Alphen,
Netherlands. 1 October. Mahatma Gandhi
once said, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world”. The swearing in of President Ashraf Ghani as
Afghanistan’s head of state this week is an important moment. It is the first peaceful, democratic hand-over
of power in Afghanistan’s history.
No-one should under-estimate the importance of the moment or the
achievement for Afghanistan and democracy in a country deeply divided by ethnicity,
power and traditions and which is too often consumed from within by elite corruption
and a criminal economy. Equally, President
Ghani faces immense challenges. He came
to power in a disputed election and will need to provide leadership Afghanistan
has never known at a particularly dangerous moment. Is he up to it?
President
Ghani and I have engaged on several occasions at meetings over the years. He is without doubt a brilliant man who
always impresses and who has an unrivalled understanding of his country and its
challenges. The very nature of our
engagement at such events was itself fascinating. My approach was to look at the challenge of
Afghanistan from an unashamedly Western viewpoint. This is because having looked at Western
strategy in Afghanistan and written several big reports on the challenges posed
I thought it important to be clear; Western powers were not in Afghanistan out
of an act of charity whatever the rhetoric to the contrary. It was pure, naked national interest that
drove the Western powers into Afghanistan and it is the self-same interests which
has driven most of them out.
Ghani’s
response to me showed his strengths and his weaknesses. In our exchanges I was always careful to bow
to his knowledge of Afghanistan and simply listen. His love for and his deep knowledge of his
country is something to behold. However,
he also suffers from the weakness of conceit shared by many brilliant people. A very clear weakness evident on several
occasions (and not just to me) was his occasionally dismissive belief that he
knew about the interests, strategy and policy of my country far better than me. He was wrong.
Part
of his ‘certainty’ was the natural defensiveness of anyone who is part of the
Washington ‘thinktocracy’. To survive in
DC think-tanks one must know everything, all of the time and never be wrong
about anything. However, too often the
Ghani lecture (for that is what it was) was not so much an analysis of Western
interests as a wish list of his ideas for a permanent Afghanistan-centric
Western interest. This led him to
believe that Afghanistan and by extension Ghani himself were and are far more
central to the national security of Western powers than was ever the case.
This
juxtaposition between leader and thinker, informed and inspired leadership and
wishful thinking is probably the place where Ghani’s presidency will succeed or
fail. If he approaches his task as an
elevated Washington think-tanker he will fail.
Indeed, as President Ghani he needs to be able to look down upon ideas
from the heights of power and great responsibility rather than up at power via
a simple exchange of ideas without great responsibility, which is where I live.
Furthermore,
to succeed Ghani will need to achieve and reconcile two almost contradictory
missions both of which concern the ‘normalisation’ of Afghanistan as a state. On the one hand, President Ghani must build
on the very genuine sense of nationhood that most Afghans feel irrespective of
ethnicity if he is to create a state called Afghanistan that is more than a
giant security complex. On the other
hand, President Ghani must deal with the consequences of ‘success’ that ‘normalisation’
entails, i.e. the more normal Afghanistan becomes the less interested the US
and indeed other allies will be in Afghanistan and by extension him.
With
this week’s signing of the Bilateral Security Agreement with the US and the
exemption of American forces from prosecution under Afghan law the security effort
to buttress the new Afghan state and Ghani’s presidency has been physically reinforced. The Agreement means some 9800 US personnel
can in principle stay in Afghanistan in a training and mentoring capacity until
at least 2024. This is important. However, for Ghani to be legitimate in the
eyes of Afghans Kabul cannot again become synonymous with force or a protected
canton of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF). Indeed, if that happens Kabul will again be
seen simply as a Western-imposed distant elite ‘legitimised’ by American, i.e.
foreign power. This is something the
Taliban, the Haqqani Network and the many fellow-travellers amongst the tribal
and clan leaders will exploit, particularly in the Pashtun lands and quite possibly
with the assistance of Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence. If that happens Afghanistan will be cast back
not moved forward.
Therefore,
the true test of President Ghani will be the emergence of some form of civil
society across Afghanistan itself buttressed by the just rule of law. It will see an Afghanistan further
established on an economy that moves steadily away from the cultivation and
exploitation of hard narcotics and which is properly re-integrated into the
wider regional economy. To achieve the
demilitarisation and decriminalisation of Afghanistan President Ghani will need
to stamp down hard on corruption in Kabul and the regional capitals and reach
out to Afghanistan’s powerful and troublesome neighbours. Above all he will need to lead a real
government of national unity in close partnership with Afghanistan’s new ‘Chief
Executive’ and presidential rival Abdullah Abdullah. Such a strategy will be at least as important
as reliance on his many contacts in elite Washington.
Here
is my concern. My reading of President
Ghani is that on occasions he too often allows an elevated ego to cloud a masterful
intellect. Indeed, he has an insecurity
about him at times which renders him susceptible to the charms of those who ‘agree’
with him out of self-interest. The
President will need to realize that he cannot be an expert on all things and
have the strength to seek wise counsel even if he is an if not the acknowledged
expert on how to build a broken state.
President
Ashraf Ghani is no Gandhi. However,
Ghani has it in him to be a truly great Afghan leader if he allows himself to rise
to the status of his elevated office (as indeed he can) and yet retain the
openness of mind to listen. There is one
thing of which I am sure; President Ashraf Ghani will certainly imbue the Presidency
of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan with the respect and
dignity that the Afghan people need and deserve.
As
Gandhi also said, “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the
service of others”.
Good
luck, Mr President.
Julian
Lindley-French
