Anyone who has served or worked in Iraq and Afghanistan knows that it's a team effort. People step up, and we honor their service. Then they go, and others step up to take their place. Arthur Chrenkoff honored us all with his service. Now the GoodNewsFromTheFront.com team steps in to carry on his legacy, with the assistance and participation of the bipartisan Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
How appropriate, therefore, that we should begin with a briefing in the wake of Afghanistan's Wolesi Jirga (think of it as their House of Representatives) and Provincial Council elections, held simultaneously with minimal violence across 34 provinces. To put that perspective, we're talking about:
5,766 candidates who ran in elections that involved almost 6,300 polling centers containing about 26,250 polling stations across Afghanistan, run by 160,000 local polling staff. 40 million ballot papers, printed in Austria and Britain, were flown in to Afghanistan by 15 super-jumbo Antonov 124 flights and 8 jumbo jet flights, then delivered across Afghanistan by 1,247 donkeys, 300 horses, 24 camels, 1,200 trucks, 9 helicopters, and 39 transport planes. Also delivered: 40,000 bottles containing 7,000 liters of indelible ink, to stain voters' fingers. At least 4,700 domestic observers, 500 foreign observers, and 80,000 candidate agents monitored polling and counting, which is still ongoing. The elections are being run by 8,000 election staff, of whom only 500 are foreigners.
Afghanistan's last national assembly elections were held in 1969.
"For three decades everything has come apart and been destroyed by war. No one had the freedom to vote for the President or the National Assembly. So today is the day we vote... it's a very important day," Said Asem explained at a polling site in Parwan.
Mazi Rashidi, another voter from the same area added, "We vote today for candidates to the National Assembly. And when we have problems in the village or the district, these elected representatives will take those problems to the government."
Those of us who've attempted to apply that idea in Western societies may offer a bit of a rueful chuckle at that. Perhaps if Mazi Rashidi had experienced the reality of that process, we think, we'd see and hear less enthusiasm and idealism. But then, perhaps if those of us inclined to chuckle had experienced the reality of a society without meaningful national assembly elections since 1969, we'd see and hear a bit more of it.
It's easy to sneer, and easy to get attention by doing so. It's harder to build a better future. Undaunted, millions of Afghans continue to try, largely outside the glare of the media spotlight. These briefings will continue to cover, and honor, their efforts.
Congratulations and thank you for stepping into the breach. "Good News from..." has been a major feature in the struggle for balanced reporting of the War on Terror and it would have been a real loss if someone hadn't carried it on. Obvious, but needs to be said.
Both Afghanistan and Iraq have suffered for many decades under brutal tyranny and mis-rule. Both nations are bravely trying to rebuild and catch up to the democratic world in terms of government institutions and policies. Iraq has a potentially large oil industry to support national efforts to modernize, but Afghanistan has nothing but poppy fields.
There are no modern traditions in Afghanistan in government, economics, finance, trade, civil society, education, construction, engineering, science, communications, manufacturing, agriculture, publishing, medicine, transportation, or anything else that makes a modern country function. The people are brave, longsuffering, and goodhearted. They suffer under the burden of Islamic and tribal traditions, and lack an intelligent and enterprising minority such as the one that has propped up Indonesia, Malaysia, and other third world countries. Do they have what they need?
Assessing al Qaida Progress in Iraq and Afghanistan
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld posed the question of how al Qaeda leaders might assess the progress being made by the terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq.
If called to account for the state of their strategy in those countries, consider what might be asked of them...