Afghanistan Elections and the Long War

KABUL PROVINCE, Afghanistan -- Afghan National Police Col. Gulam Motch Qaiss took me recently up to his headquarters radio room where his police would be monitoring today's elections. His responsibility extends for dozens of miles of towns and rural villages, where the Taliban are also at work to disrupt the elections (and kill Afghan cops).

I won't say how many policemen Col. Gulam, as he's known, has to cover his area. Let's just say not nearly enough. It was cool and dark inside the three-story building built of adobe brick and straw. We climbed a cramped, tilting flight of steps made of dried mud and sticks the size of my wrist.

When we got there, an apologetic aide explained that at the present time, the radios were not working, a nagging detail that didn't necessarily square with all the talk I've heard over here about how much money the United States has poured into training and equipping the Afghan security forces. It's now their turn to perform, I keep hearing, a mantra that, if it becomes reality, will enable the U.S. agenda -- making a graceful exit from Afghanistan.

I liked Col. Gulam. He's a short, intense guy with a brilliant smile and a scruffy beard, an amiable version of Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He is polite, deferential to Americans, demanding of his cops, savvy enough to know the precariousness of his position. When he and I and a handful of American MPs walked a joint patrol in his town, he seemed uncomfortably aware of his awkward position between his own people and his American benefactors.

I wouldn't want to walk in his dusty boots. But it's essential that, as Americans, we recognize just how much we are asking of ordinary Afghans and brave officials such as Col. Gulam.

I know the story line is that the Afghan people yearn for freedom and are demanding to express it at the polls today. No doubt this is true for many, especially in the thin strata of educated elite in Kabul and a few other places. In the back country where I've been traveling, not so much. People may yearn for freedom and prosperity, but it's not clear that they trust us or the election process to get there. It's hard to find anyone eager to vote. Those who expressed an intention to cast their ballot seemed to do it more from a weary sense of obligation than from any burning zeal to be part of momentous historical change.

A village school teacher told me that today's vote will be "historic." Of course, he himself would not be voting, he added.

Why not? He answered with a dismissive shrug. In another place, I asked a village elder, a guy who controls every aspect of small-town life, where his polling stations were. He also shrugged: no idea. No interest.

Part of this apparent indifference may be because the Taliban have threatened to cut off the nose and ears of anyone who votes today. It seems also a matter of loyalty and trust. And especially in the small villages and remote, dusty hamlets that make up much of this country, people trust: family, clan, tribe. Then God. Country is somewhere below on that list; politics even lower.

We are asking Col. Gulam and his men to step outside the ancient and comforting structure that has enabled Afghans to survive the past 30 years of war and the centuries of turmoil that came before. In the new era, we are saying, trust elections instead. Don't listen to the whispers passed along by family members or the clan elder about staying home and staying safe. Trust the politicians in Kabul.

Col. Gulam's men will protect you, we are saying. And we are relying on Col. Gulam out to do just that. Today, we want him and his men to perform, to validate our own counterinsurgency war strategy. He and I, together with a few MPs and some of Col. Gulam's police, walked together down his town's dusty main street. This is a mandatory part of American training for Afghan police: joint patrols. It's not the way Afghan police normally operate, and I got the sense they didn't particularly see the point.

The street was crowded with kids on bicycles and motorbike-drawn jitneys and men struggling with handcarts. The MPs in their body armor and helmets and ballistic sunglasses swung their carbines side to side in the heat. The Afghan police lugged AK-47s as they plodded along listlessly. Most men avoided eye contact with us; local women were absent. An old man in a white beard bicycled past, clipping the elbow of a female MP. She yelled, and he pedaled off, chuckling.

Goat carcasses swung from butcher-shop doorways and unsmiling men leaned on counters of hardware shops and bicycle repair stalls. Carpenters squatted in the dirt, sawing boards, and young boys peered out curiously from the dark recesses of shacks where cooking oil and sacks of corn were for sale.

Suddenly came a blare of car horns, and three battered sedans careened around a corner. Our parade blocked the way, and the cars slowed and honked insistently. Col. Gulam yelled at them but moved aside. The cars pushed through the crowd. Col. Gulam yelled at the drivers and shook his fist, and yelled orders to his men to stop the cars, but they accelerated on down the street and his police moved out of the way.

Good luck today, Colonel. And in the months and years that follow.