Let’s be clear about how we ended up in this mess. The successful punitive war against the Taliban for harboring the 9/11 terrorists was changed into a nation-building, democracy-promoting project. A tribal, traditional Islamic culture in which Allah’s will and divine precepts are alien to Western notions of nationhood, secular participatory government, and human rights, was going to be transformed into a liberal democracy and embrace its alien notions of confessional tolerance and equal rights for women.
The George W. Bush administration and other idealists, however, ignored the tenacious reality of human cultural diversity, the complex variety of cultures, mores, faiths, and customs that make peoples what they are and give their lives meaning and purpose. Instead, to the idealists they are proto-Westerners, who just need guidance from the enlightened West to help them discard or reform their illiberal traditions, religious beliefs, and customary structures of governance.
No doubt many Afghans welcomed these attempts, especially women. But 20 years of Taliban persistence and success, and the alacrity with which Afghan military forces are melting away, suggest that a critical mass still does not want such alien tutelage or improvements that threaten their way of life and most cherished beliefs. Remember that the Afghan constitution we midwifed in 2004 made sharia––and its illiberal practices such as killing apostates––the foundation of the nation’s new laws.
As we did in Iraq too.
Establishing sharia law in a conquered country does not help to make it a liberal democracy. Aim defeated.