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Ralph
Peters is a regular columnist with the New
York Post. Register here for
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Ralph Peters - Contributor
Ralph
Peters is a retired Army officer and the author of 19 books,
as well as of hundreds of essays and articles, written
both under his own name and as Owen Parry. He is a frequent columnist
for the New York Post and other publications. [go to Peters Index]
 Miracle
In The Mountains
Elections
Come to Afghanistan
[Ralph
Peters] 10/8/04
A decade
ago I stood at the highest point of the Khyber Pass, gazing
from a Pakistani
gun emplacement into Afghanistan’s
human darkness. The Taliban had recently seized power. A broken
country had been enslaved by bigots masquerading as men of God.
The landscape across
the border was as barren and sparse as Afghanistan’s
hopes. Fifteen years of coups and counter-coups, a murderous
Soviet occupation and bands of thugs armed indiscriminately
by the West had ravaged a country already destitute.
Then things got worse.
The Taliban stoned women to death in public. The only freedom
men had was the freedom to pray in the manner approved by the
mullahs. Music was banned and cultural monuments were destroyed.
Any form of joy was unwelcome, unless it could be disguised as
religious ecstasy. And the despots in Kabul welcomed al-Qaeda.
By the turn of the
century, the terrorists controlled the government. Afghanistan
had become the world’s leading rogue state
and a vast prison for its people.
Then the terrorists over-reached, as religious extremists never
fail to do. They attacked America. And the world changed.
Afghanistan changed, too, thanks to the valor of our troops
and the vision of our leaders. Now that long-tormented country
is about to hold free elections.
There could
be no greater proof of terror's weakness.
And the terrorists know it. So they’re fighting a desperate
rear-guard action to disrupt those elections. They bomb the innocent,
assassinate the brave and attempt to renew their torments of
the powerless. They’ve threatened those who register to
vote, promising death to those who go to the polls.
The result? More
than ten million Afghans have registered to do their part in
deciding their country’s future. Those
who discount the human desire for freedom should put themselves
in the place of those brave Afghans.
The elections are
going to happen. On schedule. Attacks on polling places and
local setbacks will dominate the headlines,
of course, but the balloting will be the most profound and hopeful
event in the last five hundred years of Afghanistan’s history.
The Afghan people are going to rule themselves.
Yes, the elections will be flawed. Some Afghans will vote along
ethnic lines or as they have been suborned to do. There will
be ample corruption. Not every official elected will be admirable.
In other words, the elections will resemble American balloting
in the middle of the nineteenth century.
This isn’t
cause for the least lament, but for jubilant celebration.
The global media
will concentrate on the flaws, rather than on the miracle of
the elections themselves. But our enemies recognize
the power of this event. That’s why they’re fighting
so viciously—and uselessly—to wreck the elections.
It appears that interim
president Hamid Karzai will win. Backed by the United States,
Karzai has proven himself a wise and decent
leader. But even if he were to lose in a surprise upset, the
process will have been more important than the immediate result.
In democracies, the people make their choice. The rest of us
live with it. The worst result would still be far better than
anything in the country’s troubled past.
Elections won’t make Afghanistan’s problems disappear.
A generation of disasters cannot be undone overnight. Afghanistan
will be in recovery for decades. But what a wonderful start these
elections will be, no matter how marred by violence and clumsiness.
There’s even a female candidate for president.
In this week’s vice-presidential debate, Senator Edwards
cited the urban legend of Tora Bora, where we supposedly allowed
Osama bin Laden to escape. The senator had his facts profoundly
wrong, from insisting that a U.S. division was nearby and went
unused—completely false—to painting the scene as
if OBL had stood there thumbing his nose at us. The truth is
that no one knows if the terrorist chief was even there.
But the senator’s omissions told us far more about the
shabbiness of his party’s platform. He did not mention
Afghanistan’s looming elections, or the risks the people
took to register to vote, or the enthusiasm illiterate villagers
are showing for a chance to live in freedom--led by those whom
they themselves will choose.
Despite the bullets
and bombs so enchanting to journalists, a glorious thing is
happening in a part of the world that has
long been left behind. “Backward” Afghanistan is
leaping ahead, becoming the vanguard democracy between Israel
and India.
The terrorists hate
it. And the Kerry-Edwards team doesn’t
like it, either. It contradicts their accusations of failure
on all fronts. But the rest of us should be proud of the chance
we have given to the Afghan people to take their own stand for
freedom. CRO
Ralph Peters is the author of Beyond
Baghdad: Postmodern War and Peace.
copyright 2004 - Ralph Peters
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