President of Afghanistan: An expert in state-building
The runaway
Wen | Wu Shuang
In the past two days, the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, the Taliban have attacked kabul like a bamboo, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has "fled" overseas overnight, Saigon moment, imperial cemetery and other keywords have been screened.
While everyone was busy comparing the striking similarities between the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam that year, a do-gooder on Twitter flipped through a screenshot of an article published by Ghani in the Los Angeles Times in February 1989, and the first sentence read: "The Soviets have left Afghanistan, and it is only a matter of time before the puppet regime in Kabul collapses." ”
Not only is the style of the withdrawal of American troops so similar, but even the fate of the puppet regime is so similar, is it really as "Let the Bullets Fly" said - at that moment, just at this moment, can it be so similar?
The "puppet regime" that Ghani calls a "puppet regime" is a Democratic Republic of Afghanistan led by the Soviet-backed People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan. However, in the face of the same enemy, the Taliban, Ghani's government has only lasted for four months since U.S. President Joe Biden announced the imminent withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan in April this year, to August 6 when the Taliban captured the first provincial capital city, and then on August 15, when the Taliban captured the capital Kabul.
In the early hours of August 16, Ghani posted on Facebook acknowledging his escape from Afghanistan, saying that if he chose to stay, Kabul would face "destruction and destruction" and more compatriots would be martyred, so "in order to avoid a lot of bloodshed, I think I had better choose to leave."
Ghani chose to "flee" presumably because he learned what he called the lesson of the leader of the "puppet regime", Mohammed Najibra. In September 1996, after the Taliban invaded Kabul, they brutally executed Najibra. As a lesson from the past, Ghani probably doesn't want to repeat the mistakes of the past.
In fact, before entering politics, Ghani was an anthropologist. He is a Doctor of Philosophy from Columbia University and has taught at prestigious Universities in the United States, such as the University of California, Berkeley, and Johns Hopkins University. In the English-speaking world, Afghanistan is widely regarded as a typical "failed state."
As an Afghan who has long been in The English-speaking academic community, he has been focusing on State-Building for so many years and founded the Institute for State Effectiveness. In 2008, Ghani co-authored a book, Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured World.
In the book, Ghani argues that some 40-60 of the world's "failed states," including Afghanistan, have become the source of systemic crises that generate conflict, instability, smuggling of weapons, drugs, populations, and even the export of terrorism as the most serious threats to global stability. There is a huge "sovereignty gap" in these failed countries. On the one hand, the international system recognizes the complete legal sovereignty of these States, but on the other hand, these States do not have the actual capacity to exercise their sovereignty. In the face of problems, in the past, the international community was always accustomed to resorting to force and imposing some order from the outside. But the example of Afghanistan shows that force cannot solve the problem. Despite NATO's large military presence in Afghanistan, Afghanistan is now the world's largest heroin producer. The international community's various "win hearts and minds" campaigns have only attracted the hatred of Afghans.
Ghani argues that the solution is to build a state-building, and that peace, prosperity, and stability can only be guaranteed by building an effective state that can perform economic, political, and social functions and protect, improve, and fulfill civil rights. Only such an effective state can have legitimacy.
Although Ghani advocates a kind of "nation-building with a citizen approach", which means to involve the vast number of Afghan citizens in the process of nation-building, he does not misunderstand that it is not enough to have elections, on the contrary, he believes that one-time elections cannot provide legitimacy, after all, who wants to eat the soil with the votes? Legitimacy can only come from the ability to continuously expand, improve and fulfil civil rights.
Ghani argues that nation-building is the result of mutual cooperation between internal forces and the international community, so the nation-building process is a "double compact." The first is a contract with its own citizens, and the state must have the ability to improve and fulfill the rights of its citizens. The second is a compact with the international community to ensure that countries comply with international norms and international standards such as accountability and transparency.
Ghani's proposal actually reflects the common dilemma of many poor third world countries. Rights have a cost, protecting the rights of citizens is simple to say, but to protect and honor any rights, it costs money and requires the input of resources, in other words, national construction is very expensive, the question is where does the money come from? According to the thinking of Chinese, construction requires more or less certain external assistance, but the main thing is to rely on self-reliance, rely on their own strength, tighten the belt of their pants, and carry out high-intensity internal social mobilization.
It is clear that Ghani's vision is highly outward, and he is pinning his hopes on the assistance of the international community. Since we have taken the money of the international community, we must naturally give an account to the financial owners. He realized that elections could not solve the problem, which was a natural step forward from the previous "political democratization" studies, but the empowerment of his own citizens (empower/enfranchise) was still a very low-intensity social mobilization, and he could not find a way to truly mobilize his own people to participate in state-building.
Ghani's book was published in 2008, and after so many years, how effective has it been?
In 2020, Obama published a memoir, The Promised Land, reminiscing about his visit to Afghanistan in the summer of 2008. "Most of the rural areas of Afghanistan are not under kabul's control, Karzai rarely ventures out, and he relies not only on U.S. troops but also on sporadic alliances with local warlords to maintain his power," Obama said. ...... Viewed from the air, the village, made of mud and wood, blends in perfectly with the surrounding stone landscape, and there is almost no hardened pavement and power lines in sight. I wonder, how do the Afghans below see the Americans, and how do they view their presidents? Even, how do you view the 'Afghan nation-state'? I guess there's no concept. ”
After all these years, Ghani's "double contract" still seems to be standing still, so we see the opening scene: the story of a nation-building expert running away.
*This article was originally published in the "Jingluo Online Journal", thanks for the authorization to reprint!