Why young Afghans won't vote

Opinion: There are misconceptions about who pulls the political strings in Afghanistan.

Oliver S. Mains July 26, 2009 10:35Updated May 30, 2010 12:03

University students walk on a street as a policeman keeps watch over an anti-U.S. protest in Kabul May 10, 2009. (Ahmad Masood/Reuters)

KABUL — The grassroots protests that pitched Iran into political crisis serve as a reminder of the vital role that youth can play in leading a robust civil society. In neighboring Afghanistan, which will hold its own elections in less than a month, youth will choose not to engage despite their deep dissatisfaction with incompetent and corrupt governance.

Even at the American University of Afghanistan, where I teach international relations to students who constitute perhaps the country’s most politically aware demographic, apathy is in the air. Their desire for change is as palpable as ours was last November, but it is matched by pessimism toward their own power to influence Afghan politics.

For all the suspicion that fabrication of votes, bribing of election officials, intimidation, and worse will likely mar the August 20th election, Afghanistan’s internal problems are not what undermine my students’ zeal for civic participation. Why vote, my students ask me, when the United States will choose Afghanistan’s next president?

The truth is, while Afghanistan’s election will be a model of neither freedom nor fairness, the source of injustice will not be some grand American conspiracy. The Obama administration and its representatives in Afghanistan have a strong interest in ensuring that the elections are as transparent as Afghanistan’s fragile infrastructure and worsening security situation will allow, and have advertised their impartiality extensively. But in the end, the constant accusations of meddling are only a symptom of what is a much deeper public diplomacy problem.

Many of my students harbor a profound distrust of the United States. This was clear to me from the first days of the semester as students wondered aloud whether U.S. motivations in Afghanistan are driven by a desire to counter Russian and Chinese regional influence, to establish a puppet regime to ease the transit of oil through Central Asia, or simply to satisfy some neo-imperialist instinct. The source of this distrust is not some warlike Afghan nationalism, but growing anger toward continued insecurity combined with wildly exaggerated views toward American power.

To my students, America’s ability to project its military around the world, combined with its centrality in the creation and stewardship of international economic regimes, constitutes political omnipotence. When they ask themselves why insecurity persists and reconstruction languishes after eight years of American intervention, they conclude that America simply has no interest in Afghanistan’s development, and must instead be using its presence there to forward its global ambitions — whatever they may be.