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Afghan legislators say Afghanistan not ready to govern itself
Afghan legislators making a stop at the California State Capitol on Monday sounded a pessimistic note about Afghanistan’s ability to govern itself.
The legislators said during their visit to Sacramento that the country is not ready to govern and police itself, and expressed concerns about corruption in the central government, the Sacramento Bee reported.
"If the U.S. just wants to escape from Afghanistan without a responsible exit strategy, that will send a clear message to the Taliban, al-Qaida and the Haqqani network that it's safe," said journalist Baktash Siawash, who is 28 and the youngest of the 249 parliamentarians elected in 2010 to the lower house of the country's National Assembly.
Siawash told the Bee that Afghanistan would fall back to the 1990s without a sound government in place “when we had civil war and the Talibanization of the country.”
While President Obama has said most U.S. troops will be gone when the transition occurs in 2014, a timeline has not been established for getting out the 68,000 troops that will be there in the fall.
Obama signed a 10-year strategic partnership agreement with Afghan President Hamid Karzai that would establish a U.S. presence in Afghanistan through 2024, which was designed in part to send a signal to the Taliban and Haqqani Network that the United States would not abandon Afghanistan.
Fatema Aziz, one of two female legislators in the group,
said that the Pakistan Taliban appeared to be making a comeback.
“They're making life miserable,” she said. “The Taliban's taking young Afghan boys to Pakistan's madrassas.”
Michael O’Hanlon, a defense analyst at the Brookings Institution, said at a House hearing on Afghanistan last week that the 2014 elections are going to be crucial for the future of the country.
“I talked to a top Afghan general when I was visiting last month and we asked him, ‘What's your No. 1 concern about security in Afghanistan?’ ” O’Hanlon said. “And he said, ‘The 2014 election, because we get the wrong person elected and all bets are off.’ ”
The Afghan legislators, who met with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) last week, said they were concerned about the centralized government and corruption.
“I told Sen. McCain, 'You're wasting your time and your money. Why don't you hold the Afghan government accountable and put an end to the corruption?’ ” Siawash told the Bee.
