The future of Afghanistan’s government will depend heavily on several complex and uncertain developments, including the April 2014 presidential elections and the number of non-Afghan combatants in Afghanistan after 2014. Although history cannot predict how Afghanistan will turn out, it does provide insights into the survivability of a fledgling democracy. In particular, it demonstrates that a government’s durability depends much more on its people’s cultural respect for democracy than on its constitution and other formalized rules.
Today’s Afghan political elites have shown little respect for democracy or the law, in accordance with Afghan cultural traditions, and they are likely to show even less once the U.S. presence and aid have faded. Afghans who are in their twenties are more inclined than older Afghans to favor a liberal democracy guided by the rule of law, but they are not yet old enough to overrule older generations. Thus, the longer Afghanistan can postpone a crisis in governance, the better the chances for democracy’s survival.
A separate but related issue is the ability of Afghan security forces to retain control of territory in the long-term. Here, too, culture exerts extraordinary power. Afghan culture encourages political opportunism and defection, especially in wartime. The American withdrawal combined with heightened insurgent infiltration from Pakistan could convince Afghan government leaders to switch sides. Whole areas of eastern and southern Afghanistan could fall quickly to the insurgents and spark an ethnic civil war.
