A just released report from the excellent International Crisis Group (ICC) looks at the disastrous Afghanistan Presidential election and concludes that the election “delivered a critical blow to the legitimacy of both the government and the international community”. The ICC says:

“Karzai’s retaining power under these circumstances has bolstered the impression that the international community is disinterested in or incapable of checking corruption. It handed the Taliban a huge public relations victory”.

It adds that “to stem the decline in public confidence, the international community, particularly the US and the UN, must urgently put in place and vigorously support a number of key measures, including:

• restrictions on the size of the cabinet, and more importantly barring nominees with demonstrated links to armed groups or criminal activities from joining government;
• the formation of an impartial commission of inquiry to conduct a thorough public review of the 20 August 2009 elections; the National Assembly’s use of its full sanctioning powers against those suspected of abusing their offices to influence the polls; and vigorous pursuit by the attorney general and courts of criminal prosecutions of those involved in flagrant violations of the law;
• consultations among relevant Afghan and international actors to achieve consensus on immediate steps to strengthen the machinery for the 2010 elections;
• convocation of a loya jirga to undertake constitutional reform, including consultations on the role of the Supreme Court; enhancing the independence of the judiciary and legislature; and meaningfully devolving authority and resources to provincial and district levels; and
• resignation of UN Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) chief and UN Special Representative of Secretary-General Kai Eide, since he has lost the faith of many on his staff and the necessary trust of many parts of the Afghan polity, accompanied by a thorough re-evaluation of the advisory role of UNAMA’s Enhancing Legal and Electoral Capacity for Tomorrow (ELECT) program view to rebuild public support for Afghanistan’s electoral institutions and processes”.

These are absolutely essential matters for the west to respond to. Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and the US Secretary of State attended Karzai’s swearing in, in an apparent show of support for Karzai. That was disturbing because it seems to put the stamp of approval on Karzai’s election. Now President Obama is about to announce the US plan for Afghanistan going forward. It is critical that the matters raised by the Crisis Group be part of that plan.

Afghanistan is at a tipping point. A large scale expansion of military forces will not save it from disaster. Governance and development are the important things. If Karzai is permitted to continue his embrace of the criminal warlords and drug dealers, including appointing three of the most notorious warlords to his cabinet as he indicated he will do two months ago, there is no point in continuing the western presence there. If the failure to develop services, infrastructure, housing and jobs continues, the people there will see no point in maintaining the existing western supported regime. Canada has sacrificed the lives of well over a hundred smart, tough young soldiers who have served well beyond what should be expected of anyone, much less the young, with a great future ahead. It will be criminal if the ICC’s proposals are not accepted as a minimum part of the plan going forward. Stephen Harper needs to make that case with vigour, as he is entitled to do as a result of the incredible contribution of Canada over the past few years.

Voters with conservative leanings have consistently accounted for about 35 – 40 % of the vote in Canada. But that has often not been good enough to put conservatives into government as it would in most countries. There has too often been more than one party courting conservative votes. The result is that the Liberals have been able to fairly consistently garner enough votes to win. But at times like this when one only party – the Conservative Party – occupies the territory on the right, it is different. As Harper is showing, and Mulroney before him, the party can then win enough seats to form government. This is likely to be the case for the foreseeable future, because there is little possibility of a right wing party other than the official Conservatives having any electoral presence.

This is a problem for the Liberals. But it is a mistake to think of the Liberal’s problem as simply arising from the successful ‘unite the right’ strategy of Harper and MacKay.

To respond, the Liberals need a consolidation of left of centre voters. Without that, they don’t have much of a chance of winning in the foreseeable future. But they face one clear but difficult obstacle – the presence of the NDP.

Surprisingly, not nearly enough Liberals understand this. Too many think that if they just move to the right they can pull enough votes from the Conservatives. This is the view of Ignatieff, and advisers such as John Manley. They are wrong. There are not enough votes there on a on-going basis. They need to get left leaning votes. But the NDP is simply too successful at attracting the support of left leaning voters for the Liberals to win.

The NDP of late has been fairly consistently drawing the support of about 2.5 million votes this decade. This is a lot of votes – about one-half the number received by the winning Conservatives in the last election and about two thirds of the number received by the Liberals. Now we have an Ipsos Reid poll for Canwest News, released November 20th, that shows the NDP at 19 per cent support and Michael Ignatieff’s Liberals at 24 per cent support. The NDP is creeping closer to the level of Liberal support.

But never mind this recent and alarming poll for the Liberals. The problem runs deeper than one poll. For years the Liberal Party in Canada has been blind to the problem it faces with the NDP. It mistakenly sees the NDP as marginal. It counts on the NDP to continually marginalize itself by playing to the more extreme views of its left wing base, and to thus drive the majority of left leaning voters to the Liberals.

There has been some validity to this. But it is not nearly the problem for the NDP that many Liberals believe. While the NDP leadership has frequently trampled on a fairly attractive set of policies by periodically launching over the top and out of touch tirades against some thing that unsettles the voters that they might otherwise capture, things seem to be changing. Layton and his party are more and more standing for sensible action that speaks to the things that are bothering people. People see their direction as the right direction for the country.

The Liberals seem constitutionally unable to really think this through, partly on account of a false hope that the Conservatives and the NDP will self destruct. That’s not going to happen. The opportunity to form a left coalition was rejected last December by the Ignatieff brain trust, made up mostly of Paul Martin acolytes, largely on the belief that there was no need for a consolidation on the left. They had neither the vision nor the courage to work out a coalition that they could have used to consolidate progressive votes around the leadership of Liberal and NDP heavy hitters, forcing the NDP into either a consolidation under a new party dominated by the Liberals or an election in two years which the Liberals would win. There was an arrogant belief among Liberals like the Martin insiders that they could win without the NDP, and ironically, there was fear by others like John Manley that a coalition would result in an NDP take over of the Liberal Party.

As a result the Liberals missed an opportunity to try to transform left politics in Canada, with perhaps fateful consequences. The numbers make it clear that the Liberals will not likely govern again in the foreseeable future, not because of the popularity of the Conservatives, but because the Liberal leadership has no vision and no plan for addressing the persistent strength of the NDP. Layton and his team are impressing with their cool, careful handling of events. It is they, not the Liberals, who are getting voter respect. With that, NDP support is actually increasing. If an election were held today, the NDP would get at least three quarters of the number of votes that the Liberals would get. That may or may not hold. But the block of votes it commands on a continuing basis is large. And if things keep going as they are, and Ignatieff fails to master Canadian politics, the NDP could easily get as many votes as the Liberals in the next election.

The strength of the NDP is not simply a passing thing. The NDP has a solid command over a large and fairly stable block of voters that will not easily be pried loose. The Liberals are going to have to understand this and figure out what it means for them. If they do not, their hopes to govern again are dim. They will likely be perpetual losers. This will be a monumental failure for a party that has long claimed to have a mastery of Canadian politics.

A poll by Oxfam just completed in Afghanistan makes interesting reading. It suggests that ordinary Afghanis see the things that make their life miserable somewhat differently than the popular reports put out by diplomats and the international media . Based on a sample of 720 people, seven in ten (70%) individuals see unemployment and poverty as a major cause of the conflict in the country, while almost half (48%) point to the corruption and ineffectiveness of the Afghan government. Other factors that individuals identify as major drivers of the conflict are: the Taliban (36%); interference by other countries(25%); Al Qaeda(18%); the presence of international forces (18%); lack of support from the international community (17%); warlords (15%); and criminal groups (14%). The poll suggests what many have said for a long time – that the economy and jobs are the most important things that need addressing to win the confidence of the people, and that the presence of the international forces is not an important factor in alienating Afghanis from government. The real sources of alienation are poverty and the corruption of the Karzai government. For almost incomprehensible reasons the west, Canada included have virtually ignored these two important facts. Military spending has pushed economic development aid to the back burner, and the corruption and malfeasance of the Karzai government was ignored until the election finally forced it onto the attention of the western media.

Oxfam’s recommendations deserve the attention of the west. It says that “the government must take serious steps to establish the rule of law at all levels, crack down on corruption and end the culture of impunity and patronage, including through root and branch reform of the police and judiciary. There must be a commitment to investigate crimes and abuses associated with the conflict and pursue justice, acknowledgement, reconciliation and redress.” The west must “commit and deliver not just more aid, but more effective aid for humanitarian, reconstruction and development activities throughout the country; hold the Afghan government accountable and provide more support for it to tackle corruption and criminality; provide strong support for local peace building and conflict resolution initiatives, led by
civil society, and urge the Afghan government to pursue justice, reconciliation and redress for abuses caused during the past three decades of conflict”.

It also urges the establishment of a “regional peace process, including all regional powers, to end adverse interference in Afghanistan’s affairs and provide constructive support for its security and economic development”

It is impossible to say it any better. The west, including Canada, needs to listen and act. This does not mean the troops must leave. It does mean that the hot pursuit strategies of our troops in the south is largely irrelevant and silly. But it also means we should be debating what we should be doing differently, rather than simply over reaching each other in embracing 2011 when our troops are to leave. This is really in most ways a minor sideshow. The things that really matter – the things raised by Oxfam – are hardly ever discussed seriously in Canada. That is a shame.