The argument for a “chief executive” of Afghanistan is interesting, leaving aside the many legal, ethical, and constitutional hurdles that would have to be surmounted for it to work.
“The office of president is … a 48-hour job given a 24-hour time frame,” says William Maley, an Afghanistan expert at Australian National University. “Something to relieve the burdens of the office is vital. On the other hand, simply going down the path of having a CEO as an agent of the president, there’s no foundation for institutionalizing the office.”
As president, Karzai controls the appointments of governors and heads of ministries. With his popularity eroding, Karzai pulls this lever of power to manage political rivals, most recently choosing notorious warlord Muhammad Fahim to be one of his two running mates.
William Maley—author of a legitimately essential book on pre-Taliban Afghanistan—is worth listening to. But what’s so interesting in this story, aside from labeling Fahim “notorious” and ignoring the many other notorious figures in Afghan power politics, is how much the CEO idea is not needed.
Some analysts suspect the CEO, if instituted, would be tasked with coordinating the relationship between the Afghan government and the international community. Westerners are frustrated with working through ministers who owe their positions to patronage. Afghans are frustrated that their government lacks the capacity to oversee projects.
“A CEO might be someone who could be in control of monitoring all these projects that are implemented by the government or by donor countries, especially these contractors,” says Haroun Mir, a Kabul-based analyst. But he joins a chorus of reservations about the idea: “I don’t think it’s a good thing for democracy. A nonelected person would have huge influence of power in the country.” …
Yet in more than a dozen interviews across Kabul and in Bamiyan and Parwan provinces, northwest of the capital, voters mostly viewed Khalilzad as a strong administrator. Many didn’t mind having an American citizen in the No. 2 position.
Of course, if you hang out in generally pro-American areas (like Bamiyan) and talk to people who already receive lots of economic incentives from Bagram (which is in Parwan), then that’s your sample.
But really: so these analysts are saying that the big problem is international NGOs operating with ministers who owe their jobs and positions to patronage networks (and fealty to Karzai, don’t forget), and in the process lack the ability or capacity to monitor projects, so their solutions is… an American overseeing everything? And based on a tiny sample in very low-key mostly non-Pashtun areas, conclude that this has a lot of support?
Seems to me the fundamental problem is the extreme centralization of the Afghan government. When the International Community created the Afghan government at the Bonn Conference—which was convened and negotiated with many of the people currently asserting their opinions as if the last time they did that wasn’t a disaster—they created one of the most centralized political systems on earth. There is no such thing as local police—all fall under the Ministry of the Interior. There remains a disconnect in how the military tends to treat provincial and district-level officials, pretending they have the autonomy or mandate to represent their residents’ interests, when in reality they owe everything they have to being friends with Karzai (or paying the right bribe to the right person in the right ministry). A provincial governor is not a governor in the sense of, say—picking at random—Mark Sanford, and much more like a Political Agent in the British Empire: unelected pseudo-technocrats with contradictory goals and limited resources.
I mean, just look at the list of government ministries: there is a ministry for education and one for higher education; one for transport and one for “air transport and tourism;” one public works ministry and one water and electricity ministry but two development ministries—one urban and one rural; one reconstruction ministry but separate ministries for “mines and industries” and industries; separate ministries for “Information & Culture,” and Communication; and the list just goes on and on. Each of these redundant ministries has a lot of political appointees, and those appointees rest solely on Karzai doling them out at the right price. Then there’s the inevitable infighting to manage: for example, now that there’s a Balochi from Nimroz in charge of the Ministry of Border and Tribal Affairs, what can Karzai give the Zadran of Loya Paktia so they don’t feel cut out of the national government and revert to Padcha Khan’s borderline rebellion over Gardez?
No wonder he doesn’t have the time the govern. He’s too busy navigating a disastrously constructed government. Just looking at how it’s built, it would be a surprise if a wealthy country in Europe could operate with such outrageous redundancy; everyone’s time would be spent in vicious turf battles, not actually doing their jobs.
Into this mix, we do not need Zalmay Khalilzad, or any other outsider, mucking things up and playing kingmaker. In fact, that would make things worse (and Zalmay in particular should not under any circumstances be given such a free hand to build his own patronage network in Afghanistan). What is needed, rather, is serious constitutional reform. Get rid of all the ridiculous overabundance of unfunded ministries, and focus on the essentials. Cut out the insane number of middlemen required to keep the bribes flowing by simplying the political structure of the government. The change is much deeper than any kind of horrid official middleman could ever be expected to address.
And for love of all that is holy, hold district elections this year. It’s a good four years since they should have happened. I get that we don’t always know where district boundaries are and the dozens of unofficial districts make things annoying and difficult, but these were supposed to happen years ago. They’re another reason we should all shake our heads at how our astounding arrogance and negligence have created such a mess.
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1771 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust
{ 3 comments }
America should do it now, change the law.
you mite as well piss them off now before you start your new plans, then try win the public over.
they need to change the goverment.
force poliygrath test. & also force back ground checks off all people in goverment.
any people that have any think to do with terrorist or crime or any of there family members, can not run or join goverment.
they should start to pull aside all the people that have been seen killing the taliban. then they sould form a new goverment with them people / old troops / trusted troops, that will be trained by goverments around the world / over looked & watched.
CKIBAG, while your post is rather poorly spelled and ungrammatical, you do have a point.
We need a grassroots-level involvement in Afghan politics, but the paradox is that most of the rural Pashtuns (for example) have seemingly resigned themselves to the fact that the government is overwhelmingly corrupt and that government agents are above the law.
Look, for example, at district sub-governors. When they get in over their heads in corruption in one district, they’re simply swapped for an equally corrupt, incompetent sub-governor from another district (often irrespective of their tribal identity, or any other reasonable consideration).
Someone once mentioned that the only way to get into Afghan politics is to commit a crime or be linked to the Taliban… otherwise, there’s nothing for the central government to blackmail them over (to get them to fall into line). We need the honest, rural, hard-working Afghans to get into positions of responsibility, but between their resignation to the corrupt state of the government and the danger of being killed for cooperating with the government, there’s not much possibility or incentive for them to do such a thing.
There’s is already a Senior Minister, why can’t that person do the stuff they want this “CEO” to do?
Or just change the constitution and create a Prime Minister role.