International Community Must Get More Action From Afghanistan Government

[JimofPennsylvan]

Hopefully, what will come out of this international meeting in the Hague over Afghanistan will be more dramatic than what the media indicates what will occur. Leaders in the world have not focused on this super important point however an abundance of experts have spoken out about it extensively in the media. This point is that the Afghanistan framework for its government is terrible from the standpoint of giving ordinary Afghanistan a voice in government and in gaining ordinary Afghanistan citizens support and cooperation with the government. Specifically, regional governments in Afghanistan are weak and the President of Afghanistan can replace the heads of these regional governments at will which is an affront to ordinary Afghanistanis’ civil rights. This government design is a design doomed to failure. Afghanistan has to change its constitution to give regional governments more power and give the Afghanistan citizens residing in each region the power to select their top regional leader. If this is not done Afghanistanis that live in each region are never going to fully support the government because they have no vested interest to do so the central government loyalties are never going to be equal to that of home grown regionally selected leaders at least in the mind of ordinary Afghanistanis. The international community trying to make Afghanistan work is spinning its wheels unless it gets ordinary Afghanistanis to fully support the Afghanistan government which it currently does not have. The international community must get a commitment from the Afghanistan government to change its constitution to remedy this weak regional government flaw.
The other problem with the international community’s dialogue on Afghanistan is that it comes up with great strategies on how to build a good country of Afghanistan but there is no talk about getting the Afghanistan government to be strongly committed to these strategies. Unless the international community gets the Afghanistan government to be strongly committed in word and deed about the needed reforms in the country of Afghanistan the country of Afghanistan will never succeed.