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Via Andrea Harris comes this news story that Zahir Shah has returned to Afghanistan, in part to preside over the Loya Jirgah that will determine the permanent government of Afghanistan. I hope that he can influence them not to choose a democratic form of government. And why do I say that? Because it's been a generation since democracy has had any meaning in Afghanistan other than "Wave a ballot with the boss thug's name at the television cameras and we won't kill you today" (it didn't have much meaning before that, either). IMHO, the best thing that HM Zahir can do is to translate Magna Carta into Pushtun, delete the clauses instead to respond to specific abuses of the time (with apologies to my Scottish readers -- if any -- I don't think the clause promising justice to the King of Scots has much meaning in here-and-now Afghanistan), and present it to the Loya Jirgah as his vision of the short-term Afghan future. Not to be morbid or callous here, but Zahir Shah is 87 years old. With the best will of everybody (which I don't think exists), he's not going to be around much longer. His last and best service to his country cannot be to give Afghanistan a democratic government -- he doesn't have the time, or the resources. Let that service be to give it a stable government that can evolve into a democracy -- as England did, even though the gang at Runnymede who imposed Magna Carta on John Softsword in the first place wouldn't have known democracy if it bit them on their collective backside. I don't have my copy of The Return of the King here with me, so I can't give an exact quote. In it, however, Gandalf says something to the effect that we can't guarantee to future generations what weather they will have for raising crops, we can only prepare the soil as best we can. Let Zahir Shah do that then, and leave governing the weather to the next generation. John "Akatsukami" Braue Sunday, April 21, 2002 |
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