OpEds—

By Dr Hakim
http://warisacrime.org/content/amerikistan-not-afghanistan-warocracy-not-democracy

[A]fghanistan Analysts Network reported on 9^th July that “he (Abdullah Abdullah ) told the crowd that he had received phone calls from both US President Barack Obama and State Secretary John Kerry and had been told that Kerry would make a stop-over in Kabul on Friday. It was clear he wanted to see what could come of that.”

Abdullah Abdullah’s phone call with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry who arrived in Kabul today, shows that it is the U.S. government, and not Afghans, who run this country.

This is Amerikistan, not Afghanistan.

Even U.S. Senator Carl Levin has chipped in with his suggestion for this land which is about 10,864 kilometres away from America’s eastern shores.

I’m academically puzzled at why both Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani, who will speak with John Kerry today, have such confidence in promising to promptly sign the U.S. Afghanistan Bilateral Security Agreement should they win the Afghan Presidential elections when the Obama administration’s policies in the Middle East and in this part of the world are far from effective, and largely war-like.

As they make their deals with the White House in Kabul, President Obama has been ordering U.S. military advisors and troops into fragmenting Iraq and has okayed Israel’s new and continued offensive in Gaza, not policies that are entirely friendly to Muslims who are keeping their fast in those war-torn places.

If anything, Gandhi’s non-violent call to ‘Quit India’ needs to be made — let John Kerry be warmly welcomed according to genuine Afghan hospitality, but also be respectfully asked to ‘Quit Afghanistan’!

U.S taxpayer money should be used to address the basic human needs of more than 40 million Americans living below the poverty line in the wealthiest country in the world, and not to finance what Abdullah Abdullah himself calls ‘industrial-scale’ fraud in the Afghan elections, and what former British Afghan envoy to Afghanistan, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles called ‘the utter, unanswerable folly of Britain’s military intervention’ in Afghanistan.

Outgoing President Karzai’s cynicism about U.S. foreign policy is not inappropriate at this time of escalating militarism. Such doubtful questioning is human, healthy, and perhaps even critical.

It could be an important peaceful demand for fresh participatory democracy, and not tiring warocracy.

Dr Hakim is a medical doctor who has done humanitarian and social enterprise work in Afghanistan for the past 9 years. He is the 2012 recipient of the International Pfeffer Peace Prize.
—