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Feudal lords In Europe
toppled their Kings, Queens and terrorized fellow citizens for
centuries. Millions of lives lost in wars and 50 years of patient
diplomacy after World War II have finally established the borders of
European nations today. European citizens were offered social services
including state education, healthcare and subsidized housing to create
and sustain a social fabric that could be politically legitimized. Some
European nations established the European Union to pool their resources,
subsidize their farmers in order to secure peace and political stability
based on parliamentary democracy.
How can Afghanistan be
helped to transform its rural economy over time so that it can adopt a
parliamentary democracy and retain its traditions and religion?
A peasant Afghani
farmer struggles to feed his family. Often, a family has only one room
where they sit, cook, play and sleep. There is no immediate access to
water, electricity, school or hospital. Poor soil, lack of seed and lack
of all weather roads limit the farmer from growing most perishable
crops. He feels abandoned and vulnerable to plunder.
How can he and his
family survive? What does ‘citizenship’ of ‘democratic’ Afghanistan mean
for him? What is his stake in his country’s economy? Is he likely to
receive any help on his farm from Kabul or the ‘international
community’? If not, should he stop growing whatever he can to feed his
family?
Democracy cannot
trickle from the presidential palace of Hamid Karzai in Kabul or from a
conference of unruly tribal leaders. It must grow from its roots in
rural areas, depend on the vote of every citizen and impact on every
social and political level. Democracy is meaningless to a poor, starving
and shackled citizen deprived of opportunities to achieve his potential
for work. Work for peasants must offer sufficient income to sustain life
without undue state/tribal interference and coercion. A genuine stake in
the nation’s economy based on land ownership induces every citizen to
seek state protection and political representation. Access to water,
secure farming income and protection from plundering warlords enhance
individual freedom, family life and create viable communities.
Afghani tribal chiefs
dominate their people by controlling rural trade based on poppy farming.
They use coercion to create fear, dependency and allegiance. Religion
supports tribal traditions and rural life crystallizes on the basis of
collective responsibility and obligations imposed by the chief and the
imam. Such a society can neither comprehend nor adopt easily western
traditions of individual rights, social liberties, economic freedom and
political democracy.
The ‘international
community’, led by the USA, Britain and the EU, is attempting to impose
a western style parliamentary democracy in Afghanistan. Its offer of
financial assistance requires the Afghan government to force its poppy
growing peasant farmers to give up their only lucrative source of
income. Absence of a reliable network of roads, regional markets,
administrative skills, financial assistance to buy farm inputs and a
sustainable programme to train Afghani farmers to acquire new skills
decimate the value of this aid. How can the Afghani farmer give up the
poppy – the only non-perishable crop that will grow on his barren land
without additional help and which he can sell easily to feed his family?
Sadly, these poppies
yield opium that is refined to produce heroin that devastates the lives
of so many, especially in Britain. Drugs related crime, loss of man
hours, cost of healthcare and deaths cost Britain almost £10bn every
year. A life sustained in Afghanistan should be of the same value as a
life lost in Britain. It is a dilemma that we must resolve.
We cannot expect a
poor nation like Afghanistan to finance a major transformation of its
rural agricultural economy. If we value human life, both in Britain and
in Afghanistan, then we must be prepared to invest, as we did in the EU,
in a comprehensive programme of agricultural training, diversification
and crop subsidy to support the Afghani peasants. It will lead to peace,
prosperity and a democratic political system that can accommodate the
traditions and religion prevailing in Afghanistan.
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