Afghan Democracy - Bare Skin, Dancing

KABUL — Eight years after the US invasion that promised progress and liberation, Afghans see Western democracy as synonymous of indecency and fornication.

"I see signs of democracy among customers with bare arms and necks," Mansoor Aslami, 21, a cosmetics shop owner, told Agence France Presse (AFP) on Tuesday, August 4.

He also defines democracy as a boy and girl walking together on the street without being questioned.

Many Afghans are provoked by alien cultures that invaded the country along with the 2001 US invasion that overthrew the Taliban regime.

"I don't know the meaning of democracy," says Noor Ali, an 81-year-old Kabul resident.

"I only know when I ask women 'why are you out almost naked in the street?' I am told 'uncle, this is democracy'," he said, sitting in front of a stall that sells petrol.

Most of Afghanistan's 13 private channels run Western music videos and movies and have come under critics who dismiss their programs un-Islamic.

Some cable operators were banned briefly by the government after complaints from the Ulema Council about immodesty and immoral programs.

"Western democracy is freedom and fornication," argues Wasim, a 28-year-old waiter in a Kabul kebab restaurant.

Afghanistan flirted with democracy in the 1960s and 1970s by holding limited parliamentary elections but the experiment was squashed with the 1979 Soviet invasion that set off decades of civil war and foreign intervention.

The 1996-2001 Taliban government banned music and dancing, ordered men not to shave, decreed that women wear the all-encompassing burka and banned girls from attending school.

Bad Democracy

But the abrupt change that followed Taliban's ouster jarred much of the deeply conservative, rural country.

Ali, the Kabul elder, is very critical of the new culture sweeping across some sections of society.

"Is this democracy? Dancing, having bare skin, dishonor?" he fumes disapprovingly.

"If it is, it shouldn't be."

Wasim, the young waiter, agrees.

"This is democracy for Western, American and European people and it is developing the same way here."

Wahid Mujda, an analyst, says such trends that run counter to the tents of Islam and the conservative Afghan culture are likely to cause confusion.

"When we ask people what democracy is, they will say democracy means lack of modesty and no religion."

But Mohammad Haleem, 25, believes the upcoming presidential and provincial elections will offer him the opportunity to vote for someone who can bring real democracy.

"I will give my vote to the person who can serve Islam and the country," he asserted.

"It allows us to select our fate."