Photo - The Guardian Newspaper

W.B. Yeats penned one of his most celebrated works at end of first the World War. The Second Coming drew allusions to a world that had lost hope, to an existential crisis into the human condition where a destroyed landscape had been littered with so many bodies - all for a few yards of dirt in the madness of trench warfare.  The lost hope seems particularly pertinent where today, in Afghanistan and elsewhere, the promise of change and reform has not only been undermined but where the everyday travails of life have been magnified and worsened.

It is times like these, after 8 years of war and after a strategic military change where General McChrystal is vying for the hearts and minds of the Afghan population, that desperate measures pounce on promises once made.  It is certainly easy to criticize the war in Afghanistan.  For all its faults and all the lives taken; many innocent.  But that conditions are steadily worsening and that the Taliban’s influence steadily increasing is a sign that:

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

-W.B. Yeats

Ahmad Zia Langari knows all too well about what could have been and what is.  He  is a commissioner at the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission.  Based in Kabul, Mr. Langari made a special appearance in Brussels on Thursday where I had the chance to speak to him following his presentation to the sub-committee on human rights at the European Parliament.

Mr. Langari said that women are extremely vulnerable in Afghanistan and that their daily lives are exasperated by violence from threats by the Taliban as well as recent  laws that appeal to the conservative elements of the Afghan government.

“A majority of the parliament are conservative and ex-mujahideen,” said Langari.  “Women lack education and some of the schools are 10 km from the villages.  Girls have to walk without any security so they don’t go,” he added.

Compounded by nepotism, cronyism and impunity, the nascent semi-functional Hamid Karzai government is unable to provide the most basic of needs.  In southern areas of Afghanistan, villagers will seek council from the Taliban who have set up ad-hoc judicial systems because of government corruption and lengthy procedures.  However, the Taliban are also pressuring people to use their council to settle disputes.  Afghanistan’s own constitution is beginning to resemble that of the Taliban.  Article 3 of the constitution states that no new law can be passed that contradicts Islamic law.

“The lack of access to government means the Taliban have been able to establish their own systems.  People go to them, not the government,” he said.

With the allegations of widespread election fraud, the discredited Karzia government is another indication of the international community’s failure to understand the intimacy that is Afghanistan.  A cartoon in the International Herald Tribune made the point.  Obama is telling Karzai that he doesn’t understand democracy.  Karzai responds - and you don’t understand Afghanistan.

Immediately following the elections, Richard Holbrooke lauded the Taliban by claiming they had failed to stop democracy.  But on the ground, the events tell a different story.  Of the 1180 international election observers from 50 different organizations, few if any monitored the counting process.  At the same time, the government has clamped down on media. Fourteen journalists were arrested for trying to report on the violence at election polls said  Rachel Reid of Human Rights Watch who was also present at the committee meeting.

“The European Union Election Observer Mission did not fully disclose the levels of violence,” she said. Instead, the European Union had painted a rosy picture which, ultimately and given all the media reports now emerging, further undermines international credibility in Afghanistan.

How then can Europe and the US possibly win the hearts and minds of the population?  McChrystal’s new strategic strategy to engage the population is a start but his objective has been made all the more difficult by international disingenuity and historic callous behavior.

Afghanistan seems like a lost cause, one mired in too many cultural, social and economic complexities that the bigwigs in Washington have failed to address or simply decided not to - at least in the beginning.   No one has ever won Afghanistan.  And it looks like the gross human rights violations and all the small but significant steps made for the emancipation of women over the past two years are quickly unravelling.  It is a disheartening situation.  One that seems hopeless and lost and yet one that we cannot give up on.