Acting in bad faith

President Barack Obama’s calls for increased international involvement in the war in Afghanistan suffered a major setback this weekend when revelation of a controversial law passed by the Kabul regime threatened the support of European governments.

The Shia Family Law, applicable to Afghanistan’s Shiite minority, legalizes child marriage and institutionalizes marital rape.

Evidence suggests that the perverse precept, signed into law this past week by president Hamid Karzai, was enacted to appease conservative Shiite clerics whose support is essential for his re-election in August.

Faced with international condemnation, Karzai promised official review of the law, insisting that it will not be enacted in its present form.

Recent developments aside, Obama vowed to move forward with plans to escalate American military presence in Afghanistan and called upon European leaders at the 60th annual NATO summit to follow suit.

Depending upon which news outlet you happen to follow, his request was met with something between reserved receptiveness and outright indifference.

Ultimately, NATO tenuously agreed to commit 3,000 troops for heightened security detail leading up to the August elections and another 2,000 for training the Afghan National Army and Police forces – far short of the 20,000 requested by NATO’s Supreme Allied Command.

Obama was certainly justified in insisting that European governments shoulder more of the burden, arguing that Afghanistan “is a joint problem [that] requires a joint effort.”  

Not one to mince words, he was quick to point out that Europe, being closer in proximity and having a far more extensive history of terrorist attacks, stands to lose just as much – if not more – from failure in Afghanistan than does the United States.

Echoing the sentiments of many European leaders, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the NATO Secretary General, warned that the implementation Sharia law would preclude any further material or military support.

“We are there to defend universal values and when I see, at the moment, a law threatening to come into effect which fundamentally violates women’s rights and human rights, that worries me,” he said.

The piety of de Hoop Scheffer and other European leaders belies the hypocrisy behind their contrived concern for human rights.

The situation in Afghanistan is indeed perilous; a resurgent insurgency and insubstantial institutions threaten the gains in human rights achieved since the Taliban’s ouster in 2001.

Were they truly concerned with protecting human rights, our NATO allies would be offering more, not less, support in Afghanistan.

It hardly takes a stretch of the imagination to believe that, in trying to absolve themselves of the situation, European leaders had in mind the thousands of anti-war demonstrators protesting the NATO summit, not the millions bound to suffer should Afghanistan regress into radicalism.

By playing politics at the peril of the well-being of Afghanistan’s citizens, European leaders seem to be acting, much like Karzai, in bad faith.