Fog of regime change: Afghans want action

Hello from Kabul, where the excitement and promise of the months just after the Taliban’s removal from power in 2001 are long gone, now, replaced by a daily assortment of crimes, mishaps and scandals, much like the events people are dealing with here today.

A member of parliament has been shot dead in front of his home - on his way to evening prayers. There have been at least two car bombings this week, while in Herat and Nangahar provinces demonstrations continue over Afghan civilian casualties of the U.S.-led war against the Taliban.

President Karzai, meantime, is grappling with extreme pressures on his leadership, stresses and strains that are inevitable in the absence of good news – and made worse by a tendancy among many of his ministers to enrich themselves while failing to make things better for the public they’re supposed to be serving.

It’s hardly surprising, then, that the president has resorted to a trick used by embattled political leaders the world over. He has teased the local media with an admission that changes are coming to his cabinet. Period. He’s left reporters guessing what those changes might be.

And the impact on the broader public? If it weren’t for traffic noise, you could hear the population yawning.

But make no mistake: the personnel changes, when they come, will be shifts forced upon both the president and his backers in the international community. No one here is happy with the Karzai regime – or its foreign sponsors. From powerful former warlords to people on the street, the slow-building frustration and anger that’s resulted from years of inertia has reached a high simmer, if not a boiling point.

However – and this is a big however – too many of us who’ve watched Afghanistan over the long haul are unwilling to raise a white flag and open the gates of Kabul to those medieval throwbacks, those pawns of Pakistan’s ISI known as the Taliban.

Get real. With school kids surfing the web, clicking onto music sharing sites and videos, watching movie trailers and joining chat rooms, experiencing what the real world has to offer?

Mullah Omar & Co. should wake up and listen. It’s the sound of technology at work, serving the most basic of human urges: curiosity and hope. In truth, the Taliban cut their own throats long ago. When they held power in Afghanistan, they displayed an even greater disdain for the common good than that shown by the current regime.