Nation Building

Most of you have probably heard about the fraud in the Afghan election. They are now planning a second round of voting. One major hurdle appears to be that it would have to be held in winter, which would make it logistically impossible in much of the north.

I think this drives home the absurdity of the whole enterprise. Here we have a disunited, tribal society which has never been a nation as such, with borders based on arbitrary lines drawn in colonial times. Illiteracy is widespread. It is commonly accepted that the authority of the "central" government doesn't extend much beyond Kabul, if it exists at all. Local power rests in the hands of warlords, tribal leaders or the taliban, which are not necessarily distinct categories. There is a war ongoing in much of the country, and it is occupied by the militaries of foreign powers.

It seems risible to imagine that these are conditions which will allow for a representative democracy.

To top it all off, it turns out that the mighty mechanisms of representative government in the country, which people for some reason seem to agree would have been legitimate if not for fraud, can be defeated by snow.