Policy Research Media Morhamburn

Leaving aside the very obvious questions of what exactly is going wrong with the British mission in Afghanistan given the pitiful election turnout and seemingly never-ending violence, the whole British presence there does raise some interesting issues.

Given that Britain has previously failed to ‘pacify’ Afghanistan at the time when we were at the head of the greatest Empire in history; given that the Soviet Union failed to successfully impose communism there in the eighties. And given that thus far, the USA and Britain have failed to impose Western liberal democracy there, does it not suggest that imposing systems on this (or perhaps on any?) country from the top down doesn’t work.

The development of democracy took generations in this country, it happened organically as social, cultural and economic circumstances dictated so that when change did happen, it was supported by the norms of the time. In this sense, we have reached democracy as a natural conclusion to historical processes that began hundreds of years ago.

And yet, we expect our system, based on our society, economy, norms, culture etc to be easily transplantable to a country that exists mainly as lines on a map. It is called a failed state, but in fact it has never really been a state as we know it.

Yes it is a country with a bloody history; but I wonder how many periods of civil war, uprising, rebellion, social unrest, regicide, civil disobedience, intellectual fervour, economic growth and foreign wars we in this country had to go through to evolve into the (still imperfect) system that we have now?

It’s as if we in the West sometimes make the same mistake that Francis Fukuyama made in declaring ‘the end of history’ – history is ongoing, and maybe if we let the Afghans chart their own, they might end up with a more natural and stable system to suit their own specific circumstances.