Crowns and chaos in the Middle East

By Colby Cosh - Sunday, January 22, 2012 at 7:45 AM - 0 Comments

Abstract: This paper helps explain the variation in political turmoil observed in the MENA [Middle East and North Africa] during the Arab Spring. The region’s monarchies have been largely spared of violence while the “republics” have not. A theory about how a monarchy’s political culture solves a ruler’s credible commitment problem explains why this has been the case. Using a panel dataset of the MENA countries (1950-2006), I show that monarchs are less likely than non-monarchs to experience political instability, a result that holds across several measures. They are also more likely to respect the rule of law and property rights, and grow their economies. Through the use of an instrumental variable that proxies for a legacy of tribalism, the time that has elapsed since the Neolithic Revolution weighted by Land Quality, I show that this result runs from monarchy to political stability. The results are also robust to alternative political explanations and country fixed effects.

I wouldn’t suggest taking this classic bit of political science too seriously, with its everything-but-the-kitchen-sink regressions on a small data set and its inherently dubious use of an “instrumental variable” to ferret out causation. That said: Victor Menaldo’s basic observations would be hard to refute. Monarchies in the Middle East and North Africa have been stable relative to their republican neighbours; the replacement of a monarchy with a republic rarely if ever makes the people better off; and the monarchies in the region tend to be more liberal economically, even if they don’t have particularly liberal political structures.

In the ci-devant monarchies of the Arab and Persian world, nostalgia for overthrown Western-friendly regimes of the past seems fairly common. When the Libyans got rid of Gadhafi last year, for instance, they promptly restored the old flag of the Kingdom of Libya (1951-69), and some of the anti-Gadhafi protesters carried portraits of the deposed late king, Idris. From the vantage point of Canada, constitutional monarchy looks like a pretty good solution to the inherent problems of governing ethnically divided or clan-dominated places. And in most of the chaotic MENA countries, including Libya, there exist legitimist claimants who could be used to bring about constitutional restorations.

The most natural locale for such an experiment would have been Afghanistan, where republican governments have made repeated use of the old monarchical institution of the loya jirga or grand council. The U.S. met with overwhelming pressure from Afghans to include ex-king Zahir Shah in the first post-Taliban loya jirga in 2002, but twisted the old man’s arm to ensure that his participation would be no more than ceremonial. At least one South Asia analyst, Shireen Burki, thinks this was a regrettable missed opportunity that can only be attributed to reflexive suspicion of monarchism by U.S. officials.

“We don’t do kings,” Secretary of State Madeleine Albright once said when she was asked if restoration could help solve the problems of the south Slavs. “Pity you don’t,” the happy Commonwealth realms and the peaceable kingdoms of northern Europe might have added. The U.S. turned out to be more interested in easily-overwhelmed American clients like Ahmed Chalabi and Hamid Karzai; and how has that turned out?

Washington condemns corpse desecration by Marines

By macleans.ca - Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 3:00 PM - 0 Comments

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta strongly condemned what looks like an act of desecration of corpses by U.S. troops in Afghanistan, the Washington Post reports. Panetta telephoned Afghan President Hamid Karzai immediately after viewing a short video shows four men in Marine uniforms urinating on three corpses. Panetta called the act “utterly deplorable,” and promised an investigation. According to a caption in the video, the corpses belong to deceased Taliban fighters. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed “total dismay,” while Karzai called on the U.S. to apply “the most severe punshiment to anyone found guilty in this crime.” An anonymous Marine spokesperson said the troops are believed to be members of the thirds Battalion, second Marines, and added that a probe is underway. Both U.S. law and the Geneva convention forbid the desecration of bodies of those killed in war.

Washington Post

Absurdity, there and here

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 10:54 AM - 0 Comments

The Harper government is disappointed with Hamid Karzai’s demand that all American-held detainees be turned over to Afghan authorities.

“Canada demarched the Afghan government on this issue,” a spokesman for Foreign Minister John Baird told Postmedia News. ”Our diplomats have expressed in the strongest terms Canada’s disappointment with the government of Afghanistan’s handling of this matter,” Joseph Lavoie said. “We also underscored that transitioning full security responsibility to Afghan control is an important process that must be carefully managed, with effective co-ordination among (International Security Assistance Force) partners.”

Meanwhile, the squabble over images of detainee hairdos could result in a Charter challenge.

Absurdity, here and there

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, January 9, 2012 at 9:05 AM - 0 Comments

The latest squabble over Afghan detainees, national security and access to information involves hairdos.

Meanwhile, Hamid Karzai is alleging abuse and demanding that all detainees under NATO control be handed over.

American officials, caught off guard by the president’s order, scrambled to figure out the source of the allegations. Now they have at least part of an answer: the Afghan commission that documented the abuses appears to have focused mainly on the side of the prison run by Afghan authorities, not the American-run part, according to interviews with American and Afghan officials.

Mr. Karzai was, in essence, demanding that the Americans cede control of a prison to Afghan authorities to stop abuses being committed by Afghan authorities.

Detainees taken by Canadian Forces are presently being transferred to the Americans.

And so we come full circle

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, December 9, 2011 at 9:28 PM - 0 Comments

John Baird informed the House this morning that detainees in Afghanistan will now be transferred to American forces.

Mr. Speaker, with the combat mission in Afghanistan now complete, I am pleased to inform the House that our government has signed an arrangement with the Obama administration to facilitate the transfer of detainees captured by Canadian Forces in Afghanistan to U.S. custody at the detention facility in Parwan. The U.S. operates this facility with full agreement of the Afghan government and detainees can be prosecuted under Afghan law. Canadian officials will continue to be present on the ground to monitor all Canadian transferred detainees until they are sentenced or released.

It was concerns about how the United States treated detainees—and the example of Abu Ghraib—that led to the decision to transfer detainees to Afghan custody in the first place.

Exits: No rush for the doors

By John Geddes - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 at 6:00 AM - 0 Comments

Murray Brewster/CP

When the time came, Brig.-Gen. Dean Milner, the last Canadian commander of Task Force Kandahar, didn’t want to leave. Milner presided over the historic withdrawal of Canada’s combat troops from Afghanistan last July, marking the end of fighting that began in deadly earnest when Canadian soldiers took responsibility for the violent southern province of Kandahar in 2006. “To be honest, I would have liked to stay on in the south a little longer assisting the Americans,” he told Maclean’s. “You hate to go because of the experience, the knowledge, the connection we established.”

Milner, who was deployed to Kandahar in the fall of 2010, said he arrived after a summer when Taliban insurgents had regrouped and “really spiked up their activities.” But a U.S. troop surge had also flooded Kandahar with American soldiers in unprecedented numbers, allowing the Canadians to concentrate their efforts more than ever before, particularly in Panjwai district. By the time of Canada’s exit, Milner could claim significant progress in the notorious Taliban hotbed: a new road he calls “a dagger in the heart of the Taliban,” 10 open schools—compared to just one when he arrived—and 600 Afghan police officers, up from 100 in less than a year.

Still, Milner doesn’t deny that the gains won at such cost—158 Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan, along with a diplomat, two aid workers and a journalist—are far from secure. “It is reversible,” he says. “It is fragile.” The Taliban have suffered punishing losses recently, but their ability to find sanctuary in Pakistan remains troubling. He points to the role Canada has taken in training the Afghan National Army as the key to ultimately ending the need for large numbers of NATO troops to prevent a Taliban rebound.

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Dozens killed by explosions in Afghanistan

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, December 6, 2011 at 2:59 PM - 0 Comments

An explosion killed at least 55 people in a shrine at the heart of Afghan capital Kabul, followed by a bicycle-bomb that went off killing four more people outside a mosque in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif on Tuesday. The attacks come the day after Western governments pledged long-term support to Afghanistan after combat troops leave in 2014. By targeting commemorations of the Ashura festival, the largest event in the Shiites’ religious calendar, the attacks could mean the resurgence of a historically violent relationship between Sunnis and Shiites in Afghanistan. Large sectarian attacks have plagued neighbouring Pakistan for decades, but have not taken in place in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Reuters

‘Freedom seldom flowers in undisturbed ground’

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, November 24, 2011 at 12:41 PM - 0 Comments

The prepared text of the Prime Minister’s remarks at today’s Parliament Hill ceremony marking the end of the mission in Libya.

“Your Excellency, Speaker Kinsella, Speaker Scheer, Ambassadors, Ministers, Honourable Senators and Members of Parliament, General Natynczyk, Lieutenant-General Bouchard, Members of Her Majesty’s Canadian Armed Forces, honoured guests , ladies and gentlemen; this is a day of honour. It is a day to celebrate the success of the NATO mission to Libya, and Canada’s contribution to it; it is a day to pay tribute to the extraordinary men and women of our Armed Forces who played their part; and yes, it is a day to honour the great Canadian who led them. This is, as I said, a day of honour.

“Of course, when it comes to the Canadian Armed Forces, every day is a day of honour. We must always remember it is no small thing to put your life on the line, day in and day out for your country: something we should always honour. But, even by that measure, today is special because we are celebrating a great military success: the success of Canada’s participation in Operation Unified Protector and Operation Mobile, respectively the NATO mission to Libya and Canada’s contribution to it.

“It is a day to pay tribute to the extraordinary men and women of our Armed Forces who played their part. And yes, it is a day to honour the great Canadian who led them.

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The Commons: Let’s be frank

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 31, 2011 at 5:44 PM - 0 Comments

The Scene. The NDP’s David Christopherson stood and, sounding serious, informed the House that the official opposition’s joined all Canadians in mourning the loss of Master Corporal Byron Greff, who died this weekend after a suicide bomber struck the convoy in which he was travelling near Kabul. The House was quiet.

The Prime Minister was absent this day, but Mr. Christopherson proceeded to direct his question to him nonetheless. “Will the Prime Minister,” he asked, “update this House on his current view of the security situation our troops are now facing in Afghanistan?”

Defence Minister Peter MacKay duly stood and added his condolences. “It is a reminder,” Mr. MacKay then said, “of the unlimited liability assumed by members of the Canadian Forces and our allies in that mission.”

Indeed, the Defence Minister seemed to sense where Mr. Christopherson was going with this. “No one would suggest,” he said with his next breath, “that the risks will ever be zero in that country, given the current security climate.”

Continue…

The science and politics of risk

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 31, 2011 at 9:30 AM - 0 Comments

The first death since the Canadian Forces transitioned to a training mission in Afghanistan prompts consideration of risk.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper says “significant risks” remain for Canadians serving as military trainers in Afghanistan. He made his comments Sunday after the death of a Canadian military trainer — the first since the training mission began earlier this year — who lost his life after his convoy was attacked by a suicide bomber. Nearly a year ago, when Harper committed Canadian troops to a three-year training mission in Kabul, he predicted it would pose “minimal risks for Canada.”

Last month, Canadian soldiers were involved in a firefight after an attack was launched against the US Embassy in Kabul.

Last year, the Prime Minister reversed course and ordered an extension to the military engagement in Afghanistan. Upon first addressing the matter in the House, he said the new mission would be “a training mission that will occur in classrooms behind the wire in bases.”

Consequently, he said a vote in Parliament wasn’t necessary. The Liberal opposition generally agreed. The NDP was not pleased. The House later debated and defeated a Bloc Quebecois motion that sought to “condemn the government’s decision to unilaterally extend the Canadian mission in Afghanistan until 2014.”

Meet the Haqqanis

By Jody White - Friday, October 21, 2011 at 2:01 PM - 1 Comment

Jalaluddin Haqqani in a 1998 photo. (Mohammed Riaz/AP Photo)

Afghanistan has long been a place where hope is in short supply. Its neighbours are hostile and meddlesome. Its government and institutions are corrupt and weak. And despite the presence of thousands of NATO troops, security is elusive thanks to Taliban bombs and bullets. Now this unhappy country faces yet another threat, one that predates the Taliban and may be competing with it at the behest of the Pakistani military as the clock winds down towards NATO’s withdrawal.

On the morning of September 13, six men disguised in burqas entered a partially-built high-rise in Kabul which overlooks both the U.S. embassy and NATO headquarters. Within minutes, they were raining fire down on both buildings with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. For 20 hours they paralyzed the city and held off hundreds of Afghan troops, police and Western Special Forces while four other attackers with suicide vests prowled the city in search of targets. By the next day, all 10 attackers—along with 11 civilians and five police officers—lay dead. It was the longest and most wide-ranging attack on the Afghan capital since the Taliban were ousted from power in 2001. Continue…

Taliban could have been our “best partner” to fight terrorism: Globe reporter

By Michael Petrou - Friday, October 14, 2011 at 2:54 PM - 3 Comments

Globe and Mail reporter Graeme Smith had this to say during a panel discussion convened by This Magazine to discuss a decade of international intervention in Afghanistan:

“Afghanistan had a functioning country in some ways before we came in in 2001. That’s a qualified statement: the Taliban had been relatively successful in establishing a regime and you could argue that if you were looking for a partner to fight terrorism—a partner to take on al-Qaeda and make sure that the country would remain stable with some kind of rule of law—in 2001, your best partner would have been the Taliban.”

Afghanistan was neither functioning nor stable prior to 2001. It was a wasteland that at least three million Afghans had fled, seeking refuge in Pakistan and Iran. Many more were internally displaced. I saw thousands of them in the fall of 2001. They lived and died in shallow pits covered with scraps of cloth and plastic. They hadn’t run from American bombs; they ran from the Taliban.  Continue…

Afghan prisoners routinely tortured: UN report

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 at 2:16 PM - 0 Comments

A blistering report by the United Nations found Afghan prisons are home to the “systematic torture” of detainees by the Afghan intelligence service and the Afghan National Police. “Use of interrogation methods, including suspension, beatings, electric shock, stress positions and threatened sexual assault,” the report noted, “is unacceptable by any standard of international human rights law.” Of the 324 security-related detainees the UN interviewed, 89 had been handed over to the Afghan intelligence service or the police by international military forces, and in 19 cases, the men were tortured once they were in Afghan custody. Prisoners handed over by Canadian troops, however, appear to have been spared the abuses. An unnamed detainee, who says he was tortured by members of the Afghan National Directorate of Security, was quoted as saying that For those arrested by Canadians, two NDS officials were allocated for further interrogation and those interrogated by them never complained about ill-treatment by NDS officials.”

New York Times

Vancouver Sun

Compelling evidence

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 at 8:45 AM - 3 Comments

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan has released a report into the treatment of detainees by Afghan authorities.

UNAMA’s detention observation found compelling evidence that 125 detainees (46 percent) of the 273 detainees interviewed who had been in NDS detention experienced interrogation techniques at the hands of NDS officials that constituted torture, and that torture is practiced systematically in a number of NDS detention facilities throughout Afghanistan … More than one third of the 117 conflict-related detainees UNAMA interviewed who had been in ANP detention experienced treatment that amounted to torture or to other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment…

UNAMA’s detention observation included interviews with 89 detainees who reported the involvement of international military forces either alone or together with Afghan forces in their capture and transfer to NDS or ANP custody. UNAMA found compelling evidence that 19 of these 89 detainees were tortured in NDS custody and three in ANP custody.

The full report is here. As the Globe notes, one detainee, interviewed in March, claims a separate process for those transferred by Canadian forces. Continue…

Bringing Afghanistan’s democrats out of the shadows

By Michael Petrou - Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 12:28 PM - 5 Comments

It is fitting that Terry Glavin begins his book Come from the Shadows: the Long and Lonely Struggle for Peace in Afghanistan with a quote from George Orwell — who once said it is not enough to oppose fascism; one must stand against totalitarianism in all its forms.

Orwell, a far-left anti-fascist who took a bullet in the throat while fighting Franco’s brutes during the Spanish Civil War, was angered by the inability of too many of his fellow leftists to counter dictatorial thuggery in those with whom they shared a common enemy. Stalinists got a free pass because, ostensibly, they opposed fascism; they didn’t deserve it.

Glavin, also of the left, is frustrated by the limits of his supposed comrades’ solidarity and internationalism. Afghanistan’s democrats — its students, human rights activists, women, socialists and secularists — should, by rights, be championed and supported by the western left. They are, after all, fighting for the same things liberals in Canada struggled for and earned over the last century. What’s more, they’re fighting for these rights against an explicitly fascistic strain of religious and ethnic extremism embodied in the Taliban. Continue…

The Commons: If you don’t support MacKay, you don’t support the troops

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 3, 2011 at 5:42 PM - 67 Comments

The Scene. For a full 13 questions this afternoon, the opposition insisted on pressing the government about matters—the economy, trade, the separation of powers in a proper functioning democracy—unrelated to whether or not the Defence Minister should be ashamed or at least embarrassed.

Finally, the Speaker called on the NDP’s Tarik Brahmi, a francophone apparently of Algerian descent, who nonetheless looks to me like a tough English soccer fanatic.

“Mr. Speaker, according to a release by the Canadian Press, the Defence Minister was kept out of key decisions about Canada’s role in the Afghan war,” he said. “This was a top defence priority, yet the Prime Minister was calling all the shots. The Prime Minister could have used some advice. Most agree our efforts should have focused more on peace talks and diplomacy. Is he still making foreign policy and defence decisions on his own, or does he now let his cabinet in the room?”

Peter MacKay stood here not only to enthuse about how cooperatively the Harper government operates, but also to state his objections to talks with the Taliban. Continue…

Good news, bad news: Sept. 22-29

By macleans.ca - Monday, October 3, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 0 Comments

Good news

No longer for scholars' eyes only, the Dead Sea Scrolls are posted online. (Lior Mizrahi/Getty Images)

Steps in the right direction

The king of Saudi Arabia has granted women the right to vote, acknowledging they can make “correct opinions.” This in a place where females can’t travel without a male’s permission, and where one woman who drove, despite a ban, was sentenced to 10 lashes. King Abdullah’s decision also permits females to run for Shura Council. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai has approved draft regulations allowing women’s shelters to remain independent from government, and receive donations without state intermediation.

Weird science

It was an exciting week in space news: NASA’s Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, deployed by the space shuttle in 1991, fell from orbit. A troublemaker on Twitter, armed with some Orson Welles quotes, managed to spread rumours worldwide that UARS had fallen near Okotoks, Alta. Fortunately, it appears the satellite crashed harmlessly somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. A few days earlier, space geeks were titillated with another report: physicists think they saw neutrinos travelling faster than the speed of light, which, if confirmed, would disprove Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity.

Continue…

‘I didn’t know all of the specifics’

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 3, 2011 at 9:43 AM - 3 Comments

However much Peter MacKay supports the troops, he apparently wasn’t much involved in one of the Harper government’s most significant moves in regards to the war in Afghanistan.

“The Savage War,” by Canadian Press defence writer and Afghanistan correspondent Murray Brewster, paints a portrait of a PMO keen to preserve its tenuous grip on minority power and desperate to control the message amid dwindling public support for the war.

MacKay, who took over Defence from Gordon O’Connor in August 2007, was blindsided by the Harper government’s decision later that year to set up a blue-ribbon panel to review the mission headed by former Liberal cabinet minister John Manley, Brewster writes. ”It wasn’t discussed with the broader cabinet, no,” the minister says in the interview. “I didn’t know all of the specifics.”

Meanwhile, at the Federal Court

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, September 30, 2011 at 12:27 PM - 5 Comments

A government appeal to limit the scope of an investigation by the Military Police Complaints Commission has been rejected.

A Federal Court has dismissed an application that would, among other things, strike the testimony of diplomat-whistleblower Richard Colvin and block thousands of pages of documents from being used by the Military Police Complaints Commission…

Justice Department lawyers argued the commission had no authority to call witnesses who were not members of the military, such as Colvin, who said he repeatedly warned both Foreign Affairs and the Defence Department about possible prison abuse … The government also claimed that the watchdog, created in the aftermath of the Somalia scandal to monitor the conduct of military police, exceeded its mandate by issuing summonses for documents.

REVIEW: Can Intervention Work?

By macleans.ca - Thursday, September 29, 2011 at 8:40 AM - 0 Comments

Stewart and Knaus grapple with the seminal question of modern international affairs: can intervention work? By this they mean: can the West, using military force, end wars, halt genocide, topple dictators, replace them with friendly governments, and build nations, without making things worse? Their answer is yes—but not as often as many of us think, and only with limited goals, and more humility and local knowledge than has typically been the case in recent decades.

Stewart, a young British member of Parliament who gained fame for a book about his 2002 walk across central Afghanistan, says foreigners intervening in a failing or war-ravaged country too often succumb to mission creep. Their mandate swells, drawing in ever more resources and troops to little beneficial effect. “There isn’t an insurgency,” a military friend told Stewart after a 2005 reconnaissance trip to Helmand province in Afghanistan, where Britain was about to deploy thousands more soldiers, “but you can have one if you want one.”

Stewart has argued for years against sending more soldiers to Afghanistan. What is needed instead, he says, is a “light long-term footprint.” Commit, but don’t try to do too much. Foreign soldiers, diplomats and aid workers, deploying for in-country tours that are so short British imperialists of a century ago would scoff in disbelief, don’t develop the expertise to implement grand plans designed in faraway capitals. “We—the foreign government organizations and their partners—know much less and can do much less than we pretend,” says Stewart.

Continue…

David Cameron comes to Ottawa

By Michael Petrou - Thursday, September 22, 2011 at 10:56 PM - 8 Comments

The invitation had been “dangling” for months but, British sources say, plans for British Prime Minister David Cameron’s first bilateral visit to Canada — and the first by a British prime minister since Tony Blair in 2001 — only got under way two weeks ago.

It was then something of a scramble to prepare statements and speeches. Quoting Churchill is always a reliable crowd pleaser on these occasions, and both sides were soon eyeing the great wartime leader’s “Some chicken! Some neck!” speech delivered in the House of Commons in December 1941. Continue…

Funding Planned Parenthood, but not abortion

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, September 22, 2011 at 1:14 PM - 18 Comments

A few months ago, Conservative MP Brad Trost was boasting that the government had “defunded” Planned Parenthood. But after more than a year of public waffling, the CBC reports that the government is about to approve funding for the group.

International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda has decided to approve a proposal by the International Planned Parenthood Federation to provide sex education and contraception in five developing countries…

The proposal gets around the thorny issue of abortion by asking for money for sex education and contraception services, and does not include abortion services. The funding is worth $6 million over three years for Planned Parenthood to work in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Mali, Sudan and Tanzania, where abortions are illegal except in cases where the mother’s life is at risk.

How’s “reconciliation” with the Taliban working out?

By Michael Petrou - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 at 2:03 PM - 10 Comments

Burhanuddin Rabbani, former Afghan president and chair of the body tasked with making peace with the Taliban, has been assassinated.  Continue…

Adventures in Afghanistan’s ‘Nothing Land’

By Emma Teitel - Friday, September 16, 2011 at 10:30 AM - 1 Comment

Ahmad Masood/Reuters

The BBC’s famous mockumentary The Office has inspired numerous copycats since its inception in 2001. America’s NBC adaptation, which is about to start its eighth season, popularized actor Steve Carell’s socially inept character, Michael Scott, a paper company manager with a penchant for political incorrectness, sexual indiscretions and a fascination with Meryl Streep. More recent contemporaries are no different: most versions of comedian Ricky Gervais’s original Office production, from France’s Le Bureau to Quebec’s La Job, come complete with almost interchangeable office antics. Every version, that is, except one: an Afghan TV station, Tolo, aired its own Office-style series this summer called The Ministry, replacing office politics with real ones.

The eight-episode series (season two is set to air in October) takes place in a fictional country mirroring Afghanistan, called “Hechland” (translation from Dari: “Nothing Land”), and follows the shenanigans of Hechland’s Ministry of Garbage and its narcissistic minister, Dawlat—played by Abdul Qadir Farookh of the The Kite Runner. Farookh is one of the only actors with professional experience on the production—a Kabul apartment flat converted to a studio by the show’s producers. “Everyone on set is in training,” says 31-year-old Abazar Khayami, one of the show’s senior producers. “But we took our disadvantage and made it into an advantage.”

There is no official television rating system in Afghanistan, but Khayami says it’s obvious The Ministry is one of the most popular shows in the country, as its actors are frequently recognized on the streets and invited into politicians’ homes for dinner. The series’ plots range from government corruption and nepotism to gender inequality and suicide bombings. In one episode, Dawlat the minister (a former New York cab driver who earned his job through pure nepotism) pays off the wrong warlord, setting off a string of suicide bombings he was supposed to prevent. “Nothing is taboo,” says Khayami, noting that things would probably be very different if the show made fun of the Afghan government in a direct, rather than veiled way. “When they are alone in their homes,” he says of real-life government officials, “I like to think they watch the show and laugh. But if we had gone that extra inch and called it Afghanistan [instead of Hechland] and poked direct fun at the administration, then it might be a different story. We’ll never know.”

Continue…