped it would be. The American relationship with Kabul has always been a strings attached kind of deal. And if the government wants to survive, it’s going to take the money and do what its told.
All of which drives the Afghan people even further away. If you’d seen billions come in, but you couldn’t keep your lights on, what would you do? Trust the same people who’ve been telling you for years they’re going to make it better? If the goal was to legitimize whoever’s sitting in the Arg, Kerry’s failed miserably.
To win its people back, Afghanistan needs a page from Beyonce’s playbook: leave Kelly and Michelle behind. Far behind. What the country doesn’t need is the added weight of Western agendas dragging it back into whatever used to pass for functional government here. At this point the only way Afghanistan can move forward is to shed itself of its overbearing Big Brother and figure out how to go it alone. But what the Americans are leaving behind is something that doesn’t work on its own.
Where the Sasha Fierce metaphor collapses faster than a Blackberry product launch is the facts: Bey’s doing just fine as a solo act. The same can’t be said for an Afghan government reliant on foreign aid to stay solvent. Or pay its troops.
So the fate of Afghanistan and the Americans is inextricably tied. But like all abusive relationships, there’s no parity. Afghans are at the table ready for checkers, and Americans are setting out the chess pieces. Until Afghanistan can find a way to pay its own way, it will be forever tied to the whims of American wishes. And that means a unity government that doesn’t have what Afghanistan needs more than anything: a leader.
Kerry’s deal for Ghanidullah was an attempt to right some of the wrongs inherent in the 2004 Afghan constitution. Which the Americans were instrumental in drafting, since at the time they wanted a strong president. That man was Hamid Karzai, but since then the SS BFF has sailed far, far away.
This deal was meant to wrest power from the hands of any one individual. If there’d been a clear winner in the first round, things would be different. But since young democracies can’t be trusted to right themselves, Kerry swooped in, salvation in hand, and parity all around.
But parity isn’t what Afghanistan needs in these uncertain times. What the country needs is Mother Teresa’s altruism and Gordon Gekko’s ruthlessness. Firmly astride the widening divide splitting this country, that person would have the kind of power needed to guide a newly formed democratic state.
By giving both Ghani and Abdullah competing powers, the result is a long slog toward painful decisions. And then those decisions will help drive the real decisions that need to be made. Decisions about the economy, the military, and proving to the world that Afghanistan’s ready to go it alone.
The United States, in its scramble for a stable democracy, picked a winner. What’s resulted is another example of interventionist democracy. And that’s perhaps the most important civics lessons of all: your vote is only as good as the Americans want it to be.