Afghan Community of the Bay Area on Presidential Elections in Afghanistan.

Pictures of burqa clad women casting their votes and long queues outside polling stations dominated the news headlines on August 20. Presidential elections in Afghanistan had become a global event. Scores of journalists were in Afghanistan to cover the elections and scholars in the U.S. provided expert views on the election process and its wider fall-out. While journalists travelled half way across the world to highlight the Afghan opinion, the huge Afghan population in the U.S. went about their business as usual. I ventured into an Afghan community of the Bay Area in California to see how these Afghans felt about the elections. My encounter exposed me to some most frank and some highly thought-proving responses. These people were keen to talk to me but not on camera; though vocal the Afghans are very private people. My interactions gave me a picture very different from the one portrayed in the mainstream media.
Very few Afghans were ‘disturbed’ by what is happening in Afghanistan. There was a sense of concern and interest in the events taking place in the country but the geographical distance seemed to have created a lack of self-identification with the Afghan problems. Many people were aware that Presidential elections were taking place in the country but had no idea about who was contesting and explicitly spoke about their general lack of interest in the politics of Afghanistan.
Most of them were happy with the way President Karzai had governed. But surprisingly, when I asked them if they wanted to go back to Afghanistan, the instant reply was, “Some day, but not now.” Though pleased with President Karzai’s governance they seemed skeptical of the ground situation. It appeared to me that Hamid Karzai was the only name they knew; even the name Abdullah Abdullah sounded alien to them.
There is no sense of opposition to the presence of international forces in Afghanistan. Most of them thought that America was doing a good job in re-building the country. The owner of an afghan restaurant, who refused to be identified, held the political establishment of Pakistan responsible for fuelling domestic instability in Afghanistan. According to him, Afghans and Pakistanis go along very well, but the Pakistani leadership wanted to keep Afghanistan weak as a means of receiving U.S. assistance in arms and money.
The younger generation, living in the U.S. for years, did not closely identify with the problems of the country. The elderly, who have fond memories of their days in Afghanistan, failed to relate to the current situation due to the language barrier. Most of these elderly people only spoke Farsi and were unable to fully understand the news reports published in English.
Having the gauged the opinion of the common Afghans, I ventured to talk to someone who was an Afghan but had followed the recent developments more closely. I got the opportunity to talk to Rona Popal, Executive Director of The Afghan Coalition and Dr. Farid Younus, Prof. at the California State University.
According to Rona Popal, there was general disinterest in the U.S. Congress with regard to Afghanistan. She had approached Nancy Pelosi and Barbrar Boxer in June this year with views of how the Afghan Diaspora viewed the Afghan situation. Her objective was to enrich the U.S. policy making process by complimenting the ‘official expert opinion’ with the views of common Afghans. To her surprise, her efforts were not even acknowledged, she never received a reply from the Congressmen. In her view the position of the Afghan women is still severely challenged. The two women candidates for the President were under-resourced and the majority of the Afghan women who voted were even not able to read the ballot paper and identify the candidates.
In the words of Dr. Younus, what exists in Afghanistan is not a democracy but an ‘ethnocracy’; Afghans don’t vote for principles of freedom but for their ethnic groups. According to him the model of capitalist democracy was ill-suited for Afghanistan. As a point of elaboration he stated that the candidates running for Presidency had to deposit a sum of $50,000 to contest the elections. In an under-developed economy of Afghanistan such a qualification was ironical. The pre-requisite for democracy in Afghanistan, was paraphrased by Dr. Younus, as ‘SEE’ – Security, Economy and Education. In Dr. Younus’s words, “Thirty years ago when I left Afghanistan, we were poor but we were not desperate, we were poor but we were not destitute….Afghanistan has been made into a Mexico at the border.”
I found a very sharp contrast in the views of the common Afghans here and the more thoughtful analysts. For the common Afghans Hamid Karzai would make a good President. For the analysts neither Karzai not Abdullah is the solution; delinking the Afghanistan’s security from the strategic interests of the global powers would be the only solution.
Tapping into the views of the Afghan Diaspora ranging from bakery workers to professionals could provide valuable insights for Afghanistan’s reconstruction. The Afghan Diaspora is uniquely positioned between appreciating the Afghan traditions and living in Western democracies. Their balancing act could provide clues for creating a traditionally acceptable variant of democracy for Afghanistan.