When one thinks of Hinduism, one is automatically transported to a world nestled in the Himalayas where people with peaceful faces practice yoga and are non-violent, peace-loving, and of a fundamentally different religion. Naturally, some images of smoke and an illegal substance may also come to mind, but for the most part, Hindus are viewed in a positive, tranquil light. Any Hindu could tell you what they believe the core values of “Hinduism” are—karma, dharma (duty), rebirth, sanatana dharma (the ultimate truth), and many others.

As a person born and brought up in a Hindu family in India, I was drawn into an intense discussion on what it really means to be Hindu with a friend who was taking “Intro to Hinduism” at Tufts. It really made me start to wonder about what characterizes all Hindus, what it means to be Hindu, and who can actually be Hindu. Does ancestry matter or is it simply about one’s beliefs? Given that there is no set procedure to convert to Hinduism, why is Julia Roberts’ conversion to Hinduism right after Eat, Pray, Love such a big deal? For all practical purposes, if someone is born into a Hindu family, does this make them Hindu?

If one were to go back into the history and origins of Hinduism, one would not find any lasting evidence to support all the myths and illusions surrounding the contemporary beliefs that people have about it. Hinduism does not in fact fit into the most basic requirements that draw the Western Abrahamic religions and many Eastern faiths together. In Islam, for example, a common belief in Allah (peace be upon Him) and the prophet Mohammad defines the religion and its followers. Hinduism, in contrast, has no common founder or fundamental belief that binds all Hindus together.

Contemporary Hinduism is a smorgasbord of ideas and faiths. The term “Hindu” actually emerged during the 19th century as a result of colonialism. When the British arrived in India and saw a completely different category of people with beliefs they could not understand, they called them all Hindu—“people who live beyond the river Indus.” But despite their shared name, all Hindus do not have the same methods of praying, living, or eating.

So what does draw all the Hindus together into this common classification? The fact that Hinduism accommodates variations in belief. Today, you can be vegetarian or non-vegetarian and still be a Hindu. You don’t have to believe in karma or dharma to be a Hindu. You can deny the existence of the holy trinity of Gods (Brahma the creator, Vishnu the sustainer, and Shiva the destroyer) and still be a part of the Hindu community. For the most part, Hinduism has multiple layers that one can keep peeling off and can be embraced as much as one wants. In the end, Hinduism is a way of life—a collection of multiple ideas and an evolution of faith since time immemorial.

Hinduism defines itself by a wide range of indigenous practices and beliefs that originated in India but have since changed and adapted to different peoples and cultures as they spread around the globe. At its heart, Hinduism is polytheistic and pluralistic. There could be more than 500 different gurus advocating for their type of Hinduism and none of them would be wrong or right. At this point in time, an Israeli could be sitting in Dharamsala trying to get rid of war scars by following an inventive, intoxicating Hinduism; an American could be scrubbing the floors of an ashram in Pune; an Indian could be sitting in a temple making offerings to the priest, and another could be sitting at the dinner table, just being thankful for another meal. What do all these people have in common? Not much, except that they are all following what they believe is Hinduism. And honestly, each of them is as close (or as far away) to the truth as anyone else.

Resistance to change is a common theme around the world in times of political and social unrest. From the unwillingness of President Lyndon B. Johnson to put an end to the Vietnam War to Hosni Mubarak’s more recent attempted refusal to step down as president of Egypt, stubbornness has proved dangerous to global socio-political stability. Important to the progression of peace and justice is the ability to recognize global trends of change and adapt to them. One nation that is doing exactly that is the South Asian country of Bhutan. As the rest of the world seems to be doing all it can to hinder progress and maintain out- dated policies, Bhutan felt the winds of political change and decided to transition from an absolute monarchy to a multi-party democracy in early 2008.

Bhutan is a small land- locked country bordered by China to the north and In- dia to the east, west, and south. It has managed to remain an independent Buddhist nation despite influence first from the British Empire and then India. Early groundwork for democracy in Bhutan began in 1953, when King Jigme Dorji Wangchuck established the country’s first legislature, a 130-member National Assembly. The road to democracy, initiated by the monarchy itself, included a mock election on April 24, 2007 to acclimate the population to the electoral process. The first actual democratic election in Bhutan was held on March 24, 2008. But how might a population that has known nothing but happiness under an absolute monarchy come to terms with such an extreme political shift? In the United States, Americans are accustomed to democracy because it has been developing for over 200 years. Bhutan, however, is only now making the transition.

The head of Bhutan’s first democratically elected government, Prime Minister Jigme Thinley, was confident that democracy would succeed in Bhutan. But Bhutan’s citizens did not share his optimistic opinion. In an article from the Council on Foreign Relations, Thinley writes, “The people were not keen on bringing the kind of change that, in their eyes and in their mind, could not be very different from what they saw in the world at large and in particular in our neighboring countries in South Asia. In many of the countries, democracy had failed or was in the process of failing, and leading to tremendous upheavals, strife among the people.” For this reason, Bhutan’s transition to a Western-style democracy was met with some trepidation from a population accustomed to their nation’s benevolent monarchy and Buddhist tradition.

But what does democracy mean for Buddhism in Bhutan? Religion is so closely linked with the Bhutanese monarchy that one could not exist without the other. This connection was not ignored in the drafting of Bhutan’s new constitution. Article 2 dictates that the dual powers of religion and politics shall be unified in the person of the king, “who, as a Buddhist, shall be the upholder of the Chhoe-sid,” the dual system of governance characterized by the sharing of power between the religious and political heads of the country. While the king’s power is mainly symbolic, his influence is seen throughout the new democratic system. As democracy has taken hold in Bhutan, the Bhutanese have recognized the benefits of the new system and have adapted to them admirably. This transition should be a model for the rest of the world, not just for nations interested in developing a democracy of their own. Individuals should also note the benefits, as demonstrated by Bhutan’s example, of being open to necessary change. Only with change can essential progress be made, and a combination of the two will ultimately aid in the attempt to create and maintain global socio-political stability.

The Egyptian anti-Mubarak protests captivated the world’s attention earlier this year when, in only 18 days, the largest Arab state in the Middle East went through an unexpected political transformation. Inspired by the events in Tunisia, over one million Egyptians took to the streets and successfully pressured Hosni Mubarak, who had served as the President of Egypt for 30 years, to resign. What makes this burgeoning revolution so remarkable is that it reveals something rarely seen under the many dictatorial leaders in the Middle East: the powerful will of the people.

Recognizing the undeniable forces behind the protest movement, leaders from around the world, either heads of state or of multi-national organizations, increasingly called on Mubarak to resign before the scheduled September elections. This international pressure was exerted by prominent figures, including United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who repeatedly urged reform and an “orderly and peaceful transition.” While many considered this global interest to be an affirmation of the legitimacy of the developments in Egypt, this considerable attention prompted some to call on the UN Security Council to intervene. However, in this context it is important to remember national sovereignty, a key principle championed by the UN.

National sovereignty forms the basis of much international law, and is clearly enshrined in the UN Charter. Article 2, Chapter 1 of this charter states that “nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state” and that “the [UN] is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all of its Members.” More plainly said, the UN is dedicated to upholding the national sovereignty of each of its members equally and will not intervene in their domestic affairs. The Secretary General made this commitment clear when, in response to questions regarding the situation in Egypt, he said that it “cannot be characterized as a threat to international peace and security” and thus did not warrant UN involvement.

Over the years, however, the meaning behind this simple language has changed with shifting international attitudes and norms regarding intervention and the concept of international human rights. While the 1945 United Nations Charter contains language which echoes these modern sentiments, such as the statement in Article 1, Chapter 1 that “[the UN shall] encourage respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms,” the attitude that human rights violations are an exception to national sovereignty emerged more recently. The rising prominence of human rights issues in the international discourse on national sovereignty has paralleled a rise in humanitarian interventions. In particular, since the end of the Cold War the number of humanitarian interventions undertaken by the UN has grown significantly, as such operations are now considered a standard option for international actors instead of an exceptional undertaking.

The United Nations, as the principle international organization dedicated to maintaining global peace and security, is often looked to in times of domestic crises. Most recently in Egypt, Dr. Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, who heads the World Muslim Scholars’ Union, urged the UN to “intervene in Egypt and protect innocent civilians.” While the deaths and injuries of Egyptian protesters is deplorable, the fact is that the situation in Egypt never reached a level consistent with current standards for humanitarian intervention. In general, it is inadvisable for the UN to intervene in such situations due to the dangerous precedent it would set.

An intervention by the UN during the protests in Egypt would have introduced a new and unnecessarily aggressive policy in international interventions, in which the UN could determine the winner in a domestic political battle. Such interference would not only undermine the idea of national sovereignty but also the authenticity of the Egyptian protesters and their achievements. These were clearly mass protests of the Egyptian people, by the Egyptian people and for the Egyptian people. They deserve the chance to determine their own future without a meddling UN intervention.

This article is adapted from an original blogpost on TRCommons.org. To read more of Quinn’s work, visit the blog where she is a contributing writer at http://www.trcommons.org/author/unagbtufts.

Western troops found themselves in a quagmire. Despite their training and technology, they found themselves continually defeated by a nearly unseen enemy, a guerilla force with an intimate knowledge of the mountainous battlefield and a fierce devotion to their cause. The military leadership, seeking to minimize casualties, decided that the best option lay in tactical airstrikes. If key opposition figures could be eliminated without even having to put troops on the ground, the war could be won easily, or so they thought. The year was 1920, the battlefield was occupied Iraq, and the decision to use aircraft was made by the British military, which was soon driven out of the countryside and forced to make major concessions to the rebels.

Nine decades later, the United States has been trying to defeat an insurgency in northwestern Pakistan with a similar strategy. Granted, technology has come a long way from biplanes with mounted machine guns. Now it is remote-controlled Predator drones used by the CIA to drop laser guided bombs and Hellfire missiles, but principle of the strikes remains. Munitions drop from the sky onto rural villages, buildings burn, citizens die, and as the smoke settles, the distant roar of a jet engine is the only trace of the phantom attacker.

Drone strikes in Pakistan, started by the Bush Administration in 2004, have been stepped up under the Obama’s leadership. Since 2004, the US has launched 181 drone strikes on Northern Pakistan. 85 of those were in this year alone. Casualties, estimated to be between 1,800 and 2,000, are reported to be nearly two-thirds militants and one third civilians. This year, the civilian casualty rate has been closer to ten percent, although the lack of reliable information on casualties makes it difficult to guess accurately. In this context, however, the real numbers are insignificant.

What is important is the perception of the Pakistani population. As my high school history teacher used to remind my class daily, “Perception is reality.” A recent poll funded by the United States Institute for Peace found that 48% of FATA residents believe that the drone attacks target civilians. As a result of this perception, 75% oppose the drone strikes, 83% view Obama unfavorably, and 90% oppose US military action in the region. The Pashtun tribes of Northwest Pakistan have long been fierce defenders of their territory, and the presence of foreign drones over their territory is in and of itself an affront to their sense of sovereignty.

The United States and the Pashtuns of the NWFP share a common enemy. The vast majority of Pashtuns in the NWFP opposes the Pakistani Taliban, and in a poll conducted by the New America Foundation, 38% said they would support drone strikes conducted by the Pakistani military. The battle here is one for hearts and minds, and the challenge is to assure Pakistanis that we are a supportive ally and not another imperialist conqueror. Unfortunately, the intrusion of mysterious flying machines that kill civilians with shells bearing the inscription “USA” only reinforces this perception.

If the US discontinues its drone strikes in the region, the Taliban in Pakistan will stop being able to draw upon resentment towards the US as a means of gaining support. Civilians there will still fear for their lives, unfortunately, but that fear and resulting resentment will be properly directed towards the Taliban. Once it becomes abundantly clear to people on the ground that the Taliban is the most pressing threat to peace in the region, it will only be a matter of time before it is dislodged and driven out.

Obama, who has taken General McChrystal’s advice and recognized the importance of perceptions in the conflict, understands all of this. He recognizes that drone strikes are not ideal, but at the same time, he is faced with a careful balancing act. The American people, weary after nine years of fighting in Afghanistan, don’t want to see more of their soldiers return in coffins, and images of dead ‘terrorist’ lynchpins serve as a resounding reminder to the public that the war is going well. With the midterm elections approaching, Obama must portray a picture of success if he is to retain domestic support. Unfortunately, while sacrificing Pakistani support for that of Americans may work to keep him in office, it will not make any progress towards bringing peace to northwestern Pakistan.

“If you want to kill the president, here he is. Kill him, if you want to. Kill him, if you are brave enough.” These were the words President Rafael Correa of Ecuador proclaimed to a crowd filled with angry police officers in the main army barracks of Quito on Thursday, September 30th. The president yelled and tore at his shirt, daring police officers, angry over new austerity measures imposed by the federal government,to backup their words with action and kill him. Apparently some of the police officers took his urging to heart.

Ecuador erupted into violence on Thursday following weeks of political demonstrations and uncertainty. On Wednesday, September 29th, President Correa vetoed a new civil service law, thereby reducing benefits for police officers and other public employees and increasing the amount of time necessary for a promotion. Members of the national police force were angry that the president had passed such a law without seeking input from public employees. There have been a series of popular protests and movements against such a veto in recent months. On Thursday, some of the lower ranks of the police force staged a mutiny in protest of the president’s veto in an effort to make their opinions known. Although the national police chief expressed his loyalty to the president, lower ranking police officers occupied barracks and set up road blocks throughout the country. Some also occupied the National Assembly building and the national airport in Quito, leading to their closure for several hours. In the police force’s absence, widespread looting and crime ensued on the streets of Quito. Businesses and schools were shut down amidst security concerns. That afternoon, following Correa’s fiery speech to a crowd of protesters, police officers released tear gas into the crowd.

At that point, the administration of President Correa shut down all other forms of media except for the national, state-run television station, Cadena Nacional de Noticias. Therefore, the official version of the ensuing series of events is markedly one-sided in favor of President Correa. International news media,such as CNN and BBC, have reported that the president was injured when he was hit in the face by tear gas. The president also claims that a police officer attempted to rip off his face mask and choke him. The president was rushed to the national army hospital in Quito. While he was being treated by medical personnel, pro-testing police officers began to gather outside the hospital. BBC and CNN report that these officers forcibly prevented the president from leaving the hospital, essentially kidnapping him and holding him hostage. However, critics have noted that other members of the government entered and left the hospital freely throughout the ordeal, suggesting that the president could have left at any time.

The national media urged the general population to come to the defense of their president and rescue him from the rioting police officers. Crowds of civilians and members of the military gathered outside the hospital and soon clashed with the rioting police officers. CNN reports that the government estimates that four people died in the ensuing gunfire, including one university student, while over 200 people were injured nationwide on Thursday, although critics claim that there are far more casualties. The president was finally rushed away by army special forces after more than twelve hours in the hospital, and taken to the national palace, at which point he made another fiery speech to a cheering crowd, praising them for this “triumph” and insisting that there would be “no pardon or forgiveness” for those responsible for the violence.

BBC reports that President Correa also insisted that “this was an attempted coup, an attempt to destabilize the government, which failed thanks to the Ecuadorean people.” However, critics insist that the police officers never wanted to overthrow the government; they simply wanted to have their voices heard. Analyst Roberto Izurieta told CCN en Español that “the elements for a coup do not exist. There was no political movement or a call for the president to leave office. There was no intent to put the presidency in the power of another person. What occurred was an uprising from part of the police.” Indeed, Tracey Tokuhama Espinosa, a professor at Universidad San Francisco de Quito and a BBC news correspondent, says that the police actually submitted a petition with nine specific points of disagreement with the austerity law. This petition indicates that “it was never the intention of the police to hold a coup-they wanted to be heard, like the media, universities and other public servants whose opinions have been ignored up to now.” Other nations, including the United States, Colombia, Venezuela, Chile and Argentina, quickly denounced the violence and pledged their support for the democratically elected leader.

Since the unrest, the nation has remained extremely tense. A national state of emergency was in place for over a week after the violence, and the National Assembly building remains guarded by military forces with armored vehicles. Despite contrary allegations, the government still maintains that the unrest amounted to an attempted coup and claims that former president Lucío Gutierrez, leader of the oppositional Patriotic Society Party, is responsible for conspiring to carry out the coup, charges that Gutierrez adamantly denies. The government has released recordings of police officers that it claims prove that some police officers were plotting to kill the president, although the reliability of these tapes cannot be verified. The chief of the national police force, Freddy Martinez, has resigned amidst the unrest, and President Correa has promised to “purge” the 42,000 member national police force of all dissidents. Despite the President’s tough stance, the administration has recently revised the austerity law and increased army and police pay, perhaps signaling willingness to compromise with police officers. In another promising turn of events, President Correa has agreed not to dissolve Congress. Immediately following the violence, the president had vowed to dissolve the National Assembly and rule by decree, powers which were granted to him by the new federal constitution that his administration drafted and approved in 2008.

Despite these compromises, the situation in the country remains very tense. Ecuador has a long history of political unrest; there have been eight presidents since 1996. The leftist Correa was initially elected in 2006 with the promise of pushing a socialist agenda. He was re-elected for a second term in 2009. He has the support of the Alianza País party in the National Assembly, and his ad`ministration has been able to make significant changes especially in redistributing capital to poorer populations and improving the education system, but he has faced harsh criticism about his unwillingness to listen to opposing viewpoints, his alliances with Hugo Chavez and his confrontational personal demeanor. Critics insist that the president’s taking over of all forms of media represents a threat to freedom of the press and other rights guaranteed under a democracy. Tokuhama Espinosa insists that “no one wants to overthrow the government; people just want to be heard and are extremely frustrated at the farce played out in Congress (in which laws are passed but vetoed by the President, or that they pass because ‘the president says so’ without proper debate or integration of opposing viewpoints).” Clearly, the reality of what occurred in Ecuador remains unclear, and the situation remains tense and extremely complex.

On September 30th, Ecuador’s national police allied with military factions to launch a coordinated rebellion across the country in what is believed to have been an attempted coup d’état. Stone-faced officers outfitted in urban camouflage blocked major highways, invaded the Parliament building and major airports and seized control of the nation’s state-run TV station, culminating in the tear gassing of the country’s president, Rafael Correa.

News coming out of Ecuador follows familiar and sloppy patterns of previous Latin American crisis narratives. Two competing sides have emerged to construct their own narratives about the situation. Rogue police forces claim to have been protesting the President’s budget cuts to the armed forces while Correa himself claims the uprising was ultimately an attempt on his life. A leaked audio recording of police transmissions, however, lends more clout to the former story. On the recording, multiple officers are heard calling for Correa’s head if he did not reverse the cuts. Images of him being pummeled by a barrage of fists while escaping an ill-received meeting at police headquarters only support his coup allegation. “If you want to kill the president,” shouted the tomato-faced President minutes before the attack, “here he is!”

In our cynical age, it is difficult to perceive Correa’s call as anything but a self-indulgent attempt at emulating the fatal defiance of romanticized Latin American martyrs like Che Guevara and Salvador Allende. Perhaps this is partially true, but one must contextualize the event among broader changes in Ecuadorian and Latin American governance. Correa claims the budget cuts are part of a broader attempt at bolstering national welfare, and the subsequent insurrection of an armed wing (the traditional face of conservative regimes in South America) saturates the failed coup with the uneasy connotations of left/ right struggle that defined the entire continent in the latter half of the 20th century. Complicating matters, Correa, who rode populist waves of support into office, is a vocal leader of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s international socialist organization ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas).

Nevertheless, the rebellion was hardly indicative of the conventional Marxist narrative that pits the organized proletariat against the ham-fisted bourgeoisie. The policies that incited the uprising are rather byproducts of growing defiance toward US influence in Latin America. It is for this reason that our own President Barack Obama should take the clash as an opportunity to rethink political strategy in the region, and how best to deal with the rising clout of ALBA.

Correa has joined Chavez and Bolivia’s President Evo Morales in defying demands for debt repayment by the US-led International Monetary Fund and his decision in 2008 to default on the country’s debt to the IMF chilled diplomatic relations with North America even further. In the past, Ecuador would have found itself floundering in its own self-righteous rhetoric without the support of the world’s biggest creditors. Today, however, as the United States and Europe scramble to bolster their economies in the face of massive domestic debts, Ecuador and other ALBA members are looking to themselves and other non-Western powers, in particular China, to counter the former hegemony of the Washington Consensus. In the wake of Correa’s decision to oust the US military from its airbase in Manta, it was revealed that bilateral trade volume between Ecuador and China surged to 400 times larger than what it was in the 1980’s and in late 2009 the red dragon announced its firm commitment to increase investment in the ninth poorest country in the Western hemisphere.

For the last ten years, the US has perceived new tensions with Latin America as a nuisance; a thorn in Uncle Sam’s foot. The wound threatens to become gangrenous now. Preoccupied with wars of choice in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US has allowed its past mistakes in the region to haunt current relations. Now the door has been cracked open even further for a strong South-South alliance in the twenty-first century. Perhaps such an alliance is unavoidable, but the US should not wait passively and allow its relations with Latin America to deteriorate even further.

The coup attempt in Ecuador should serve as yet another notice to the Obama administration that the international balance of power is shifting quickly. Ecuador and growing number of other Latin American countries have demonstrated their commitment to resisting anything that smells of old Western imperialism. The US must nurture its ties with these nations by demonstrating, above all, a firm break with past policies.

Europe has long been home to countless minority ethnic groups. But for the Roma, nearly a millennium on the European continent has failed to produce marked assimilation.

The Roma are thought to have immigrated to Europe from central India as early as the eleventh century. Commonly referred to as gypsies or Romani, the Roma quickly spread across all regions of Europe and today make up nearly ten percent of the population in southeastern European nations such as Romania and Bulgaria. Their arrival marked the beginning of centuries of extreme social ostracism and persecution, characterized by enslavement, forced labor, and extermination. Indeed, beside the Jewish people, the Roma were the only other ethnic group that the Nazis forced into death camps. Sixty-five years after World War II, many Roma continue to live isolated from mainstream European society, and congregate in impoverished group encampments on the outskirts of major cities.

France’s massive deportation of the Roma over the past year reveals that racial prejudices and policies of discrimination against the Roma persist, which only exacerbate the Roma’s fringe role in European society. However, French deportation policies also raise questions as to how members of the European Union should appropriately deal with sweeping social problems.

Since January, the French government has deported at least of 8,300 Roma, raising the number of Roma deportations in France to approximately 26,000 over the past three years. The vast majority of the deportees had immigrated from Romania and Bulgaria, giving them the right to free movement within the European Union and challenging the legality of French action.

President Nicolas Sarkozy justified the deportations by citing reasons of “public order,” insisting that France wanted to crack down on crime in all illegal encampments, regardless of ethnic affiliation. He claimed that only individuals with a history of criminal activity would be evacuated. However, the European Commission found it unlikely that France was truly evaluating the Roma on a case-by-case basis, and, in late August, began investigating what they suspected to be discriminatory deportation policies. On September 12, a document was released by the French Interior Ministry citing exactly what Sarkozy’s government spent weeks denying. The ministry had labeled the evacuation of Roma encampments as a “priority,” indicating the existence of an active government campaign against Roma immigrants in France.

When set against a backdrop of a recent stream of hate crimes, French action could easily be explained by an extreme hatred and prejudice that some Europeans still hold against the Roma. In the past year, six Roma have been murdered in Hungary without provocation, and, on August 30, a Slovakian Roma family was slaughtered when their neighbor burst into their apartment armed with a submachine gun. The Slovakian public’s reaction to the murder was perhaps even more disturbing than the crime itself. The New York Times described the national mood as ambivalent, insisting that while Slovaks clearly recognized the immorality of the shooting, they continue to view the Roma as delinquents who deserve to be punished.

While racially motivated stereotyping may have played a role in the French expulsion of the Roma, the larger issue at hand seems to be who should be held responsible for integrating the Roma into European society. According to France, the brunt of the burden should fall on the shoulders of the countries of which the Roma are citizens. Roma residing in Romania continue to have high rates of joblessness and illiteracy and, in a 2009 survey, one-fifth of Romanian Roma said they had been victims of a racially motivated hate crime. The French government has made clear that it is in favor of helping governments with large Roma populations fix their failed integration programs. In late August, French Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux met with Valentin Mocanu, Romanian Secretary of Roma integration, to discuss ways that Romania could improve employment opportunities and early childhood education.

However, many critics see these efforts as little more than halfhearted political posturing, especially in light of other EU states’ policies to actively integrate the Roma. Spain, which has also seen a significant influx of Roma immigration in the past five years, has taken steps to deal with the Roma’s social struggles within its own borders. In March of 2010, the Spanish government created a plan to spend over 100 million euros on programs aimed at improving the education, health, and lodging of Roma women and children. Funding for such programs can be obtained through the EU’s Integration Fund.

The Spanish initiative questions whether the failures of other EU member states’ policies truly warranted the deportation and displacement of thousands of people. The Roma have endured centuries of abuse, and their expulsion from France only reinforces public perception of them as a migrant social problem that should be eliminated instead of dealt with. In a European political environment characterized by the economic bailouts of countries such as Greece by fellow member states, collective problems seem to call for an end to blame-game politicking and a sober analysis of how each member state can manage the problem at hand.

Nearly eight years after the commencement of Operation Enduring Freedom, the Obama administration is facing serious pressure from all points of the political spectrum on the question of US’ future involvement in Afghanistan. Washington’s NATO allies are wavering more than ever on their commitments to the Coalition, adding significantly to the growing opposition at home. The future of the Afghan nation is now at a crossroads, and the threat of regression into failed statehood appears imminent.

While there is broad agreement that the establishment of a responsive and locally attuned government is essential to winning the favor of the Afghan population, and thus to “winning the war,” the question of what form this system of governance should take has received insufficient consideration. In creating this system, it is imperative that the coalition governments revisit the history of governance in Afghanistan, while avoiding the presumption that, despite thirty years of war, Afghanistan will somehow find the return to the secluded, decentralized tribal structure an easy one. Afghanistan has lived under three distinct systems of governance over time: the maximalist-formal system, seen after the Saur Revolution of 1978, IT brought the communist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan to power; a failed-anarchic system, which emerged after the fall of the Soviet Empire in 1991 as the country descended into brutal civil war; and a hybrid system of formal and informal institutions, which can be seen in its modern reincarnation in the provinces of Nangahar and Balkh. In each phase, Afghans experienced varying levels of oppression, violence, and relative peace. In only one will we find a chance for achieving our dual objectives of eliminating Al Qaeda’s safe haven and ensuring a timely withdrawal.

The strong rise of the Taliban in the late 1990s was not an affirmation of an Afghan predilection for radical Islam but a result of the country’s descent into a brutal civil war and a wide-spread desire for stability. In fact, the movement’s repressive ways and myopic insistence on a strict interpretation of Islam in the daily affairs of its people would later create mass support among Afghans for the American invasion of Kabul in October 2001. The Taliban were swiftly defeated and an opportunity for a US-mediated peace agreement between the warring factions of the state—including moderate elements of the Taliban—had finally emerged. With high hopes that a new system of governance would return Afghanistan to the relative calm of the pre-war years, the Bonn Agreement was signed and President Karzai, a Pashtun, found himself navigating the volatile terrain of a country he had not seen in over a decade. His Western backers, basking in their easy victory, bequeathed to him a technocrat’s constitution before sauntering off to Iraq where their real attentions were focused.

From the writing of the Bonn Agreement in 2001 to present day, the United States has taken a minimalist approach in advocating the creation of a maximalist central government under Hamid Karzai with disastrous consequences, the first and foremost of which is the revived insurgency in the south and east of the country. The Bonn Agreement failed for three reasons: it presented a vision for an impossibly centralized and capable Afghan government without explicitly defining the steps needed to reach that vision; America’s commitment of resources and man-power to rebuilding Afghanistan in the ensuing years would prove remarkably shallow and ineffective, despite the grandiose rhetoric; and, perhaps most importantly, it alienated crucial regional figures and ethnic groups such as the Uzbeks, Heratis, and the Hazara Shia—not to mention the Pashtun Taliban, who were never given the opportunity to accepted defeat under the terms of any peace agreement.

American strategists and policy makers have yet to fully comprehend the significance of this failed experiment with the maximalist-formal state model. Even today, Western commentators show their disillusionment with the failure to erect a maximalist state in Afghanistan; Frank Rich, for example, disparagingly claims that “we will never build a functioning state in a country where there has never been one”—while others call for top-down solutions, such as the call by David Kilcullen for “immediate action from... a legitimately elected Afghan president... on a publicly announced consultation with Afghan society” that includes, among other steps, the “firing human rights abusers and drug traffickers.” Such expectations are unrealistic and myopic, for the regional and ethnic warlords whom Kilcullen and others advocate removing from power only became so under the carte-blanche largesse of American, Saudi and Pakistani governments during the covert war against the Soviet Union, before which the position of the “modern warlord” was filled by many thousands of relatively secluded ethnic-tribal leaders. Bringing these well-armed leaders back into the political sphere is the only conceivable way of mitigating the potential for future rebellion against the Kabul government, a lesson the U.S. should well have learned by now after alienating the Taliban in 2001. By adopting the maximalist model of statehood outlined in the Bonn agreement, familiar tribal methods of rule were rendered illegitimate and excluded from the debate, even when these parallel informal institutions of governance and security continued to exist in remote regions of the country. Legitimizing these leaders with the explicit or tacit approval of the state, thereby granting them the fundamental recognition of their humanity and their existence, would be the first step towards establishing an effective, hybrid model of rule in Afghanistan.

Two provincial strongmen, Gul Agha Sherzai of Nangarhar and Atta Mohammed Noor of Balkh, are evidence that the hybrid model can, in fact, achieve the desired outcomes of minimally functional governance. Both governors derive legitimacy from a mix of personality, patronage, and tribal allegiance that, despite their closeness to what we might call “corruption” and “nepotism,” have proven remarkably effective in the their respective provinces. A counter argument might be made that this model depends too heavily on popular allegiance to individual personalities and contains no effective checks and balances against heavy-handed, autocratic rule. Indeed, while the idea of “contracting out” local self-defense forces to tribal leaders and warlords is gaining currency among western observers, an overzealous call for the complete return to centuries-old systems of tribal rule must undoubtedly be cautioned against. As Eqbal Ahmad noted as early as 1988, “A decade of war has undermined the old Afghan ways of managing and limiting violence. These traditional methods rested on a set of shared values and customs, which have been weakened by revolution, war, and exile.” But the Afghan state’s ability to sustain a 400,000-strong National Security Force will require a significant reliance on local tribal enforcement and justice administration, as both Sherzai and Noor have provided. Contrary to the McCrystal formula, the solution to the Afghan question lies in a reconception of the international community’s interface with the Afghan government, shifting the focus from the center to the periphery.

The international community cannot continue to deliver its financial support of the Afghan people through the failed apparatus of the centralized state; money seen flowing in and not hitting the ground where it is needed most not only negates the impact of international assistance, but alienates the population and fuels the “crisis of popular confidence” that General Stanley McCrystal has deemed inimical to the success of the counterinsurgency. While the corruption of local and regional officials may be no less despicable to Western governments, channeling international development assistance through regional governments will increase the accountability of the governors to the people and remove an extra layer of bureaucracy between the donor and the people, both of which will result in greater aid effectiveness and popular buy-in for our objective.

Once success in Afghanistan has been defined as the establishment of a hybrid government with a reasonable monopoly over state wide force, a strong focus on local governance, and a minimally-acceptable level of trust of corruption, we can engage local branches of the Afghan government in capacity building and development projects. These includes those undertaken by the Coalition’s Provincial Reconstruction Teams, which have thus far remained far too insulated from the nuanced culture and realities on the ground. As long as the American military commitment on the ground resembles the failed “nation-building lite” approach it adopted from 2001 to 2008, the United States will be unable to bridge the gap between its military mission of defeating insurgents and its civilian mission of reconnecting the Afghan state with its people.

The US’ grand strategy must place a strong focus on the informal mechanisms of state rule that are unpalatable to western diplomats and technocrats but present the only viable solution for the pluralistic, tribal society of Afghanistan. The time that would be required to create a maximalist state in Afghanistan is measurable by decades, not years; American involvement, conversely, will surely be measured by domestic election cycles. This is problematic, but only insofar as the United States falsely believes that it can or must deliver formal Western institutions of governance to the Afghan people. Recent concern over the fraudulent parliamentary elections of August 2009 need not terminate America’s will to proceed; just as an election alone does not guarantee a liberal democracy, a failed election should not end all hope for the establishment of an acceptable government in Afghanistan. While Afghan faith in the Karzai administration has been severely shaken because of the election, its legitimacy can still be reestablished if local and national government bodies rethink their roles in the effort bring security and humanitarian and economic assistance to the Afghan people.