ABC Nightline 3/29: Deadlines and Democracy

[Bozita]

 
Nightline Daily E-Mail
March 29, 2004


TONIGHT'S FOCUS: Deadlines and Democracy: A tough combination in countries torn apart for decades by militants, terrorism and war. When you've been oppressed by feuding warlords and evil despots, how do you build someone else's vision of democracy? How do you learn to define it? In Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States has stepped in to teach. The Bush administration needs these democracies to take hold. Soon. But as election day approaches in the U.S., deadlines for these elections abroad appear to be slipping back. Tonight we'll look at Afghanistan, and its neighbor Pakistan. With thousands of U.S. troops chasing Al Qaeda and billions of U.S. dollars trying to rebuild Afghan infrastructure, how do you wage a war and build a democracy at the same time?

------------------------------------------------------------------------

A Pakistani military spokesman said today that an Al- Qaeda intelligence chief known as "Abdullah" had been killed after more than a week of intense fighting in South Waziristan, the tribal area that borders Afghanistan and Pakistan and is thought to be the hiding place for many Al-Qaeda's leaders. Two weeks ago, when the Pakistanis announced they had moved into the area, some said they had the architect of many of the Al-Qaeda terrorist attacks, Ayman Al-Zawahri, surrounded. That statement whipped around the world and generated an enormous amount of buzz. But they didn't have him. The fighting that ensued was fierce, with 400-500 insurgents hitting back hard against the Pakistanis. They ended up killing 46 Pakistani troops. That's a significant and even embarrassing number for a government that says it can handle a war against Al-Qaeda. President Musharraf is under immense pressure to please his partner in the Al-Qaeda hunt, George Bush; but he's also under a lot of pressure from pro-Qaeda tribal chiefs in Pakistan's Waziristan region. In this latest assault, the U.S. provided some fire power from the other side of the border, in Afghanistan -- proving what a complicated balancing act this terror war can be for Pakistan. David Wright has been in the tribal areas recently, and will report on that part of the war.

On the other side of the border, the Bush administration needs democracy to succeed in Afghanistan. There's a lot at stake for the President because the other "democracy war," in Iraq, is not going so well. Afghan elections were supposed to take place in June, but this weekend, President Hamid Karzai said they just won't happen that soon. There's too much to do to prepare, and not enough time. Outside of Kabul, Afghanistan can seem almost medieval. Torn apart by a brutal war with the Soviet Union, the rest of the country is controlled by powerful warlords who run their provinces with iron fists, and don't listen to the central Karzai government in Kabul. Karzai is having a very tough time reigning them in. Some of their private armies are bigger than his own. To many of them, signing on to help build democracy doesn't seem consistent with their interests. But these are also the same warlords who were instrumental in helping the Americans defeat the Taliban after the attacks of 9/11.

Afghanistan is an extremely dangerous place. Bandits and militants run rampant. Aid workers have been killed. Reaching many of the remote areas takes time, because of bad roads and safety concerns. The effort to register Afghans to vote is moving along at a snail's pace: less than twenty percent of the eligible population has registered so far. Correspondent Don Dahler just returned from Afghanistan, and has two reports on the difficulty of building democracy in a place scarred by present conflict and past war. Can democracy have a deadline?

We hope you'll join us.

Gerry Holmes and the Nightline Staff
ABCNEWS Washington D.C. bureau

 

[Kagemusha]

1. That's like saying the English have killed a warlord named 'John'.

That's not exactly much information to go on.

[Bozita]

2. starting now