An Afghan woman carries her child as she walks along a road in Kabul, Afghanistan, Feb. 1. (Reuters File Photo)

Kabul is in the grip of yet another harsh winter, and most of the city’s inhabitants are without power, bar a few hours every second or third day. Although huge amounts of international money have been spent on civic infrastructure since the fall of the Taliban, material improvements have lagged behind, bringing scant relief to a largely dispirited population, who lack basic commodities and struggle daily with soaring prices.
Yet the city is bustling, and the streets stream with people. Girls in white headscarves and black gowns head for school under billboards advertising the latest brands of mobile phone. Little boys run down the slopes flying kites. And music--a vital component in Afghan life--floats in the air. The contrast with life under the Taliban’s authoritarian regime is sharp.
Kabul’s situation is paradigmatic of the contradictions still embedded in Afghan society.
The “Afghanistan compact“ expected to emerge from this meeting (the London conference on Jan. 30) will symbolically launch the post-Bonn era. The initial rebuilding process set in motion by the 2001 Bonn agreement has come to an end: a new constitution has been announced, and a president has been democratically elected, as have the parliament and provincial councils across the country. The next phase requires a three-pronged approach: developing democratic processes within state-building; fostering civic culture; and tackling the main risks to democratization.
Efficient, accountable public institutions are crucial. The electoral system chosen for the recent elections--the single non-transferable vote--is not only extremely costly, but it also blurs representation in parliament, and thus undermines the general legitimacy of institutions it produces. In future, a more suitable electoral system is needed to ensure political pluralism.
Just and fair representation alone is not sufficient for establishing the rule of law. Much work will be required to protect basic human rights, guarantee freedom of expression, set up an independent and credible judiciary, create checks and balances that properly define the powers of each institution, and promote political party politics and other forms of “organized“ political activity.
The link between state and citizens must be strengthened, first of all by enhancing national unity and reconciliation. Here, an essential step will be to expand public participation, through recognizing the role of non-governmental actors, dramatically improving the condition of women and by strengthening public and independent media outlets. The momentum gained from the recent elections should be used to pursue civic education in order to make citizens fully aware of their rights and duties, as well as the authorities’ goals and timelines. The main risk factors to democratization are tightly interlinked. Lack of good governance impedes the termination of the vicious circle of illegal activities that breed violence and corruption, which in turn generate the law of silence and, finally, feed a culture of impunity. The consolidation of networks of local power brokers and the perseverance of illegal armed groups in parts of the country contribute to instability.
Moreover, pervasive opium and heroin production casts a long shadow over the country’s future, carrying the risk of permanently affecting politics, crippling society and distorting the economy of an already fragile state, while maintaining a “narco-elite“ which finds itself increasingly at odds with the surrounding poverty.
Though everybody apparently agrees that the illegal revenue must be decreased, few seem to accept the fact that this will not happen as long as farmers remain the principal focus of counter-narcotics strategies. The illegal drug economy poses a serious threat to stability and democracy in Afghanistan, so it is crucial to promote a sincere and open-minded debate about it, and to consider the merit of different ideas and approaches. This debate must not exclude the possibility of licensed opium production for medical purposes, with quotas granted as in many other countries.
The post-Bonn compact should also carefully consider managing people’s expectations. Undeliverable promises must be avoided, so as not to reproduce the cruel disappointment that occurred after the 2004 presidential elections, when many anticipated that their quality of life would rapidly change for the better.
While launching the second phase of the process initiated by the Bonn agreement, the London conference will also renew the commitment of the international community over the next five years. This engagement should induce the Afghan authorities to act in a concrete and accountable manner in pushing ahead sustainable reforms in the interests of the Afghan people.
OPENDEMOCRACY.COM

Iraqi Sunni Mulsims burn the Danish flag as well as Danish products in a small bonfire following Friday noon prayer in Baghdad, Feb. 3. (AFP File Photo)

Four months after the fact, Muslim anger over the publication in Scandinavia of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) has snowballed into a diplomatic crisis threatening trade relations with Europe.
The cartoons published in a Danish newspaper last September and reprinted in a Norwegian magazine in January, have sparked uproar in the Muslim world.
The row has taken a new dimension over the past days, with Danish flags being burned, products being boycotted and Copenhagen starting to take measures to protect its citizens living in Muslim countries.
Egypt’s powerful opposition Muslim Brotherhood was the latest group to join a chorus of calls for the boycott of Danish and Norwegian products.
“I call on Arab and Muslim peoples and governments to boycott Danish and Norwegian products and take firm measures,“ the Islamist movement’s leader Mohammed Mehdi Akef said in a statement.
The incident has threatened to deal an unprecedented blow to the Muslim and Arab world’s usually healthy relations with Scandinavian governments, who are major donors in the region.
Retailers in the Persian Gulf have already started pulling Danish and Norwegian products off the shelves and Danish manufacturers have voiced their concern should the boycott gain further momentum.
An Emirati retailer joined the boycott of Danish products “in response to the offense against Prophet Mohammed ... and in response to consumers’ wishes“.
EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson warned a Saudi official during a meeting in the Swiss ski resort of Davos that any boycott of Danish products was tantamount to a boycott of European goods.
Mandelson’s spokesman warned Riyadh that it could have to take the matter to the World Trade Organization (WTO) if the Saudi government encouraged the boycott.
Former US president Bill Clinton described the cartoons as “appalling“ during an economic conference in the Qatari capital Doha.
Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa, in Tunis for a meeting of Arab interior ministers, decried the “double standards“ in the European media.
“We see double standards in the European media, which is fearful of being accused of anti-Semitism but which invokes freedom of expression for a caricature on Islam,“ Moussa told reporters.
Most Arab governments have vocally condemned the series of 12 cartoons.
Libya announced on Sunday that it had decided to close its diplomatic representation in Copenhagen “in light of the attacks against the Prophet Mohammed and the silence of the Danish authorities“.
In a further step, the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference have announced their intention to seek a UN resolution banning attacks against religious beliefs.
In the Gaza Strip, masked Palestinian gunmen carrying rocket launchers demonstrated in front of EU offices on Monday and warned that they would prevent Danes and Norwegians from entering the territory until Copenhagen apologized.
At another Gaza demonstration, protestors burned the Danish flag.
The Danish government has said that the views expressed by the Jyllands-Posten newspaper did not reflect its own but has consistently refused to apologize and has insisted that it would defend freedom of expression.
An official from a Danish dairy products company said that two of its salespersons were molested in Saudi Arabia, in the holy Muslim city of Mecca.
The Danish government “vigorously condemns these attacks as well as the fact that Danish flags have been burned in the Arab world and expects the governments of these countries to do the same“, Danish foreign minister Per Stig Moeller said.
As a sign that it was taking the crisis seriously, the Danish foreign ministry issued a warning to its nationals in seven Arab countries to be extra vigilant, while the Danish branch of the Red Cross said that it had evacuated two of its aid workers in Gaza and one in Yemen.
The incriminated cartoons have triggered one of Scandinavia’s most serious diplomatic incidents in recent years.
METIMES.COM

Osama bin Laden undoubtedly infuriated President Bush with his most recent audiotape, which was played last week on Aljazeera, for four reasons:
First, bin Laden’s tape serves as a reminder to the American people that he is still alive despite the untold number of innocent people that U.S. personnel killed and maimed in the attack on Afghanistan as part of their unsuccessful “war-on-terrorism“ attempt to kill him.
Second, bin Laden’s focus on U.S. foreign policy, especially Bush’s invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, once again reminds Americans that Bush, Cheney, and the rest of the federal gang have been lying from the beginning about the terrorists’ being motivated by hatred for America’s “freedom and values“ rather than by the brutality of U.S. foreign policy, including the sanctions against Iraq, which contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi children, and which were a motivating factor in the World Trade Center attacks, both in 1993 and 2001.
Third, bin Laden’s warning of future terrorist attacks in the United States exposes the ludicrous nature of the president’s alternative “magnet rationale“ of invading Iraq (after the WMDs failed to materialize) Ñ that terrorists would be so irresistibly drawn to “bring it on“ to U.S. troops in Iraq that, like filings to a magnet, none of them would be able to come to the United States and commit terrorist acts. At the risk of belaboring the obvious, human beings, including terrorists, are not iron filings and thus are able to make choices as to which targets they wish to kill. It may be more difficult to travel to the United States, as compared to Iraq or even Europe, to commit terrorist acts, but that doesn’t mean that the U.S. occupation of Iraq precludes them from doing so.
The problem is that if there is another terrorist act, Bush and his cohorts will immediately forget about the failure of the “magnet rationale“ and immediately use the new attack as another excuse to exercise the Padilla doctrine, enact a new USA Patriot Act, spy on Americans, round up foreigners, build a Berlin Wall around America, etcetera.
Fourth, bin Laden’s insistence that Bush end his occupation of Iraq has now put the president in a very uncomfortable position. Bush had been planning to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq, obviously because of the upcoming 2006 congressional elections and the risk that Republicans might lose control of the House or Senate. But if he pulls the troops out now, in the wake of the bin Laden tape, it will appear that he is kowtowing to bin Laden. So, bin Laden has effectively cornered Bush into continuing his military occupation of Iraq, which means more and more U.S. soldiers and Iraqi people being killed practically on a daily basis for the indefinite future.
So why would bin Laden do that, knowing that his statement would be more likely to motivate Bush to stay in Iraq than to exit Iraq? For the same reason that conservative think tanks call for reform of government programs rather than elimination: the continuation of the programs guarantees a constant supply of donor money into the organization. If the programs were eliminated, the need for financial support would diminish.
It’s the same with bin Laden and Iraq. Bush’s invasion of that country has provided bin Laden with a boundless source of both volunteers and cash. Moreover, why would bin Laden want to stop an occupation that he knows is bleeding the United States monetarily, killing American troops on a daily basis in Iraq, inciting ever-increasing animosity against the United States, and weakening the U.S. military? And what does it matter to bin Laden that Bush continues to use the “terrorist threat“ to continue frightening the American people into supporting his assumption of dictatorial powers, including military arrests and detentions of Americans (e.g., Jose Padilla), rounding up foreigners, and spying on Americans or that Bush?
Given the Bush administration’s propensity to target messengers who carry discomforting messages, federal officials are undoubtedly now thinking that President Bush should have bombed Aljazeera after all!
Jacob Hornberger
ANTIWAR.COM

I nearly fell out of my car window Monday morning while traveling around several of the fine universities in North Carolina, when I read U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s statement on the Hamas election victory in Palestine. She stated: “I’ve asked why nobody saw it coming. It does say something about us not having a good enough pulse.“
Good grief, Condoleezza, this is not about having or not having a good enough pulse. It’s about the consequences of the last decade of Israeli and American policies towards the Palestinians in general, and the Islamist resistance movements in particular. This is not a time to persist in simplistic, counter-productive policies that will only further strengthen the forces of military resistance against the Israeli occupation, and wider Arab-Islamic political resistance against America’s blatantly pro-Israeli position.
To add a new dose of American perplexity and wonderment now to several existing layers of mistaken policies on Arab-Israeli peacemaking will be of no help to anyone. If Washington’s initial reaction is bewilderment at why it did not see this coming, and a reaffirmation of its policy of placing Israeli security above Palestinian security, then we are all in far more serious trouble than we can imagine. What is required now is a combination of honesty, independent analysis and composure that have long been missing in Washington’s policies on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
If the United States government, with all its capacity to collect and interpret information, did not see Hamas doing very well in the Palestinian election in the wake of the other Islamist victories in the Middle East region, then it is either willfully blind or totally incompetent--and neither possibility is a very comforting thought.
The domestic and war-and-peace-making implications of the Hamas victory would appear to be rather clear. It was elected to throw out the incompetent, increasingly corrupt, and aloof Fateh-dominated Palestinian Authority, and to try and restore a sense of order and decency in Palestinian governance and life. Its victory patently was not a popular Palestinian mandate to establish an Islamic state, revive the Caliphate, apply Islamic law, or wipe out Israel. The hysterical spin-doctoring and obfuscation coming out of some circles in Washington and Israel to this effect are just that: hysterical scare-mongering.
The fact is we do not know how Hamas will use its newfound political power. It is, perhaps, the most legitimate political leadership in the Arab world, because it is the only one to be voted in through a free and fair election monitored by the international community. Whether it will be an effective leadership, or a humane, fair and tolerant one, remains to be seen. It will have to make some important decisions in the coming weeks about how to apply its power, keeping in mind the desires of its constituency--the Palestinian people living in the West Bank, Gaza and Arab East Beit-ul-Moqaddas--to live a normal life, not a life of perpetual war, occupation or resistance.
The most interesting thing about the Hamas victory is its legitimacy, as the consequence of a free, fair and pluralistic democratic election. This raises a massive new challenge to the American leadership, which is why Condoleezza Rice and her colleagues in government should be overcoming their perplexity and replacing it with some strong doses of realism and rationality.
The right thing to do now is to explore how to take advantage of the fact that we have a legitimate, democratically elected Palestinian leadership.
Rami G. Khouri
DAILYSTAR.COM.LB