Other editorials & articles from this author
Upcoming Afghan Elections: Security, Fairness and Commitment
April 15, 2004
April 7, 2004
Afghanistan's Transitional Government’s difficulties to establish its authority:
Regalian Functions
It used to be that a State and its Government were recognized as such because the country’s ruling authority was able to perform three regalian functions: mint money, keep an army and collect taxes.
You are probably going to immediately interject that there are many other functions and services that a government should perform to be accepted as such and that this “basic” definition, to put it simply, is old, even medieval!
As basic and undemanding as this definition of what a government ought to be to be able to regard itself as the legitimate authority leading over the destiny of a country may be, it is unfortunate to witness that the Karzai Government can claim to have performed only one of these three basic stately prerogatives at this date: mint money.
One should see merit where it lies. The Governor of the Da Afghanistan Bank, Ahadi, did an unexpectedly good job of implementing a savvy and smooth introduction of the reevaluated Afghani currency. But as for the two other basic regalian functions – i.e. the army and the taxes – the least we can say is that the Karzai Government shines by its quasi-inexistence.
The US backed, funded and trained National Army of Afghanistan had an initial target of around 70, 000 troopers in the short to mid-term and probably double or more than that number in a near distant future. As it stands now, after almost two years of efforts, Kabul’s army has a “flexible” incorporation of seven to ten thousands soldiers, depending on the flow between incoming recruits and…fleeing ones!
For now, the role of the National Army is played by the American expeditionary troops (12,000), the UN-endorsed ISAF (6,000) and the regional warlords who entertain personal militias five to ten times the size of the fledging Afghan National Army (ANA).
The irony of the whole affair is that the US in Afghanistan keeps paying the warlords for their “participation in the war on terror,” thus contributing to directly undercut any chance the ANA may have to grow and stand on its feet. The Afghan Defense Minister Fahim himself maintains at the gates of Kabul a militia estimated at 25,000 men, while the ANA that he officially is in charge of, remains a ridiculously debilitated martial body. Obviously, the persistence of such paradoxes is not helpful for the Karzai Government the Bush Administration is so whole-heartedly backing.
Taxes are the third of the “regalian” privileges that the US-backed transitional authority in Kabul has been unable to appropriate. Grand warlords – “Emirs” – controlling all (land) ports of entry to Afghanistan, are the ones collecting taxes locally and from merchants alike. There is some logic to this. With their militias and their “self-rule,” the warlords are the one who actually rule these “fiefdoms”. Kabul is far away. The only faces of authority inhabitants of Mazar, Herat, Jalalabad, Bamyan or Kandahar ever see are those of local “commanders” who perform in the double capacity of civil administrators - possibly paid by Kabul– and militia members/leaders; for financial and local reasons, their legitimacy will of course often go to the latter.
We are being charitable here not to mention what today people expect of their government/leadership, the first of which is probably that it is elected (legitimacy) and that it stands to perform the stately functions it was elected for and acts for the well being of its people.
If the US-backed Karzai Government is to gain credibility, then its mentors (US) and its tutors (UN) need to take the appropriate steps to allow it to claim its legitimacy through real (!) elections and assert its authority through massively shifting resources towards the rapid and visible build up of the army, the police and other security bodies. Without security provided nationwide by the State and thus the dismantlement of local militias, it is difficult to imagine how Afghanistan can move forward towards “normalization” whilst the fear that the country is on its way to become a “narco-state” looms on the horizon!
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