Afghanistan Times
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It’s not a good start at all. But chances and the trend of the time stand in favor of the government. If you get to the rule of law, human rights improvement, and an immediate end to the endemic corruption, perhaps you have gone too far. Touching on political and economic issues require long term remedies and efforts. And the government has a good excuse—coming into the power corridor much recently. Another good excuse is the start was much chaotic. The government doesn’t need to be unnerved. What it needs is go into overdrive. What it must do is to start by doing what’s necessary. And look at what is possible. At the end of the day it will pick the courage to do with is the most difficult. But it did perhaps the opposite. The new government at its very outset touched upon some biggest challenges. Which unfortunately were not taken to their logical conclusions. As long as President Ashraf Ghani and CEO Abdullah are in power corridor, it’s never too late to do reforms and wage stern war on corruption, improve good governance and equitable distribution of wealth. If it lacks the capacities, it will try to bank upon rhetoric and fabricating excuses. But it must know that governance is about not where you start, in which circumstances you take it from another, but it is where you start. And it is where you are going. As long as political leaders blame others for the mess and chaos, such leaders are failures, always. Then it looks quite futile to expect good from them. They don’t need to bide their time waiting for the situation to heal on its own.
Now President Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah are on the driving seat. They cannot blame circumstances as those equipped with visions and leadership qualities drive nations out of challenges. Following the tragic tale of Fakhunda’s lynching when an angry mob beat her to death and then set her dead body on fire therefore human rights should top Afghanistan summit agenda. Those who are supposed to defend citizens from being tortured and killed were holding their mobile sets out to film the entire harrowing episode of lynching. What they did during the entire period of torture, stoning, beating, and setting her dead body on fire exposed serious problems in the training of policemen.
The government must devise strategies how to fight the mindset that is deadliest, intolerant and prevalent in the society. For over 13 years, Kabul has been striving to achieve security, but sorrowfully at the cost of human rights. Violence has found roots in our society. But why? Because the ground is quite fertile for it. We will have to kill this fertility. This land has become a land of fear where you are always haunted by sense of fear. This sense of fear means you are going to be killed at any moment of your life. And that’s too for no reason and no crime. Is it the Afghanistan we want? And is it the Afghanistan that can give a safe, secure and peaceful future to our children and generations to come. The problem is government officials are living in barricaded castles. Powerful strongmen are being guarded by their legions of security guards, and commoners are prone to injustices, political and economic exploitations, and lynching like Farkhunda—who was ruthlessly killed under the very nose of the government in this capital city. Indeed, our political elite and those supposed to be guarding the citizens, fiddled while Rome was burning.
