Muhammad Shafiq Popal is one of Afghan President Hamid Karzai's more formidable opponents — yet he isn't a chieftain, a warlord or even a candidate in the Aug. 20 Afghanistan presidential election. Just 30 years old, Popal is a rare individual in the country: a community organizer who heads the Afghanistan Youth National and Social Organization (AYNSO), an NGO that, in a nation marked by division, transcends religion, ethnicity and tribe. AYNSO's broad objective is to promote democracy and human rights. But Popal's current objective is much more specific: mobilizing AYNSO's 32,000 members to unseat Karzai, who he believes has done little to address the needs of Afghanistan's youth. "The present government doesn't understand our value," says Popal. "That has to change." Nearby, at Kabul University, Qudsia Zohab, a freshman studying literature, says her classmates spend more time on the coming election than on their coming exam. "Most of the university students will vote," she says — but not for Karzai. "There is a feeling that he doesn't work for young people."
That Afghanistan is even holding an election is practically a miracle. The year is far from over, but it's already the bloodiest since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. Large swaths of the southern and eastern regions of the country are under the control of militants, while some security analysts estimate that the Taliban has a permanent presence in at least 70% of the nation. As the election nears, the frequency and ferocity of attacks by insurgents have spiked. The U.N. reports that in the first six months of 2009, civilian casualties from such attacks — as well as from friendly fire — are 24% higher than in the corresponding period last year. July was the worst month ever for the NATO-led coalition forces: 76 soldiers were killed, more than half of them Americans. (See pictures of the U.S. Marines new offensive in Afghanistan.)
That's why this election is so crucial. Afghanistan last went to the polls in 2004, in what was widely seen as a referendum on Karzai as the interim leader after U.S. forces arrived three years earlier. It was the first time Afghans had ever elected a President, and while many hoped for change, the Karzai government soon reverted to the traditional practices of top-down leadership and relying on personal connections and patronage to run the country. That approach may work with the older generation, but it's left many youths frustrated. More than 70% of the country's 33 million people are under the age of 30, and estimates of registered voters ages 18 to 25 range from 8 million to 10 million, out of a total of 17 million. While today's young Afghans have experienced the ravages of war, they have also witnessed — as refugees or through TV and the Internet — an alternative: governments accountable to the public. "People assume the elders will tell the young how to vote," says 38-year-old Jahid Mohseni, CEO of the media organization Moby Group. "Young people still respect their elders, but they have developed a capacity to think for themselves. And the candidates that neglect that vote may be in for a surprise." (See art depicting war-torn Afghanistan.)
While security is a daily concern for most Afghans, the young in particular want a government committed to eliminating the corruption plaguing the country and to generating jobs that go to people who deserve them. Many youths feel that Karzai, with his emphasis on building relationships with tribal elders, warlords and other traditional power brokers, is not their man.
Besides the President, there are 40 candidates on the ballot, but only two are contenders: Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, a onetime Foreign Minister, and Ashraf Ghani, Karzai's former Finance Minister, who used to be an analyst with the World Bank. In a recently released poll conducted by U.S. pollsters Glevum Associates in July, Ghani was considered a long shot — garnering only a 4% rating, compared with Abdullah's 25% and Karzai's 31%. But in recent weeks, the relentlessly pragmatic Ghani has steadily gained ground, according to private polls conducted by nonpartisan groups. Those polls also indicate that Karzai is unlikely to receive the 50% of votes required to avoid a runoff. Whoever joins Karzai in the second round will largely be the choice of the youth vote. For AYNSO, that individual is Ghani, whose platform includes government hiring based on merit, job creation through financial incentives and the modernizing of school curriculums to help bring the country into the 21st century. "Lots of candidates promise that they support the youth, but with Ghani, he says how he will do it," says Popal.
In Search of Honest Work
Esmatullah Kosar is someone who very much wants to be judged on his merits. A slight, shy 24-year-old, Kosar has just returned from three years of studying in a Bangalore university, on a scholarship from the Indian government. At age 2, Kosar lost his father in the war against the Soviets. His mother, a member of the Hazara ethnic group heavily persecuted by the Taliban regime, saw her sons' education as the family's ticket out of desperation. Kosar thought his fluent English and new bachelor's degree in human resources and management would guarantee him a good job in a country crying out for professionals. When he got an interview as a human-resources assistant in a government ministry, he was confident of getting the job — until he encountered the interviewer. "I was more knowledgeable than he was, and I was supposed to be his assistant," says Kosar. He was rejected. The same thing had happened to most of the other graduates in his scholarship program. "Thousands of graduates are coming out every year with talent and skills, but they cannot get jobs because those in higher posts are not professionals, so they are threatened by the younger generations who really know something."
See pictures of treasure hunting in Afghanistan.
Watch "Afghanistan's Ongoing War.
Disillusioned, many young Afghans try to find jobs overseas — sometimes with tragic results. In April, on the border with Pakistan, 62 young Afghans were found suffocated to death in a shipping container stuffed with some 100 illegal migrants. They had been bound for Iran. The estimated number of illegal migrants fleeing Afghanistan last year was 600,000 — nearly double the number in 2006. According to Basir, a human trafficker who asked that his full name not be used, most of the migrants are young and educated — "middle class, with enough money to pay me but not enough to live without a job." Though business is good for him — the going rate to Turkey is $6,000, Europe up to $15,000 — Basir is ambivalent about the exodus: "If the youth are leaving, that means there is no future for Afghanistan."
The needless deaths of so many young Afghans has sparked nationwide soul-searching and inspired at least one young Afghan to do something. At 20 years old, Sayed Hussain Fakhri is the youngest Afghan running for a seat on the Kabul provincial council, a position similar to that of a state congressman in the U.S. "There is no excuse for men to be going away and dying for jobs," says Fakhri. That's what made me think I should run for office, to see if I could change that." (Watch TIME's video "The Life (and Death Threats) of an Outspoken Afghan Woman.")
Because so many young Afghans feel that the government has failed them, some are taking control of their future and helping other youths in the process. Moby Group is Afghanistan's most influential broadcaster, having created a hugely popular local version of American Idol called Afghan Star as well as a program in which young Afghans argue, through debates, about why they should hold high office. CEO Mohseni chalks up Moby's success to its emphasis on young personnel: he reckons the average age of his 600 employees is 24. "They are a generation with fresh ideas," he says. "If [this generation is] earning an income and is engaged and involved, you have a better chance of moving the whole country forward."
Hope amid Despair
In Afghanistan, it is often said that the definition of Taliban (which literally means students) is "young man without a job." The Taliban, points out 23-year-old Moby manager Yosuf Shabir Mohseni (no relation to Jahid), started as a youth movement frustrated with injustices during the civil war of the early 1990s — injustices that Yosuf Mohseni feels still abound. "It just doesn't seem like the government is paying attention to what is really needed to fix this country," he says. "If young people are left in the dark, what do you think will happen in 10 years? The Taliban." Most young Afghans interviewed for this story believe the best — and simplest — way to defeat the militants is to give idle youth gainful employment. "We want to feel like we are part of society, that we can contribute and that our voices can be heard," says Kosar. "When you don't find that in normal life, you look elsewhere."
Twenty-year-old Shafiq Shah is an extreme example of that. He was arrested after his explosives-laden Toyota failed to detonate near his intended target: four foreigners working for an aid organization. Shah has spent the past several months in Kabul's Pul-e-Charkhi prison, where he was eventually moved to an isolation wing because of his aggressive proselytizing. He is intelligent, charismatic and wholly dedicated to the downfall of the current government. While he says the Afghan leadership isn't sufficiently Islamic, the real target of his rage is what he considers an absence of justice: "Afghanistan is a society where men rape children and go free. In the Taliban time, if they arrested a robber, they would kill him. If a butcher was cheating his customers, they would cut off his fingers."
Though Shah is a radical, literature student Zohab sees his point. After being denied an education for so long under the Taliban regime, she is finally able to pursue her dream of getting a degree by taking night courses while working at the Kabul Museum. Still, she says, she suffers periodic harassment as she enters and leaves the campus. She has been called names, threatened, even beaten. Appeals to the police never help. These days she goes to school only if her father or brother can drop her off. "I love Afghanistan," she says, "but sometimes I feel like I hate Afghans. Even if the economy improves and there are jobs after graduation, it is worth nothing if we [women] don't feel safe."
A constant sense of insecurity coupled with a chronic lack of opportunity: Afghanistan seems a nation in perpetual crisis, with no respite for young and old. But it is in the nature of youth to be optimistic, and Yosuf Mohseni, for one, finds hope in the coming election. "I do see a future, provided we choose the right person," he says. "If I can influence one person and he influences one person, we can all change. Who does the country have but us?"
