"I don't understand how anybody can dislike the US," said a senior Oxford academic I met in 2003. His position at the university required a great deal of traveling - he had seen the world and was an intelligent man. So how is it he failed to comprehend a basic fact: that many people had solid reasons to dislike the US. There was no hostility towards the American people or their way of life - it was US foreign policy that caused resentment. I didn't understand the man - just as he didn't follow me and thousands of other people who were critical of the US. I've now moved to the US and am beginning to understand why our perceptions were in such stark contrast. He had spent time in the US and experienced all that is attractive about this country - a rare sense of freedom, a dynamic and friendly people, and a sense of committed citizenship European politicians can only dream of. This, of course, is a generalization but nonetheless, these aspects of the US are as real and true as are the less commendable sides of life here. By contrast to with the Oxford man, my views of the US had been essentially shaped by US foreign policy towards my country of origin: Afghanistan.
Like many other Afghans I had reason to be critical of the US government. In the Afghan war against the Soviet invasion of 1979, the US government didn't support educated, moderate and progressive Afghans. It sided with militant Islamists even though they lacked popular support and political legitimacy. A survey conducted by the Afghanistan Information Centre in Peshwar in 1988 brought this to light early on. It asked Afghans refugees and fighters based in Peshawar who they thought should run the country after the Soviet withdrawal. The results showed that the majority was against a takeover of power by Islamist parties. The people in this survey included commanders of Islamist parties - they had fought for the parties and yet believed the militants were not fit to govern Afghanistan. This was the predominant Afghan sentiment a decade before the Taliban came to power.
There was a clear lack of support for militant Islamism among the Afghan population. The man who conducted the survey, Professor Sayed Bahauddin Majrooh, was soon assassinated and his killing was most probably in response to the survey. So why did the US - the self-appointed global leader of freedom and democracy - side with militants and extremists whose human rights records were appalling and who had no grass-roots support? The common understanding is that Washington had a mistrust of moderates and liberals. It feared that the moderates might negotiate with the communists in Kabul or try to find a political solution to the war rather than fight until the last Soviet soldier left Afghanistan. The long-term implications of this policy on the Afghans and the rest of the world were not taken seriously, it seems.
Be it as it may, the contrast between US ideals and the values that it supported in the Afghan resistance movement was so absolute that it led to all sorts of doubt, resentment and conspiracy theories. Subsequently, the people who should naturally be allies of the US - human rights activists, moderate and progressive forces of Muslim majority societies - have come to believe that the rise of militant Islamism is a deliberate US policy to keep the Middle East and South Asia poor and divided. Only recently I met a staunch opponent of militant Islamism who told me with great conviction that the Iranian regime had come to power with the help of the CIA. This type of ignorant confusion should be forgiven - the US administration has so far done little to prove to the rest of the world that it really is on the side of grass-roots democracy. A good example for this is the contrasting stories of the American "Jack" Idema and the Afghan Malalai Joya.
Joya is the kind of activist the world expects the US to support. She has grass-roots support - young and elderly Afghans walk for miles to see and to support her - and is honest, brave and truthful. She has one problem - unlike her opponents she has neither US weapons nor US dollars. Everybody agrees that as soon as the foreign troops leave Afghanistan, Joya will be killed. Her opponents are the aforementioned militants whose rise from rags to riches was almost entirely sponsored by the US administrations of the 1980s. Joya's constituents should be forgiven for suspecting the US administration of being a force that works against democracy in the developing world. While Joya, who is an example of authentic, home-grown Afghan democracy, had (and still has) to live in fear of assassination by the US administrations' lackeys, US citizen Jack Idema was able to set up a private prison in Afghanistan and torture Afghan detainees. In May 2007 Malalai Joya was suspended as an MP for showing a lack of deference to the Afghan parliament. Her offense - if it was an offense at all - was a minor one bearing in mind that war criminals have been allowed to thrive in Afghanistan (-she compared some MPs to farm animals). She was suspended only a month after the Afghan government pardoned "Jack" Idema, allowing him to leave prison after only three years.
The Taliban, of course, love this sort of story. They don't need to invent tales of US cruelty to encourage anti-US sentiment. Idema and his like (for example some of the corrupt US companies operating in Afghanistan) provide the Taliban with a rich body of truthful accounts of appalling US behavior that can be easily exploited and used to their advantage. Ordinary Afghans often feel despair at this behavior. Could it be that the current US administration is its own worst enemy? Judging by the way it had turned Afghan success into failure in only seven years, there can be only one answer: yes. This is a shame for all the decent US citizens who want to help Afghanistan. For the Afghans who welcomed the US invasion of 2001, it's a tragedy.
But as an Afghan saying goes, gozashta gozasht - there is no point in crying over spilt milk. Living in America, I've fallen for the most attractive of all American traits: endless optimism. Call me naïve but the US that I've encountered since I moved here early this year is by and large an outstanding country in terms of meritocracy, equality, accountability and human rights. The law is on the side of justice and is mostly respected and enforced. If this is what the US administration wants in Afghanistan and the rest of the world - then, I am all for it and we shall all be Americans in our own way.
It's not too late and it would be easy for the US to improve its image abroad and regain its lost honor: just apply to the rest of the world the same standards for justice and progress you insist on for yourselves. In other words, give us more of Obama and less of Idema.