Volatile Afghanistan needs attention

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The countryside is a lawless vacuum.

Coalition forces struggle to keep insurgents from sabotaging peacekeeping efforts.

Humanitarian aid is slow to arrive and diverted to emergence relief rather than reconstruction.

The scene in Afghanistan draws easy comparisons to Iraq. But the
attention that Afghanistan is receiving from the United States does not
resemble that which Iraq has received.

Afghanistan is being left behind amid contention over how the United States should handle the reconstruction efforts in Iraq.

But Iraq is now center stage in the war on terror, President Bush says.

Where the White House’s priorities lie in the Middle East is
illustrated in the $87 billion request for military spending and
reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan. Only a mere fraction of the
money will go toward Afghanistan under the Bush administration’s plan.

While the proposal has met some resistance in Congress, no one is
arguing that the United States should spend more  money on
Afghanistan.

It’s a shame. Afghanistan needs every bit of help it can get.

Afghanistan would be tougher to rebuild than Iraq, says Moataz Fattah, political science instructor.

Afghanistan was never a nation-state, Fattah says. To have a democracy, you must have demos, or people, he says.

To build a nation-state is to convert  love — or at least lack
of hatred — into marriage. “Afghan from different sects and backgrounds
don’t want to marry each other,” he says.

Fattah says he does not believe that Afghanistan is a country that
can be stable without oppression at least for the next 10 to 15 years.

“To remain one state, Afghanistan needs either a dictator — someone
similar to Saddam Hussein — who would force its people to live together
or a Madison-like mentality with a magic formula. I see no Madison
there.”

Even if Americans re-elected Bush, it will take longer than his term
in office to achieve meaningful results in Afghanistan, Fattah says.

Rebuilding a country is like rebuilding a bathroom, he says. “The
first estimate comes in, and it’s $75. Then you start building, with
each day the estimate goes up and up.

“You cannot live without a bathroom. The U.S. cannot leave
Afghanistan without having a viable society and sustainable
government,” he says.

The country needs more attention, Fattah says. “What I mean by
attention is diplomatic attention, first aid and more inclusion of
Afghan moderates — who are rare — and more support from surrounding
countries, especially Pakistan.”

Such attention is lost amid the growing causalities in Iraq —
especially when eight people die in a suicide bombing on a Baghdad
hotel.

And people are forgetting that the real perpetrator of the 9/11 attacks is al-Qaida, not Hussein.

“There’s no connection between al-Qaida and Iraq, except the letter ‘q,’” Fattah says.

Despite a majority of Americans’ believing there’s a strong tie
between al-Qaida and Hussein, no conclusive evidence of a link between
the two has surfaced.

Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden is roaming the mountainside unchecked
with his aides, making threats against Americans via videos and audio
tapes.

At a time when the United States should put more resources into
gathering intelligence into finding and dismantling al-Qaida, the
United States is having difficulty providing the necessary resources
and means to keep Afghanistan safe.

And uniting different groups of Muslims who cannot agree with each other.

“So simply, it’s chaos, and it’s going to be chaos for a relatively long time to go,” Fattah says.

Life Editorial Page Editor Nick Buonodono can be reached for comment at oped@cm-life.com.