politics for the 99%

Published on Russia Today RT, by Nadezhda Kevorkova, April 28, 2014:

The Americans never intended to help us build our country. Now Kabul is asking them not to leave Afghanistan so that the Taliban will not attack them,” a Pashtun from Kabul in his Moscow shop muses.
“Just imagine: we had 44 countries invading Afghanistan with modern weapons, satellite monitoring, tanks and missiles. The Taliban has an army of less than 20,000. We have 400,000 Afghan troops and 200,000 Americans with the most advanced weaponry. How is it possible that they can’t prevail over the Taliban?” he says.
A PhD-qualified engineer by profession, he trades a range of Oriental items from hookahs to incense sticks. We’ve been talking about the elections for two hours, with visitors coming in and leaving without being served, and other Afghans joining our discussion with eagerness.
There are only a handful of places in Moscow where you can get a glimpse of people from different Afghan tribes and social strata. One of them is a former hotel in the city suburbs housing a multitude of shops and firms owned by Afghans. They all retain close ties with their homeland, make regular visits and keep daily contact with their families and business partners.
Those who do business in Russia usually have quite a good background and a decent profession. They work here despite the fact the clans they come from fought the Soviet army in 1979-1989. But that was a long time ago. The US army has been in Afghanistan for 13 years and Afghans do not have much respect for either the Americans or those who they support.

Endangered elections:

Elections in the east are being increasingly associated with terror acts and mysterious problems with vote counting.
Ironically, political analysts may soon pick up some of the language used by journalists. The developments in Afghanistan and Iraq indicate that elections in a country with a US troop presence are always hailed as success, while a vote in a country left by US troops merely serves as a backdrop for terror attacks.
Curiously enough, in the old Western democracies the elites negotiate before the elections, whereas in Afghanistan, it looks like the election comes prior to negotiations. This seems to be the only explanation as to why it takes them almost three weeks to count the votes, and why they’ve postponed the announcement of the results for the 4th time. The election took place on April 5 and the votes were supposed to be counted by April 24. Then it was postponed to May 14, so that the second round could start on May 28.
I’d like to remind that four years ago, it took Iraq a record four months to count the votes from its election. The current prime minister stayed in office, but his bloc in the parliament lost one vote to the opposition.
The behind-the-scenes struggle continues in Afghanistan. It would be naïve to believe that the Afghan independent commission is unable to count quickly. The clans and advisers just didn’t rush it, as they were fighting for the second round and for the difference in votes.
Right now this difference has become more distinct, when the conventional anti-Americanism pole represented by Abdullah Abdullah got the upper hand over the most pro-American candidate, Ashraf Ghani.
This division is quite feeble though. Before the election they both had stated that they supported the presence of the US troops in the country. Whereas President Karzai finished his tenure with a patriotic gesture of refusing to sign the agreement for the US troop presence. He also took his brother off the presidential candidates’ list and directed his supporters to unlikely candidate Zamlai Rassoul.
At the moment, according to another preliminary count, Abdullah Abdullah wins this election. He looks more or less remote from the occupation forces compared to other candidates. His name is associated with Ahmad Shakh Massoud, who was mysteriously murdered on September 11, 2001. Many believe he was a Mujahideen physician, if not a Mujahideen himself.
Abdullah does have a flaw in his biography. From the viewpoint of a Pashtun, the main Afghan tribe, he is a Tajik, as is his mother. “Can a Tajik rule Afghanistan?” This is something any Pashtun would ask you, unless they are related to the occupation forces. Moreover, his name is related to the reputation of the Afghan Northern Alliance, which welcomed the US presence and had close cooperation with it.
However, for Afghans one’s origin isn’t the main concern. More importantly, these people who really value their independence feel that they have been invaded, in spite of the elections, speeches and promises. The behind-the-scenes war which they sense more clearly than the foreign observers do is a part of this invasion.

Difficult choice: … //

… (full long text).

Links:

US sanctions won’t undermine Russian economy, on Russia Today RT, April 29, 2014;

Russia and Iran set to strike $10bn energy deal, on Russia Today RT, April 28, 2014;

Iraqi Election Fear: No One Is Safe Anymore – Interview on Spiegel Online International with Iraq’s former interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, conducted by Dieter Bednarz and Klaus Brinkbäumer, April 28, 2018 (Photo Gallery): Iraq’s former interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, is hoping to oust the current government in this week’s elections. He speaks to SPIEGEL about his belief that the Americans robbed him of power and about the country’s escalating violence …;

Egypte: le message politique derrière les condamnations de masse, dans l’Express.fr, par Marie Le Douaran, 28 avril 2014 … //
… De cette farce judiciaire et de ces verdicts hors-norme, il faut plus certainement retenir la pression politique qui pèse en Egypte, notamment sur la confrérie de l’ex-président, les Frères musulmans. Pour Sophie Pommier, spécialiste de l’Egypte, ces verdicts sont des messages envoyés à l’opposition “dans la perspective de l’élection présidentielle du printemps. Le régime ne veut pas de mobilisation de rue. Il tape donc très fort pour dissuader toute velléité de contestation, alors que les universités connaissent un nouveau vent de fronde”.