When something goes wrong, people start looking at what went wrong. It’s simply human nature to find the infected part and fix it. For example, if a car breaks down, a mechanic looks for the fault and fixes it. In the same sense doctors and people in other professions deal with their customers on a daily basis, but what if a nation goes wrong? What if a society collapses? What if a system as a whole sinks? What if…
Humans being a social organism (rather than social animals because some may object to the word animal) have to live a disciplined life. For that discipline to prevail, a collective decision is made to have the best amongst them as their leaders. However, according to one view the simple case mentioned above just went wrong in my country. Pick a book on Afghanistan or its history what you find is war, battles, conflicts, arguments and all the things that could ultimately bring them to destruction. And it did. Afghans are a destroyed nation. They are no more the people who could claim to have added anything substantial to human civilization except new techniques of war. However, I may contradict this view as well although I agree with what this view given above in the sense that afghans have never had mercy on themselves but history and luck queen sometimes did smile on them by providing them such leaders who could have changed their destiny had they (afghans) given them a good chance to act. Let me put forth such two individuals in a chronological order in the history of modern day Afghanistan:
1. The first such names that comes to my mind is that of King Amanullah Khan who stood firm against the British occupation in 1919 and founded the present day Afghanistan. He had a dream of making Afghanistan a developed nation but his firm stance didn’t work against his own countrymen, who were feudal, fundamentalist and afraid of his land and social reforms. Feudal feared he may grab their huge wealth and land while the fundamentalist clerics feared their life and role in their ultimate zone of influence. He was thus very shamefully replaced by an illiterate, caravan looter Habibullah, whose dark rule of nine months is remembered as Bache Saqaw rule. (Bache Saqaw for Habibullah because he was a son of water bearer, who would sell water to the common man in open markets in the old days). What a bad luck to replace an enlightened hardworking king with a person of such a low caliber?
2. The second person that afghan history witnessed as their destiny shaper appeared in mid 1970s in the form of the then King Zahir Shah’s cousin, Sardar Dawood Khan who over threw the snail pacer king in a coup and overtook as the president of Afghanistan, thus he became the founder of a republic Afghanistan. He remained firm in power for over four years in which he did all the things that the King (Now titled as the late-father of the nation) couldn’t do in forty years of his kingdom. He modified Kabul to a modern city bringing it out of the ruined walls of old days. He introduced many projects in Afghanistan that were funded by donor countries like US and Saudi Arabia. Soon this unlucky man was overthrown in a bloody coup led by a communist party leader Noor Muhammad Taraki with the direct influence of USSR in 1979 which brought an angry world on USSR.
Ever since, Dawood Khan’s reign as the president of modern republic Afghanistan, no leader has dared serve the interest of the public. Name anyone of the leaders who succeeded one after the other in military coups or forcefully in other ways, and they have served their vested personal interests rather than the poor, poverty stricken afghan nation. The current administration of President Hamid Karzai, who was installed as a result of US invasion in its war against terrorism, is the world’s most notorious administration for charges of corruption that puts the state of Afghanistan as one of the most corrupt states in the world.
Now that democracy prevails although not inheritance but as a gift from outsiders, the ball is in afghan nation’s court as to who should be chosen in the upcoming elections. They have to see whether they are going to elect a person who could change their destiny and has a vision for a prosperous Afghanistan or a person who is as lazy as Zahir Shah, or as powerless as Karzai or should they elect a president who could live up well upto the wishes of the afghan nation like Amanullah Khan Ghazi or Dawood Khan? The decision is yours (afghan nation). If you are waiting for a messiah like superstitious fundamentalists, I am afraid to say that the luck lady is not happy with you nor history is going to forgive the atrocities committed in the streets of Kabul in the name of holy war (jihad). So choose the person with a wise decision so that the whole nation shouldn’t come under scrutiny again or accused of wrong judgment.
