Crowning of a Crony President

November 22, 2009
Crowning of a Crony President
By Saeed Qureshi
Despite his umpteen follies, and in the face of a bogus election façade, Hamid Karzai has against assumed the presidency in Kabul. The degeneracy of a poltical system is manifest in the exigent way this most mind boggling anti- democratic feat was surmounted with the explicit blessing of America. If this is the color of the democracy America wants the occupied lands to paint with, then better we bury the pious platitudes of turning the world into an abode of legitimate governance. “That was the lesser evil and the only viable way-out”, argue the proponents of such a horrifying joke with the franchise of the people.
Nevertheless, it is vile and would remain a moral baggage for the overseas torch bearers of democratic orders and representative dispensations. Hamid Karzai is an outright stooge and a declared puppet of America. He is an incompetent, sluggish person imposed for the second term on a fractious and bleeding country that desperately needs veritable healers. Instead of messiahs this god forsaken country has a senseless crony who has no moral and poltical credentials to stay for another term as president.
At his swearing-in-ceremony, the birds of the same flock were visible with their backlog of unlovely deeds. Here was, Attired in Sindhi costumes, Pakistan’s president Asif Ali Zardari exuding the stubborn notoriety that he shares with his counterpart in Kabul? And no less a luminary than the American secretary of state was also present to bless and authenticate the American approval of a ceremony that was a blatant insult to humanity and civilized world at large. There is another Pol Pot or Chiang Kai-Shek or a Suharto to preside over a god damned country, fast turning into a graveyard. So much for the, sovereignty and democratic genre of a state trampled under the jackboots of the powerful west!
Since the Second World War, United States has been involved in internecine wars in various parts of the world; the latest being fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. The history of the last six decades, after the Second World War, bears out the sordid fact that United States always propped up pliant dictators or phony democratic dispensations against the popular leaders, for docile cronyism. In Pakistan too, it was first General Ziaul Haq, followed by General Mushrraf and now the alter ego of Musharraf in the grab of Asif Zardari. Let us leave the other American camp followers of the past or the present.
For obvious reasons it is utterly impossible for Karzai to survive even for a day after the exit of American or NATO forces. Keeping in view the nature of the fighting, it’s forgone that sooner than later the occupation armies will have to quit Afghanistan. With their departure Karzai will have to also say goodbye to his motherland. But if it was not Karzai to serve the west, it could have been someone else to play the same mercenary role. Karzai is just a symbol of cronyism that survives as long its promoters remain on the stage. The people like Karzai may not be blamed for their despicable surrogate role. Such individuals are the product of circumstances and vanish after they have played their part as promoters of foreign agendas.
The foreign occupation of Afghan starting with the Soviet forces in 1979 has cost this country of unique landscape and rugged beauty, roughly 2 million human casualties: the material destruction apart. It would take decades before the Afghan society comes out of a lingering trauma, the agonizing paranoid and the disastrous reflections of a war imposed by the mighty powers in pursuit of their blighted agendas aimed at coveting the resource rich lands.
With a pacifist Obama at the helm in America, there are strong indications to hope that United States, with the apron string of NATO, would get rid of this futile war in the near future. America and the west should stop worrying as to how Afghanistan would look like after they beat a retreat. If the main objective is to annihilate Taliban and al-Qaida, then let this task be handled by the Afghan themselves. Pakistan’s example is instructive where Taliban and Al-Qaida are on the run.
In the similar fashion, America can provide military and economic aid to the anti militants forces in Afghanistan by keeping herself aloof. That would be the pragmatic strategy with bright chances to bear fruit. The powerful west must seize this cardinal lesson that those times are over when occupation armies would stay on a conquered land for ages. America can befriend Afghanistan, if it wants to, even without the display if its military muscle and without embarking on military adventures that have lost their luster and utility in a world transforming into the so called global village. In the modern times, the reckless and unprovoked military adventures for occupation , in fact, tarnish the image of the occupiers.