How to Become an Activist and Do Activism in Service of Afghanistan
Unless you become an activist, there is not much you can do to put Afghanistan on a better path. You need to learn how to enable others to do the things that need to be done.
For people not familiar with the term “activist,” a good example to learn from would be the work of the predominantly African American group called the Southern Non-violent Coordinating Committee, frequently spoken of by its acronym SNCC, which is often pronounced as “Snick.”
One of these figures who brought a great increase in the exercise of civil rights was Julian Bond.You can find his book here: https://www.amazon.com/Julian-Bonds-Time-Teach-Southern/dp/0807033200 See also some gleanings from [Julian Bond's Time to Teach
The activist responsible for working toward civil rights in the USA of the 1960s had three independent schools from which they could gain information, wisdom, and support.
- Highlander Folk School https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highlander_Research_and_Education_Center
- Fellowship of Reconciliation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fellowship_of_Reconciliation_(United_States)
- Southern Conference Education Fund https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Conference_Educational_Fund
With the aim of becoming an activist in Afghanistan, it should be useful to have a good understanding of the current situation there and also its origins. One particularly good analysis is given here: https://qr.ae/pvwtix (An Archival copy can be found here.)
Most analyses of the causal factors leading up to the debacle of mid August of 2021 have concentrated on mistakes made after George Bush decided to attempt nation building in Afghanistan. It ought to strike observers as odd that so many things went obviously wrong, and that many of the supposed successes of the nation building efforts such as the Afghan military appeared to lose all defensive capabilities once the US left the Bagram airport.
Let us consider the hypothesis that a fundamental step was skipped at the very beginning or perhaps even before the beginning of the US invasion, and that more time passed after that first step should have been taken, the more difficult it became to remedy the lack of it. A house built on the sandy margins of a large river that occasionally floods will not last long because the foundation of the house rests of material that can easily be eroded.
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has investigated the success of US attempts to do nation building. https://carnegieendowment.org/files/Policybrief24.pdf This study was written in 2003.
Panama was colonized by Spanish, and later became a part of the Republic of Gran Colombia. So it had some experience with being a republic before the US essentially took it over to facilitate the creation of the Panama Canal. So it is not entirely surprising that it has succeeded as a democracy.
Grenada had been a member of the Commonwealth before having difficulties with a communist takeover, at which point the US took over for a year. “Since then, the island has returned to a parliamentary representative democracy and has remained politically stable.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenada)
Attempts made at nation building in countries with less experience with modern forms of government have all failed, with the possible exception of Iraq.
Step back a bit and look at the kinds of choices that may be consider beforehand.
Suppose that leadership sees a problem or an opportunity in another country.
They might decide to do nothing, or they might act with the intention of producing a change that they want. Those actions might be such as George H. W. Bush's invasion of Iraq, which he did not carry to the point of causing regime change or of long-term occupation of the country. Another example would be Barack Obama's decision not to make a military move on Syria even though it appeared that they were using chemical warfare on their own people. Obama did not carry out his threat to retaliate for the gassing of civilians.
The Eisenhower administration's cooperation with GB to attempt to take Mohammad Mosaddegh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Mosaddegh off the political stage failed and resulted in a severe enmity that persists down to the present.
Attempts to do nation building in the seven countries most like Afghanistan had already failed by the writing of the Carnegie report, and Afghanistan has joined the list. Nobody seems to be declaring success in the case of Iraq either.
The struggle for civil rights in the United States during the 1960s used grassroots activism. That period has been called America's bloodless civil war. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and other pro-freedom actors on the political stage did not involve themselves in nation building.
There is one other example of one nation successfully changing the course of political and governmental developments in other countries. While the communist system of the USSR aimed to create satellite nations that would follow its lead and eventually join in a world-wide communist society, but fell apart under the weight of its own unresponsiveness and rigidity, it did succeed in producing a generation of activists who profoundly affected their home countries. Study the list in the chart above. Most people will recognize such names as Deng Xiaoping, Ho Chi Minh, Jiang Jingguo (son of Republic of China's “president for life, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-she who did not follow his father's way and instead steered the government in Taiwan toward democracy), Liu Shaoqi, et al.
The Soviets created a two-year college in Moscow and admitted a new class every year. In the USA it is generally known as the “Communist University of the Toilers of the East,” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_University_of_the_Toilers_of_the_East). It was closely related to the Moscow Sun Yat-sen University (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Sun_Yat-sen_University).''
Life at the Toilers of the Earth university was extremely vibrant. The teachers had them during the day, but at night they argued things out among themselves. There were risks involved. For the story, see the memoir of one of the students:
Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow and the Chinese Revolution: A Personal Account By Yueh Sheng.
Readers may not have the opportunity to argue out issues in person the way Yeah Sheng and his classmates did. (Read about it. It is exciting.) But there are possibilities for Internet connections and arguments.
Yueh Sheng gives an account of the curriculum his school followed. What are the needs of the new activist in Afghanistan?
