Afghanistan: Hire Bill Clinton as your Presedent

 

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Afghanistan/Syria: Hire Bill Clintonas Your President

By

Wahab Raofi

Here’s a solution for failed states like my own native Afghanistan: hire proven, professional leaders from the international marketplace. Wouldn’t Bill Clinton be a far better president than Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah  for bringing peace to the rival factions? He certainly couldn’t be accused of favoring one tribe or sect over another.

            How about former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair or, when he’s done with his current job, Turkish Turky’s presedent Recep Tayyip Erdoğan or German Chancellor Angela Merkel as president-for-hire inIraq or Somalia? They have ample experience in resolving conflicts.

            Yes, it’s an unorthodox approach to leadership, but one that in certain situations actually makes sense. We see successful precedents throughout the business world, where corporations often scour the entire planet in search of talent and expertise. 

As the world’s sophisticated economic demands supersede geographic boundaries, multi-nationals increasingly hire skilled CEOs, managers and labor from all parts of the globe. China and Russia, once dismissive of capitalism, today employ chief executive officers from the United States to run or salvage broken companies.

Likewise, the U.S. issues thousands of visas to talented professionals in the fields of medicine, engineering and science from the Far East, India and other points around the globe. Qatar is a case in point where thousands of foreign experts have helped the country capitalize on its resources,and it now enjoys the world’s highest per-capita income.

            The U.S. and other nations pour billions of dollars in aid into countries like Pakistan and Egypt. Why not leverage that financial support to nudge the creation of transparent, efficient, honest and fair governance? It can start with shopping the free market for proven, even-handed leaders.

The first protest to this concept would be that leadership must come from within. The U.S. Constitution, for example, prohibits a foreign-born president. But the U.S. is not a failed state – at least, not yet. And it’s true that in a perfect world, the best leaders would be indigenous and enjoy majority support from their people. But in the real world, leaders of most troubled countries lack that second requirement.

Conflicts and violence in Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Afghanistan and Somalia can be linked to a chronic,socio-economic“multiple sclerosis” to some degree. What they – and at least 20 other failed states – have in common is bad leadership, which triggers political instability and in turn becomes a springboard for civil war, social upheaval and human suffering.

What is the problem with the leaders of these failed states? Corruption and mismanagementare part of it, but the political leaders of these countries often are more loyal to their tribe, region and religious sect than they are to the nations they serve. Rather than improving the economy, enhancing the quality of life and maintaining stability, they are driven by ideology and obsessed with imposing morality and codes of conduct on their citizens.

Take, for example, deposed Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi, who, instead of implementing economic reform and liberalizing institutions, imposed his ideology on citizens. Furthermore, he infuriated Egypt’s neighbors by spreading Pan-Islamism, which could have had a destabilizing effect on stable states like Saudi Arabia and others on the Arabian Peninsula.

In Iraq, Prime Minister Nouri al-Malikii failed to deliver on his promise of inclusivity by excluding Sunni Muslims from participating in government resulted in the rise of ISIS. In Syria, al-Assad, with the backing of his Alawi clan and his friend Putin of Russia clings to power by gassing his own citizens to death. But if the opposition were to win the civil war, different factions might compete violently to nullify the others’ influence, making Assad almost look like a stable leader.

In Afghanistan, the U.S. spent $120 billion in 2011? alone, yet attained no tangible improvement in the lives of ordinary Afghans. This is due in part to rampant corruption, resistance and a lack of healthy leadership.In the words of former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry, “They consistently oppose foreign efforts to create transparent, rule-bound Afghan institutions because such projects threaten to undermine their political domination and economic banditry.”

In failed states such as this, rife with instability, violence and political unrest, powerless citizens caught in the crossfire often risk their lives to escape. They will travel through unforgiving terrain or in unseaworthy vessels to reach western borders, even if it means living in military tent camps, rather than stay in their native land.

So far, the U.S. and European recipe for dealing with these conflicts has been an unfruitful mix: deploying boots on the ground, preaching the advancement of democracy through free elections,and dumping tax dollars into thecoffins of comatose states. These actions only serve to keep ineffectivegovernments on a sort of codependent life support.

These futile actions are not conducive to a new, emerging world order. It’s time to take an unconventionalapproach. Go global!Resort to international, free-market governance.

When the Emir of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, was asked by a reporter about his success, he responded that managing the affairs of a state is not much different than managing the affairs of a corporation; It takes good planning and good management.

International presidents-for-hire could be brought onboardwith limited-term contracts, renewable if they are successful. I think Bill Clinton, or even Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, would be a great alternative to fix broken countries like Afghanistan or Syria.