"In Afghanistan, an air of hope"

Terry Glavin reflects on his recent time in the country, and why the fight is worth it. A long piece in the National Post, well worth reading (more at his blog, e.g.):

Terry Glavin relates a tale of two Kabuls: A city terrorized by jihadist intimidation, a population fuelled by determination. The overwhelming message from Afghans to the West: Please stay

Among the many things that are likely to surprise a visitor to this city is the Dari version of Marilyn Manson's Personal Jesus that's playing on the radio these days. There is also the exuberant courtesy, solicitousness and friendliness of the place, and the fact that at least four million people live here now. That's about 10 times the population of 30 years ago. The city's motor registry department adds 8,000 new vehicles to its rolls every month.

I have no excuse to be surprised. I'm well-travelled, I've made Afghanistan a bit of a personal study over the past few years, I'm a co-founder of the Canada-Afghanistan Solidarity Committee, and among my committee colleagues I count several Kabuli emigres and activists who have spent a great deal of time here.

Still, nothing quite prepares a visitor for certain things, not least the spectacular contrast between the cosseted little universe inhabited by Kabul's "international community" overclass and the gritty, raucous reality of everyday life among Kabul's rambunctious masses. It's as though there are two completely different Kabuls in the world. There's the city that routinely shows up in English-language dailies -- a miniature, Central Asian version of Stalingrad during the siege -- and then there's the one you never hear about, a bustling, heartbreakingly poor but hopeful and splendid city.

The Kabul known to the outside world is the city the Sunday Telegraph judged "as dangerous as Baghdad at its worst" shortly after I arrived here. This is the Kabul you can see from the verandahs of the city's justifiably jittery foreign diplomats, aid-agency bureaucrats and journalists. It's the one with helicopters always flying overhead, and rapid-fire text messages on everyone's fancy cellphones containing intelligence bulletins about the latest assassination attempts and kidnappings.

Another city entirely is the Kabul I came to know during three weeks of interviews with human rights lawyers, polio victims, almond sellers, seamstresses, football players, cab drivers, teachers and beggars. This the Kabul of the souks and bazaars, the bus stops and back alleys; and no matter what you read in the headlines, its citizens are among the most welcoming, happily boisterous and hospitable people on Earth...

Update: Mr Glavin expands at his blog:

...
[The Post article]...is a slightly abbreviated version of my essay in Democratiya, here.

The National Post version is accompanied by an editorial, "Our Mission in Afghanistan," with which there is much to agree, but which is also partly wrong, in two important ways.

Firstly, ". . .were we not to remain firm on our target withdrawal date, the Afghan government would not take seriously its need to bring its army and police up to the levels needed to maintain national and local security once we and other NATO nations are gone." Secondly, the editorial asserts that the Afghan people "have little taste for such Western preoccupations as feminism, free speech, due process, religious pluralism, literacy and even democracy itself. Our Canadian presumption that ordinary Afghans want the same sort of society we have, with the same sort of freedoms, turned out to be an act of psychological projection. . ."

On the first point, we don't need a firm target date to force the Afghan government to take more seriously the need to build up a competent and effective army and police force. ISAF and the U.S. have been taking this objective less seriously than the Afghan government has, and indeed NATO's laggardly approach to these challenges has been one of the prime causes of disaffection between Hamid Karzai and Britain's Gordon Brown.

More importantly, this business about Afghan disinterest in "Western preoccupations" such as women's rights, free speech, democracy and so on, is simply groundless and wrong. First, these values are not "western," and secondly, the vast majority of Afghans do want their version of "the same sort of freedoms" Canadians enjoy - including the right of women to work, to go to school, and to run for office - and they have said so, time and again, in poll after poll after poll.

Here's just a few:

National Democratic Institute of International Affairs: "Afghan Perspectives on Democracy: A Report on Focus Groups in the Kabul Area on the Eve of the Emergency Loya Jirga." May, 2002. http://www.accessdemocracy.org/library/1411_af_report_052802.pdf

Human Rights Research and Advocacy Consortium (HRRAC): "Speaking Out: Afghan
Opinions on Rights and Responsibilities." November, 2003.
http://www.dd-rd.ca/site/_PDF/publications/women/HRCspeakingOut.pdf

National Democratic Institute of International Affairs: "A Society in Transition: Focus Group Discussions in Afghanistan." December, 2003.
http://www.accessdemocracy.org/library/1677_af_focusgroups_120103.pdf

Asia Foundation / Afghan Media Resource Center: "Democracy In Afghanistan." July 13, 2004.
http://www.asiafoundation.org/pdf/afghan_voter-ed04.pdf

Human Rights Research and Advocacy Consortium (HRRAC): "Take the Guns Away: Afghan Voices on Security and Elections." September, 2004.
http://www.afghanadvocacy.org/documents/TaketheGunsAwayEnglish.pdf

Center for Strategic and International Studies: "Voices of a New Afghanistan." June 14, 2005.
http://www.csis.org/media/csis/press/ma_2005_0715.pdf

ABC News Poll: "Life in Afghanistan." December 7, 2005.
http://abcnews.go.com/images/Politics/998a1Afghanistan.pdf

Program on International Policy Attitudes (University of Maryland) / D3 Systems / Afghan Center for Social and Opinion Research, Kabul: "Poll of Afghanistan." January 11, 2006 .
http://65.109.167.118/pipa/pdf/jan06/Afghanistan_Jan06_quaire.pdf

Asia Foundation / Afghan Center for Social and Opinion Research: "A Survey of the Afghan People." November 9, 2006.
http://www.asiafoundation.org/pdf/AG-survey06.pdf

Human Rights Watch: "The Human Cost: The Consequences of Insurgent Attacks in Afghanistan." April, 2007.
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2007/afghanistan0407/afghanistan0407web.pdf

Environics / D3 Systems / Afghan Centre for Social and Opinion Research: "2007 Survey of Afghans." October 18, 2007.
Environics_2007_Survey_of_Afghans_methodology.pdf

You're welcome.