THE U.S.–JAPAN–CHINA TRIANGLE: WHO’S THE ODD MAN OUT?

A S I A P R O G R A M S P E C I A L R E P O R T

Political Transition in Afghanistan:The State, Islam and Civil Society

NO. 122 JUNE 2004

For the current Bush administration,Afghanistan is not only a focal pointin the war on terrorism, but also a

“city on a hill”—a potential beacon ofdemocracy in a region rife with autocrats andauthoritarian leadership. Indeed, George W.Bush situates both Afghanistan and Iraq with-in the context of a larger geopolitical mission,exemplified in this March 2004 speech:

The rise of democratic institutions inAfghanistan and Iraq is a great step toward agoal of lasting importance to the world.Wehave set out to encourage reform anddemocracy in the greater Middle East asthe alternatives to fanaticism, resentment,and terror.We’ve set out to break the cycleof bitterness and radicalism that has

brought stagnation to a vital region, anddestruction to cities in America and Europeand around the world.This task is historic,and difficult; this task is necessary and wor-thy of our efforts. . . .With Afghanistan andIraq showing the way, we are confident thatfreedom will lift the sights and hopes ofmillions in the greater Middle East.1

For a president who initially eschewed theidea of “nation-building,” Afghanistan hasbecome, ironically, a laboratory for U.S.-ledpost-conflict reconstruction and state-building.The administration has sought to portray theCentral Asian country’s development since thefall of the Taliban regime in late 2001 as both asuccess and a harbinger of things to come innearby Iraq. Clearly, Afghanistan’s reconstruc-tion and democratization possess deep symbol-ic and practical importance for both theAmerican government and Afghans alike.

INSIDE

SAID TAYEB JAWAD

The New Constitution ofAfghanistan

page 5

WILLIAM MALEY

Political Transition inAfghanistan: The State,Religion and Civil Society

page 9

THOMAS BARFIELD

Radical Political Islamin an Afghan Context

page 15

SIMA WALI

Afghan Women:Reconstruction, CivilSociety and U.S. Policy

page 18

NEAMAT NOJUMI

The Prospect of Justiceand the PoliticalTransition of CivilSociety: The RecoveryProcess of Afghanistan

page 21

ABSTRACT: With the adoption of a new constitution in January 2004 and elections slatedfor September 2004,Afghanistan stands at a critical turning point in its political development.This Special Report examines the challenges facing Afghanistan in its quest for democracyand stability. Ambassador Said Tayeb Jawad details the promulgation of the new constitutionand other successes in Afghanistan’s political transition as well as hurdles such as security anddemobilization. William Maley enumerates six major obstacles to peace and governance,emphasizing that time and international commitment are crucial to Afghanistan’s path topeace. Thomas Barfield discusses political Islam in Afghanistan and argues that Afghans, whilemaintaining a strong Muslim identity, are generally resistant to extreme forms of ideology andradicalism. Sima Wali notes that serious gender inequities persist under the new order, andwomen, as well as Afghans in general, are not being empowered. Neamat Nojumi points outthat indigenous sources of law and local institutions could serve as the basis for wider politi-cal participation and the strengthening of civil society.This type of grassroots process couldhelp circumscribe the influence of warlords and external groups that may act as spoilers toAfghanistan’s reconstruction.

IntroductionWilson Lee

ASIA PROGRAM

Wilson Lee is program assistant in the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Asia Program.

This Special Report is a joint publication of the Asia Program and the Middle East Program at the

Woodrow Wilson Center.

But beyond the hopeful rhetoric, what are thereal prospects for democracy in a country emergingfrom decades of warfare? Can this experiment indemocratic nation-building—born out of terrorismand state failure rather than an indigenous move-ment—succeed in the long term? In the immediateaftermath of September 11, Afghanistan gaineddeep symbolic importance and garnered the atten-tion of the world. However, the war in Iraq and theprosaic task of reconstruction have led to waninginternational interest and donor fatigue. At theBerlin Conference held on March 31 and April 1,2004, donors pledged only US$8.2 billion—less thana third of the US$27.5 billion requested by Kabul toachieve a level of “dignified poverty” of US$500 percapita.The pledges are even less encouraging onceone considers that only a small portion of theUS$4.5 billion raised in the January 2002 TokyoConference has actually reached Afghanistan.

Despite the lack of sufficient financial support,Afghanistan has embarked on a critical phase in itspolitical development based on a timetable mappedin the Bonn Agreement of December 2001. Thenew constitution adopted in January 2004 and thepresidential and parliamentary elections slated forSeptember 2004 represent the most significant mile-stones in Afghanistan’s political reconstruction thusfar, but myriad obstacles to bringing full and sustain-able peace and prosperity clearly remain.Resurgence in the cultivation and trafficking of

opium threatens to undermine law and order.Remnants of the Taliban and followers ofGulbuddin Hekmatyar and al Qaeda still roam therugged borderlands near Pakistan, prompting theUnited States to mount more concerted offensivesagainst the insurgents. The factional fighting inHerat and Faryab that erupted in March and April2004 has brought into sharp focus the tenuous bal-ance of regional powers maintained by PresidentKarzai in Kabul and the necessity for a larger andmore competent Afghan National Army to maintaincentralized authority.

This Special Report, the result of a half-day con-ference held on April 20, 2004, at the WoodrowWilson Center, co-sponsored by the Asia andMiddle East Programs, seeks to examine the nexusbetween state, society and religion in Afghanistan’snascent democratic order. Five experts from govern-ment, academia and the NGO community explorehow Afghanistan can bring the ideals enshrinedwithin the constitution and the hopes of the Afghanpeople to fruition.

In the first essay, Afghan ambassador to theUnited States Said Tayeb Jawad details the provi-sions of the new constitution signed by PresidentKarzai on January 4, 2004.The establishment of asystem of checks and balances, with a directly elect-ed president, a bicameral legislature, and an inde-pendent judiciary form the core of the new govern-mental structure. Strong safeguards for human

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THE ASIA PROGRAM

The Wilson Center’s Asia Program is dedicated tothe proposition that only those with a sound schol-arly grounding can begin to understand contempo-rary events. One of the Center’s oldest regional pro-grams, the Asia Program seeks to bring historicaland cultural sensitivity to the discussion of Asia inthe nation’s capital. In seminars, workshops, briefin-gs, and conferences, prominent scholars of Asiainteract with one another and with policy practition-ers to further understanding of the peoples, tradi-tions, and behaviors of the world’s most populouscontinent.

Asia Program Staff:Robert M. Hathaway, DirectorGang Lin, Program AssociateAmy McCreedy, Program AssociateWilson Lee, Program AssistantTimothy R. Hildebrandt, Program Assistant

THE MIDDLE EAST PROGRAM

The Middle East Program's meetings, conferencesand reports assess the policy implications of region-al developments (political, economic, and social),the Middle East's role in the international arena,American interests in the region, strategic threats toand from the regional states, and the role and futureprospects of the region's energy resources. TheProgram pays special attention to gender issues,democratization, and civil society in the region.Rather than spotlighting day-to-day issues, theProgram concentrates on long-term developmentsand their impact on the region and on the relationsof regional countries with the United States.

Middle East Program Staff:Haleh Esfandiari, DirectorJillian Frumkin, Program Associate

rights and gender equity are also enshrined in thebasic law of the land. Jawad stresses the compatibil-ity of democracy with Afghan traditions and Islam.The government has embarked upon numerouspolicy initiatives to improve the lives of ordinaryAfghans, from developing infrastructure to restruc-turing trade and investment laws to encourage eco-nomic growth. Amid these encouraging successes,the ambassador also recognizes the nascent state’slimited capacity to penetrate all sectors of Afghansociety to deliver public services, root out corrup-tion, and provide security. In particular, the demobi-lization of regional warlords and curbing the nar-cotics trade remain significant challenges. The inter-national community’s sustained commitment—whether in the form of NATO-led InternationalSecurity Assistance Forces (ISAF), the registration ofvoters by the United Nations, or financial supportfrom the donor community—is essential to thelong-term success of reconstruction efforts. LikePresidents Bush and Karzai, Jawad views Afghanistanas a model for other societies wracked by “terrorand tyranny.”

Less sanguine than the U.S. and Afghan govern-ments on progress in Afghanistan, William Maley,professor and foundation director of the Asia-PacificCollege of Diplomacy at the Australian NationalUniversity, casts a critical eye toward the accom-plishments of the post-Taliban period. Maley seesthe elections as an important litmus test to measurethe Afghan state’s capacity. Specifically, he enumer-ates several challenges to the consolidation ofdemocracy and long-term stability in Afghanistan.In the realm of state-building, Maley applauds thenew constitution’s promulgation but notes that theproliferation of ministries and the lack of merito-cratic methods of bureaucratic recruitment will seri-ously hamper the state’s effectiveness. Rebuildingtrust after many years of warfare and internecineconflict is also a major impediment to peace. Ethnicand tribal cleavages persist, and no process of nation-al reconciliation exists to overcome mistrust andcreate a sense of national solidarity.

Security remains the primary concern for ordi-nary Afghans, and progress in this area has been slow,Maley notes. The Afghan National Army is out-numbered by private militias and suffers from highdesertion rates. Holding fair elections will be diffi-cult, and remnants of the Taliban, al Qaeda, and

criminal groups linked to the narcotics trade stillseek to destabilize the new order.

Maley points out that Afghanistan faces externalchallenges also. Pakistan, with its radical Islamistgroups and strategic interests in Afghanistan, remainsthe biggest nuisance in a historically hostile neigh-borhood. While its immediate neighbors mayexpress too much interest in Afghanistan’s internalaffairs, the larger problem may be the lack of interestfrom more developed nations. Maley, echoingAmbassador Jawad, urges the international commu-nity to continue its support for Afghanistan evenafter the elections.

Some observers, reminded of the Taliban and alsoIslamic regimes in Iran and Sudan, have expressedconcern over the new constitution’s designation ofAfghanistan as an “Islamic Republic” and the provi-sion that no law can contravene “the beliefs and provi-sions of the sacred religion of Islam.”2 ThomasBarfield, professor and chairman of the departmentof anthropology at Boston University, examinesIslam’s role in Afghan politics and governance. Heargues that while Afghans express a particularly robustMuslim identity, they are generally resistant to radicalforms of Islamic political ideology. Religion has animportant legitimizing function in Afghan society, butidentity is so strongly rooted in local communities thatexternally imposed political ideologies rarely findwidespread support. The local Afghan understandingof Islam trumps more radical interpretations of Islam.

Among the most victimized of Afghan societyunder the Taliban were women. Sima Wali, presi-dent of Refugee Women in Development, views theempowerment of women and ordinary Afghans ascritical to the country’s reconstruction. Althoughthe issue of women’s rights was used by the UnitedStates to topple the Taliban, the conditions forwomen remain bleak. Afghan women face some ofthe highest rates of illiteracy and child mortality inthe world while ranking among the lowest in over-all human development. Afghanistan’s reconstruc-tion cannot be accomplished without the assistanceof women, who are 60 percent of the population,argues Wali. Furthermore, if state-building does notaccompany the revitalization of civil society, manyof the advances by women and the population as awhole will remain merely symbolic.

Neamat Nojumi, who recently finished histenure as research fellow and coordinator for the

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Afghanistan Legal Studies Initiative at Harvard LawSchool’s Islamic Legal Studies Program, also viewsgrassroots processes as the key to recovery inAfghanistan. Nojumi examines the failure of pastpolitical transitions such as those under the People’sDemocratic Party of Afghanistan in 1978 and theTaliban, and finds that these regimes, while relyingon the state’s coercive power to maintain control,never enjoyed widespread support. Like Barfield,Nojumi notes that the ideologies of these regimeswere never congruent with local identity and per-ceptions. Therefore, the current regime should cap-italize on indigenous processes of conflict resolu-tion, local institutions such as the Jirga and Shura, andcustomary law in order to bring state and societyinto alignment. However, the obstacles to this typeof grassroots mobilization are manifold. Nojumiwrites that the fragmentation of the political spacedue to ethnic or regional tensions and the compara-tively well-organized and -funded Islamist groupsthreaten to derail the transition process envisionedby President Karzai and the transitional govern-ment.

The picture that emerges from these essays is acomplex one. The mosaic of ethnic, tribal, religious,and regional interests presents a daunting challengeto reconstructing the Afghan state and society.Solving the problems described in this SpecialReport requires sustained political and financialcommitment on the part of the international com-munity. Equally important is the reinvigoration andrevitalization of Afghan civil society after years ofwarfare, so that Afghans themselves can becomeactive agents of their own future.

ENDNOTES

1. Remarks by the President on Operation IraqiFreedom and Operation Enduring Freedom onMarch 19, 2004, available online at www.whitehouse.gov/news/releaes/2004/03/20040319-3.html. Accessed on May 20, 2004.

2. See the English version of the Constitution ofAfghanistan online at www.embassyofafghanistan.org/pdf%27s/Documents/adoptedConstitutionEnglish.pdf. Accessed on May 20, 2004.

Special thanks to Ambassador Dennis Kux, seniorscholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center, MarvinWeinbaum of the Middle East Institute, and RobertHathaway, director of the Asia Program, for theirinvaluable support and contributions to this confer-ence. Also, thanks to Tim Hildebrandt and AmyMcCreedy for their helpful comments and feedbackon this Special Report.

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POLITICAL TRANSITION IN AFGHANISTAN

The New Constitution of AfghanistanSAID TAYEB JAWAD

Said Tayeb Jawad is the Afghan ambassador to the United States.

Iwould like to focus mainly on our new consti-tution, but I will also share with you ourachievements and the challenges that we are

facing in building state and national institutions inAfghanistan, and the prospects of election anddemocracy under our new constitution.

In the past two years, we have worked hard toimplement the Bonn Agreement. We have sustainedthe politics of consensus building, and continued tocraft inclusive political processes. On January 4,2004, President Karzai signed our new constitutioninto law, marking another significant milestone,under the Bonn Agreement. Five hundred and twomen and women delegates adopted with near unan-imous acclamation the most progressive constitutionin the region.

The draft was prepared by a 35-member team inconsultation with Afghans and experts from theUnited States, Europe and Africa. At nationwidepublic meetings, half a million Afghans were askedabout their opinion for the new constitution.

The new constitution is a balanced national char-ter. It provides for equal rights and full participationof women. It seeks and finds an equilibriumbetween building a strong central executive branch(to further strengthen national unity and rebuild thenational institutions), and respecting the rights andvolition of the provinces to exercise more authorityin managing their local affairs. It institutionalizesdistrict and provincial level councils. Furthermore,it is a careful combination of respect for the moder-ate and traditional values of Afghan society andadherence to the international norms of humanrights and democracy. The new constitution furtherreveals that our Islamic and traditional values arefully compatible with and mutually reinforce anopen democracy.

The new constitution provides for checks andbalances between a strong presidency and a two-chamber national assembly with extensive powers ofinquiry. It establishes the president as the head ofstate. He/She is elected by direct majority vote and

he will serve for a period of five years with twovice-presidents and is subject to a two-term limit.The president is the commander-in-chief of thearmed forces and appoints ministers and membersof the Supreme Court, but only with the approval ofthe parliament. The president cannot dissolve theparliament. The constitution provides for a clearimpeachment process.

The parliament or national assembly consists oftwo chambers: the Wolesi Jirga (or the lower house)and Meshrano Jirga (or the upper house or senate).To insure that 25 percent of the members of thelower house are women, the constitution requiresthat two female delegates be elected from each ofthe 34 provinces of the country. Such a high quotafor women is rare in most countries whetherMuslim and non-Muslim. The president appointsone-third of the senators of which 50 percent mustbe women.

The constitution creates an independent and ablejudicial branch. The Supreme Court is comprisedof nine members serving for a period of ten years.The creation of the new Supreme Court will beunderway when the newly elected government isseated.

The new constitution institutionalizes the civil lawsystem in Afghanistan. The Hanafi jurisprudence of

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Islamic law will only be applied if there is no existinglaw that deals with the matter. The constitution pro-tects the freedom of followers of other religions. Itprohibits formation of a political party based on eth-nicity, language and/or an Islamic school of thought.

The right to life and liberty, right to privacy, rightto assembly, and right of every person to a lawyer isguaranteed. The state is obligated to appoint anattorney for the destitute. The constitution obligatesthe state to abide by the UN charter and interna-tional treaties and conventions. It also specificallyprotects the rights of millions of disabled, handi-capped and war victims. The constitution, for thefirst time, gives Afghan citizens unlimited rights toaccess information from the government. The con-stitution obligates the state to prevent all types ofterrorist activities and the production and traffickingof narcotics and intoxicants. It includes specific pro-visions requiring the state to encourage and protectinvestments and private enterprises, and intellectualproperty rights.

The Independent Human Rights Commissionset forth by the Bonn Agreement is further empow-ered and institutionalized by Article 58. The com-mission has the right to refer cases of human rightsand fundamental rights violation to the judiciaryand is empowered to defend the victims.

As evident by the new constitution, we havecome a long way in two short years. The fact that afew weeks ago the international community inBerlin pledged US4.5 billion dollars for our nextfiscal year and US8.2 billion dollars for the nextthree years indicates the confidence of the donorcountries in our plans and vision to build a demo-cratic state in Afghanistan.

Originally, success in Afghanistan was set in thecontext of preventing negative results from a failedstate—such as spread of terrorism, narcotics and vio-lation of human and gender rights. Today,Afghanistan is gradually emerging as a model of suc-cess, creating positive and exemplary results for theregion. Commerce and trade through Afghanistanare increasing. This increase is enhancing the move-ment of not only goods but also ideas, such as freemarket economics and democracy, along the historicSilk Road in Asia. We are hosting this week the firstmajor international business conference in Kabul.The two-day Economic Co-operation Organi-zation Conference brought ten countries together.

In the past two years, most Afghans have experi-enced a significant improvement in their living con-ditions. Last year, we reached an economic growthrate of 30 percent, and are continuing at 20 percentthis year, according to International Monetary Fundreports.

Our policy is to secure durable donor commit-ment and to institutionalize the national budget as acentral tool of policy making. We are convincedthat sustainability can be achieved only by buildingthe capacity of our government to plan and monitorthe reconstruction agenda. We are committed toprudent fiscal and monetary policies and rejectdeficit financing. Despite challenges, we are pursu-ing an aggressive strategy for generating and collect-ing more domestic revenues. We have rebuilt sevencustom houses throughout the country.

Fiscal stability has been achieved in Afghanistan,after years of political and economic mismanage-ment. We have successfully launched a new curren-cy, and a very stable exchange rate has been main-tained. After years of three-digit inflation, business-es in Afghanistan today are experiencing an almostinflation-free environment. We have insured theautonomy of the banking sector, and enacted a newbanking law. Several international banks havealready opened offices in Kabul. We expect to seemore to come, as the market for loans, equityfinancing and insurance services is not yet served.

A new liberal investment law is enacted, and avery open trade regime has been introduced.Traders and investors are faced with limited tariffs.Border formalities are being reduced to a minimum.We have set up, with the assistance of the Germangovernment, a “one-stop-shop” for investors, knownas the Afghan Investment Support Agency. To meetinternational standards, a National Bureau ofStandards is now being established.

After licensing two private Afghan and interna-tional mobile phone companies, telecommunicationand internet services are now available in Kabul andall major cities. Two major international hotelchains have invested in Afghanistan.

Building roads and infrastructure is our first pri-ority. The country is being reunited in terms ofroads. The main Kabul to Kandahar highway iscompleted with the support of the United Statesand Japan. Securing funds for the reconstruction ofalmost 5,000 kilometers of primary road is now

completed. We are building 1,000 kilometers ofsecondary roads each year. Preliminary works onthe Bamyan, Dushi, Jalalabad, Spinboldak and Herathighways have taken place.

New laws on political parties, civic organizations,freedom of expression and the press have beenenacted. Fourteen independent and privatelyowned radio stations are operating in different partsof the country, including radio stations operated bywomen and for women in provinces such asKandahar and Kunduz. Two hundred and seventynewspapers and periodicals, the largest number ever,are published. Women are beginning to participatein social and political life.

On poverty reduction, we are implementing theNational Solidarity Program. Through this pro-gram, over 3,000 villages, covering five million peo-ple, have elected through secret ballot their villagedevelopment councils. These councils are planning,managing and implementing development projects,using a US$20,000 dollar block grant provided toeach village by the government. Every month, fivehundred villages receive around US$10 million ingrants. To insure the national ownership of thereconstruction process, we have adopted a NationalDevelopment Framework and presented the donorcommunity with a detailed seven-year outlook dur-ing the Berlin conference.

Despite security challenges, we have started thereform of our national intelligence service, which isa remnant of past oppressive regimes. The newlyformed Afghan National Army is about to reach9,000 troops. About 7,600 National Police Forcemembers are trained. This number will increase to20,000 by the end of the year. They are graduallyassuming their roles in maintaining security. Theyare deployed in Herat, Faryab, Kandahar, Paktia,Khost and Uruzgan provinces. Nationwide, morethan 6,000 heavy weapons have been moved to can-tonment sites.

About 5.6 million children are going to school.Thirty-five percent are girls. We have publishedmillions of textbooks. We have rebuilt 20 percent ofour schools but there is more to be done. Only 29percent of schools are in buildings and 70 percentare in need of major repairs. We need 2,500 newschools. Japan has rebuilt 150 schools and theUnited States is building 1,000 more schoolsthroughout the country. We need to invest much

more in education. Teachers are being trained viaradio broadcasts throughout the country.

Now, about our challenges—about which we arerealistic. We face the general challenge of building astate and providing for good governance after thecomplete destruction of all national institutions anda severe shortage of resources and human capital.We must improve local and district level gover-nance, and reform, strengthen and rebuild our gov-ernment institutions to make them accountable,capable and more representative. We must enhancegovernment capacity to deliver services to all cor-ners of the country, especially areas prone to terror-ist infiltration. All Afghans have not yet benefitedfrom the peace dividends and economic recovery.Some still lack personal and social security. We musteliminate corruption, nepotism, rule of guns andabuse of power that undermine our recoveryprocess. We must confront and end the legacy ofSoviet-oriented rules, and the mindsets of the hooli-gans of the past decades.

We are also facing specific challenges of prepar-ing the logistical and legal grounds for the electionand building the institutions and the capacity need-ed to prepare and enact the enabling laws requiredby the new constitution. Our people have no elec-toral experience. Our attorneys and judges are paidUS$40 a month.

We also continue to confront security challengesposed by the terrorists and warlords. To overcomesecurity challenges, we must expedite the process ofbuilding our national army and professional policeforce, and further orchestrate external security sup-port. To insure a successful election, our interna-tional partners must enhance security in provincesby expediting the deployment of the InternationalSecurity Assistance Force (ISAF) and/or ProvincialReconstructing Teams (PRTs). We welcomed theNATO and United Nations’ decision to expand theISAF outside of Kabul as well as increasing thenumber of PRTs from 12 to 16 before the election.

We must accelerate the demobilization, disarma-ment and reintegration of private militias and pre-vent extremists and opportunists from highjackingdemocracy and the state building process for per-sonal gain or factional agenda. The clashes in Heratand Faryab prove, once again, that we will not beable to build a civil society in Afghanistan as long aswarlords, guns and private militias are around. The

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international community must help us to disarmand demobilize the existing militias. PresidentKarzai recently announced a major program toreduce the number of militia groups by 40 percentby the end of June, and another 20 percent reduc-tion by the end of the year, and to completely elim-inate them by the end of June 2005. That meansthat by the end of June 2004, 11 divisions, 13brigades, 10 regiments and two battalions will becompletely demobilized.

Narcotics pose a serious challenge for all of us.Cultivation and trafficking of narcotics go hand inhand with terrorism and warlordism. It is in ourbest national interest to fight them all. PresidentKarzai is committed to mobilizing all our resourcesin the fight against narcotics. We know Afghanistan’sheroin, which sells on the retail market for one hun-dred times the farm gate price, is one of the mainsources of the illegal money that funds internationalterrorism and crimes across the region. It alsofinances the destabilizing activities of warlords andcriminals in Afghanistan. The international commu-nity and our government cannot afford to wait asthese destructive trends further endanger nationaland global security. Comprehensive and acceleratedefforts are needed to break this vicious cycle. Thegovernment of Afghanistan has adopted a NationalDrug Strategy to reduce drastically poppy cultiva-tion, encourage alternative income streams, destroypoppy fields, and train specialized national policeunits.

To overcome these challenges and to make thestate building process in Afghanistan irreversible,Afghans need and demand the accelerated supportand the sustained engagement by the internationalcommunity. In two short years, the people ofAfghanistan, in partnership with the United States,

turned a neglected country over-run by the Talibanand al Qaeda, into what President Hamid Karzaicalled “a center for the cooperation of civilizations.”

The Afghan constitution is a significant achieve-ment in our common fight against terrorism. Ournext milestone will be holding the first nationalelections under the new constitution. The presiden-tial and parliamentary elections are scheduled forSeptember 2004. We insist on holding the electionson time; but we will not compromise the legitimacy,credibility and integrity of the process. We ask ourinternational partners to help the United Nationsspeed up the voters’ registration process. It is crucialthat the process gives all adult Afghans the opportu-nity to exercise their constitutional rights to vote inthe first national elections. To date, 1.8 million outof 10.5 million eligible voters are registered. We areworking with the UN to drastically increase thenumber of registration posts from eight to 4,200throughout the country.

By helping Afghanistan sustain this importantmilestone, the United States and other nations arehelping provide the future blueprint for democracyin similar societies, the very best antidote to extrem-ism and terrorism. Led by the vision of PresidentKarzai, Afghanistan has emerged as a model.Afghanistan's successful advance on the path todemocracy and state building will impact the expec-tations and the aspirations of the people in otherarenas of the global war against terror and tyranny.

Our people genuinely believe in engagementwith the international community, and have puttheir trust on the benefits of international partner-ship. The world has found a genuine strategic part-ner in our president.

Together we must demonstrate that this trust isnot misplaced.

As storm clouds gather over Iraq, it is easy tooverlook the dangers that haunt the con-tinuing transition process in Afghanistan.

When the Bonn Conference was held in Novemberand December 2001, the challenges by whichAfghanistan was confronted were staggering.1

Afghanistan was one of the poorest and most trau-matized countries in the world.The instrumentali-ties of the state, sustained by Soviet support until theend of 1991, had collapsed almost completely, leav-ing different components of the Afghan resistance tobattle for control of the symbols of state power, mostimportantly the capital Kabul.While the Taliban hadapparently been removed as a central political forceby Operation Enduring Freedom, deep fissuresremained between different members of the Afghanpolitical elite. Despite the legal cloak of the BonnAgreement, power within Afghanistan was far moreclosely related to the ability to mobilize armed sup-porters than to the holding of cabinet rank. Finally,the regional context remained daunting, with realdoubts surrounding both the willingness and theability of Pakistan to control the use of its territoryby radical spoilers intent on making life as awkwardas possible for the new Afghan rulers and their sup-porters.

In the period since the Bonn Agreement,Afghanistan has met a number of the goals con-tained in the “map” for transition which the accordset out. An emergency Loya Jirga was held in mid-2002 that replaced the interim administration head-ed by Hamid Karzai with a transitional administra-tion in which a number of new and dynamic minis-ters held key portfolios. In December 2003 andJanuary 2004, a constitutional Loya Jirga endorsed anew constitution, establishing a presidential systemwith a parallel legislature and putting in place anumber of impressive human rights protections. AnInternational Security Assistance Force (ISAF), cur-rently under NATO command, was deployed, andwork began on the reconstitution of an AfghanNational Army (ANA). Afghanistan resumed its

active participation in global affairs, shedding thepariah status that it had held during the period ofTaliban rule.

That said, the next stage in the transitionprocess—the holding of presidential and legislativeelections—is likely to test the mettle of both ordi-nary Afghans and the international community tothe full.While free and fair elections serve the vitaldemocratic task of according ordinary citizens theopportunity to change their government by peace-ful means, they are high-stakes, divisive exercisesfrom the point of view of political competitors.2 Asa recent report to the UN Secretary-General pre-sciently observed, “Elections that are not properlyprepared and that are held without the best possibleconditions first being established often lead to‘token’ democracies and radicalized politics, andundermine compromise among stakeholders andcoalition-building.This is particularly relevant in sit-uations where rule-of-law institutions are weak andincapable of managing political debate and con-flict.”3 Elections depend for their efficacy upon anoverarching framework of rules, norms and under-standings that ensures that election results arerespected. In addition, elections are logistically com-plex exercises, probably the most complex massexercises in which any state engages in peacetime,since they involve potentially the entire adult popu-

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William Maley is professor and foundation director, Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy,The Australian NationalUniversity.

Political Transition in Afghanistan: TheState, Religion and Civil Society

WILLIAM MALEY

lation in an activity which must be seen to besecure, as far as both voters and voting materials areconcerned. If they are to be judged free and fair,they must meet exacting international standards.4

Finally, elections are vulnerable exercises, which bythe very virtue of the involvement of the entireadult population, provide easy opportunities forspoilers to strike a blow at the transition process. Justfrom first principles, it is no wonder that elections inAfghanistan have been dubbed the “Great Gamble.”5

But there is more to the challenge of holdingelections in Afghanistan than just these abstract con-siderations.As the following pages argue, not all thepositive developments in Afghanistan are quite whatthey seem, and a great deal remains to be donebefore Afghanistan can make any claim to beapproaching the status of a consolidated democracy.Afghanistan faces six major challenges that willimpinge not only on the holding of elections, butalso on the prospects for political stability more gen-erally. If the Afghan people and the wider world donot rise to these challenges, the outlook will bebleak.

The first challenge is the that of state-building.When the state has collapsed, the task of building anew one is daunting in the extreme. Rebuilding thestate involves four distinct but interrelated activities.The first is designing the new state. This involvesboth constitutional development and the devising ofnew administrative structures.The second is legiti-mating the new state.The third is securing fundingfor the activities of the new state.The fourth, a cul-mination of the first three, is transferring the newstate from paper to practice.

Afghanistan’s record here is mixed.A new consti-tution is now in place, and this must be counted as asignificant achievement, although one can debatethe wisdom of establishing a presidential system in acountry as marked by socio-cultural diversity asAfghanistan. On the other hand, the new adminis-trative structures leave much to be desired.There arefar too many ministries, a situation reflecting theneed for offices to be distributed to groupings rep-resented at Bonn rather than any rational assessmentof how government should be structured.This hasproven to be seriously dysfunctional, prompting turfbattles in some situations and buck-passing in oth-ers. Furthermore, the Civil Service Commissionproposed in the Bonn Agreement has proved quite

ineffectual, and the consequences have been devas-tating. The need for professional, meritocraticbureaucracy was recognized in the mid-19th centu-ry, when the Northcote-Trevelyan Report of 1853outlined a model of recruitment and promotion forthe British civil service which sought a break fromthe corrosive effects of patronage. If ever there was abureaucracy that required such reforms, it was thepre-war Afghan system, which Afghanistan’s currentFinance Minister Dr. Ashraf Ghani once describedas the most corrupt on the face of the earth.Unfortunately, bad old habits have resurfaced, and inKabul one hears endless credible accounts, acrosspolitical lines, of nepotism, misuse of resources andsheer incompetence flourishing in state agencies.Given Afghanistan’s desperate poverty this is hardlysurprising, but it needs to be addressed forcefully,not least by donors. If the state is ineffectual, itsprospects of securing generalized normative sup-port—that is, legitimacy—will be undermined, aswill its prospects of securing ongoing internationalsupport. And the state will remain a “paper state”rather than a real state.

The second challenge is reconstituting trust.Trust,based not on face-to-face acquaintance but simplyon common membership of a political communitydefined in terms of citizenship, is a key feature ofstable politics in consolidated democracies, but it isan extremely important requirement for stabilitymore generally. It is also one of the first casualtieswhen states experience lengthy periods of internaldisorder. Where levels of such “anonymous” trustbetween political actors are low, the temptation toengage in extra-constitutional political activities inthe expectation that others will do the same is likelyto be high. At the elite level, where the problemoccurs most seriously, it leads to a mindset in whichthe state is an asset to be captured and controlled (orattacked in the event that it falls under the control ofothers).

In Afghanistan, levels of such trust remain low.After decades of war, bonds of solidarity on ethnicand linguistic lines are frequently more potent,something that became distressingly clear at the con-stitutional Loya Jirga.There are also significant ten-sions between some mujahideen who battled againstboth the Soviets and the Taliban, and some tech-nocrats who sat out the war years in Western coun-tries and only recently returned.6 Several of the lat-

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ter have written off the former as “warlords,” whichon the whole aids neither reconciliation nor analysis.This is a pity, for the technocrats often have a greatdeal to contribute to the transition process. But thatsaid, it is sadly the case that some Afghans haveextremely powerful reasons for distrusting others.For example, members of Afghanistan’s Hazaraminority find quite chilling the prominent publicrole played by Abdul Rab al-Rasul Sayyaf. WhileSayyaf is committed to supporting the Karzai admin-istration, his militia is regarded by Hazaras as respon-sible for the hideous Afshar massacre of February1993,7 and more recently for brutal intimidation ofresidents of Paghman and west Kabul.8 Mechanismsfor human rights protection in Afghanistan remainextremely weak, and there are notorious offenderswho have not been brought to justice, and probablynever will be.9 The low level of trust is also reflectedin the snail’s pace at which disarmament has pro-ceeded: it is scarcely rational to abandon one’sweapons and expose oneself to the risk of a devastat-ing attack if one is surrounded by groups who can-not be trusted not to mount such an attack.This isone reason why the deployment of a neutral securityforce is extremely important in such situations.10

This brings us to the third challenge, which isthat of establishing security.Without basic security, lifetakes shape along the lines of Thomas Hobbes’s grimpicture: solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. Thefailure to provide basic security for ordinary Afghanshas been the greatest failure of the TransitionalAdministration, but the blame more properlybelongs to its ostensible supporters. Unfortunately,at the very time when it was essential to sustain theBonn Agreement’s momentum through a swiftdeployment of ISAF to key centers acrossAfghanistan, the attention of key states, most impor-tantly the United States, shifted to Iraq.11 The lostmomentum has not been recovered, and the morerecent deployment of “Provincial ReconstructionTeams” has provided at best a certain amount oflocal security—although even that counted for littleduring the recent crisis in Herat—but nothingapproaching the more general atmosphere of securi-ty on which civil association thrives.Without dra-matic improvements in security, elections can be“free and fair” in name only.

The long-term strategy of the AfghanTransitional Administration has focused on the

establishment of a new Afghan National Army(ANA).This is a very important enterprise, for ulti-mately security forces of this kind are essential if thestate is to move towards establishing a monopolyover the legitimate means of violence. It is not,however, a solution to Afghanistan’s short-termsecurity challenges.The ANA has been plagued byhigh desertion rates, reaching 10 percent during2003, and still numbers only 7500 troops, a forcemarkedly smaller than a number of militias.12

During the Vietnam War, the British counter-terror-ism specialist Sir Robert Thompson addressed thequestion of capacity-building, warning that if“demands are urgent and impatience wins the day,training is reduced and short crash programs areinstituted, there will be a constant supply of inexpe-rienced, incompetent, useless officials who will beincapable of implementing any policy and who willmerely add to the prevailing confusion.”13 This isequally a danger for security sector reform inAfghanistan. Beyond the problems of numbers andcapacity lies the deeper problem of subordination topolitical authority.Where security forces confrontan external enemy, nationalist sentiments may gen-erate cohesion.When the threat is internal, the loy-alties of soldiers may be divided, something whichthe Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq discov-ered the hard way during the April 2004 Fallujahcampaign, when a battalion of the new Iraqi armedforces declined to play a part in action directedagainst fellow Iraqis.14 While elements of the ANAhave been deployed in Herat and Maimana, theircommanders appear—very wisely—to have beenreluctant to order them to fire against other Afghans,using them instead as symbolic circuit-breakers.

The fourth challenge, central to the issue of secu-rity, is dealing with criminals and other spoilers.A craftypolitician once remarked that if you can’t run ameeting, wreck it. In Afghanistan, there are severalgroups with a serious interest in playing spoilingroles, and it is cheaper and easier to be a spoiler thana builder. In an environment populated by spoilers,the nascent state authorities have a choice betweenconfronting them (in various ways) or seeking todraw them into the new politics of the nation.Whatapproach works best depends to a considerabledegree on the exact nature of the actors involved.

One very obvious spoiler in Afghanistan is theresidue of the Taliban movement.When the Taliban

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were driven from Afghanistan’s cities in 2001, theydid not dissolve into thin air. Some, who had joinedout of expediency, switched sides with no qualms.Others melted back into villages, and the protectionof lineage networks to which they belonged. Butstill others decamped to Pakistan, where, despitePakistan’s support for the “war against terrorism,”they were able to re-establish themselves, drawingon substantial pre-existing networks with Pakistaniparties and social networks.15 There is very littlescope to accommodate the wishes of hardlineTaliban.They have not hesitated to strike at “soft”targets within Afghanistan. On November 16, 2003,a French employee of the United Nations HighCommissioner for Refugees, Bettina Goislard, wasmurdered in broad daylight by Taliban in downtownGhazni.And on January 6, 2004, gunmen massacred12 Hazaras travelling near the border betweenHelmand and Uruzgan.16 Attacks of this latter kindcan serve the attackers’ interests by prompting thewithdrawal of international agencies, underminingthe legitimacy claims of the state by illustrating itsinability to offer basic protection to ordinary citi-zens, and triggering a cycle of slayings at local level.The existence of a criminalized economy based ontrade of opium and other illicit goods reinforces theposition of spoilers: as a recent report concludes, the“availability of easily taxed income from the crimi-nalized economy not only creates permanent incen-tives for militias to remain armed, but also suppliesresources to the Taliban, al Qaeda, and other ene-mies of the effort to stabilize Afghanistan.”17 Theboom in opium cultivation since the fall of theTaliban points to the scale of this problem, andneeds to be addressed with careful diagnosis andsharp rather than blunt instruments.

The fifth challenge is that of a hostile region. Someparts of the world are relatively benign, but it hap-pens to be Afghanistan’s misfortune to be located ina rough neighbourhood, marked by interstate rival-ry, territorial disputes, institutional decay, ethnic andreligious tensions, and weapons proliferation.

While cricket has brought something of a thawin India-Pakistan relations, they remain fraught withdifficulty. Pakistan is an existentially insecure statethat for the last 25 years has responded to its weak-ness relative to India by pursuing the chimera of“strategic depth” in Afghanistan—to be secured bythe promotion of clients, first the radical Islamist

Hezb-e Islami and more recently the Taliban. Its sin-gle-mindedness in this respect succeeded in fuellingthe suspicion or hostility not just of India, but at dif-ferent times of Iran, a number of Central Asianstates, and of course large sections of the Afghanpopulation. Pakistan is a deeply troubled state, andassistance to help it address its internal problemswould be money well spent: the Talibanization ofPakistan is in almost no one’s interest.18 It is alsoimportant that policies towards Afghanistan recog-nize that it is enmeshed in the wider politics of theregion, marked by interlocking security dilemmas.19

Only a synoptic approach to the region’s problems islikely to offer any long-term solution.This requiresthe attention of the wider world: as one of SouthAsia’s most penetrating political commentators hasobserved,“outside powers have an interest in SouthAsian stability as never before.”20 Unfortunately, in aturbulent world this does not guarantee that SouthAsia will receive the attention it deserves.

The sixth challenge for Afghanistan is retaining theinterest of the world. Even the greatest powers havelimited attention spans, and the global politicalagenda is uncomfortably crowded. Furthermore,when instability in a state such as Afghanistan is seenas a threat to many states, a free-rider problem cansurface: rather than acting concertedly to address theproblem, individual states can sit back in the hopethat others will assume the bulk of the burden, theresult being that far less help is provided than is nec-essary.

The story of Afghanistan’s quest for financialassistance fits this pattern.At a January 2002 confer-ence in Tokyo, substantial pledges of assistance weremade, but as of November 2003, only US$112 mil-lion of reconstruction projects had actually beencompleted. In such circumstances, the AfghanGovernment is in no position to secure legitimacyon account of its success in “delivering the goods.” Itwas in the light of this tortuous process that a fur-ther Afghanistan conference was held in Berlin onMarch 31 and April 1, 2004. In preparation for thismeeting, the Afghan government circulated a verydetailed program entitled Securing Afghanistan’sFuture, which identified key areas of need and waysin which resources could be used to address them.The key conclusion of the report was that“Afghanistan will require total external assistance inthe range of US$27.6 billion over 7 years on com-

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mitment basis. A minimum of US$6.3 billion ofexternal financing will be required in the form ofdirect support to the national budget—preferablymore, since budget support helps build the State andits legitimacy.”21 After the meeting concluded, a“Berlin Declaration” was issued which welcomedthe commitments made at the conference.Unfortunately, these amounted to only US$8.2 bil-lion for the period March 2004–March 2007 and$4.4 billion for March 2004–March 2005. TheAfghan government of course welcomed this result,but given the cogency of the case for greater assis-tance, the outcome was quite disappointing.To putthis in perspective, the Emergency SupplementalAppropriations Act for the Reconstruction of Iraq andAfghanistan of November 2003 approved US$18.6billion for reconstruction in Iraq.As I wrote in early2002, the “war on terrorism and the hunt for BinLaden put Afghanistan on the front pages. It willsoon be off them.”22

Let me conclude on a somber but realistic note.When countries have experienced as much disrup-tion as Afghanistan, it is simply a delusion to believethat there are quick or easy solutions to the prob-lems that beset them. If actors in the wider world areat all interested in aiding the recovery of such states,they must commit themselves to providing supportfor the long-term.This need not be military sup-port, which on occasion can simply block the effortsof new authorities to win legitimacy, somethingwhich the Soviet Union learned to its cost inAfghanistan, and which has now surfaced as a prob-lem in Iraq. But few transitional regimes will survivewithout substantial, long-term, material and moralsupport. All such regimes pass through infancy andadolescence before reaching maturity.The demandfor a fixed, short-term “exit strategy” as a precondi-tion for commitment is at odds with the reality thattransitions are fragile, tenuous and prone to move inunexpected directions as the difficulties of transitionreveal themselves.To lock oneself in advance intotight rather than loose timetables is to deny this real-ity. In particular, exit strategies should be crafted toassist the helped rather than the helper, and the suc-cessful holding of an election should not be used asan excuse for a state’s alleged “friends” to pack theirbags and leave. Elections do not bring transitions toan end. On the contrary, like interventions moregenerally, they typically inaugurate new and frac-

tious periods in a state’s political life.23 During suchperiods, states often need all the help they can get.

ENDNOTES

1. See William Maley, “The Reconstruction ofAfghanistan,” in Ken Booth and Tim Dunne (eds),Worlds in Collision: Terror and the Future of Global Order(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002):184-193.

2. See Jack Snyder, From Voting to Violence:Democratization and Nationalist Conflict (New York:W.W. Norton, 2000): passim.

3. The political transition in Iraq: report of the fact-finding mission (New York: United Nations,S/2004/140, February 23, 2004): para.40.

4. See Jørgen Elklit and Palle Svensson,“What MakesElections Free and Fair?,” Journal of Democracy 8, no. 3(1997): 32-46; Michael Maley, “Transplanting ElectoralRegulation,”Election Law Journal 2,no.4 (2003):479-497.

5. Afghan Elections: The Great Gamble (Kabul:Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, 2003).

6. See Barnett R. Rubin, “(Re)BuildingAfghanistan:The Folly of Stateless Democracy,”CurrentHistory 103, no. 672, 165-170.

7. See Situation of Human Rights in Afghanistan (NewYork: United Nations, A/48/584, November 16,1993): para. 58.

8. Human Rights Watch, “Killing You Is A Very EasyThing For Us,” Human Rights Abuses In SoutheastAfghanistan (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2003):30-35.

9. See Norah Niland, “Justice Postponed: TheMarginalization of Human Rights in Afghanistan,” inAntonio Donini, Norah Niland and Karin Wermester(eds), Nation-Building Unraveled? Aid, Peace and Justice inAfghanistan (Bloomfield: Kumarian Press, 2004): 61-82.

10. See Barbara F.Walter, Committing to Peace:TheSuccessful Settlement of Civil Wars (Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press, 2002); and William Maley,“Institutional Design and the Rebuilding of Trust,” inWilliam Maley, Charles Sampford and Ramesh Thakur(eds), From Civil Strife to Civil Society: Civil and MilitaryResponsibilities in Disrupted States (New York and Tokyo:United Nations University Press, 2003): 163-179.

11. Seymour M. Hersh,“The Other War”, The NewYorker, 12 April 2004. This is also a key theme ofRichard A. Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America'sWar on Terror (New York: Free Press, 2004): 263-279.

12. Elections and Security in Afghanistan (Kabul andBrussels: International Crisis Group, March 30, 2004):1-2.

13. Richard M. Pfeffer (ed.), No More Vietnams? TheWar and the Future of American Foreign Policy (New York:Harper & Row, 1968): 163.

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14. See Thomas E. Ricks, “Iraqi Battalion Refusesto ‘Fight Iraqis’”, The Washington Post,April 11, 2004.

15. See Ahmed Rashid, “Pakistan and the Taliban,”in William Maley (ed.), Fundamentalism Reborn?Afghanistan and the Taliban (New York: New YorkUniversity Press, 1998): 72-89.

16.“Le bilan de l’attentat de Kandahar s’alourdit; 12hommes abattus dans la province de Helmand,”Associated Press, January 7, 2004.

17. Barnett R. Rubin, Abby Stoddard, HumayunHamidzada and Adib Farhadi, Building a NewAfghanistan:The Value of Success, the Cost of Failure (NewYork: Center on International Cooperation, New YorkUniversity, in cooperation with CARE, 2004): 8.

18.William Maley,“Talibanisation and Pakistan,” inDenise Groves (ed.). Talibanisation: Extremism andRegional Instability in South and Central Asia (Berlin:Conflict Prevention Network: Stiftung Wissenschaftund Politik, 2001): 53-74.

19. See Barnett R. Rubin, Ashraf Ghani,WilliamMaley, Ahmed Rashid, and Olivier Roy, Afghanistan:

Reconstruction and Peacebuilding in a Regional Framework(Bern: KOFF Peacebuilding Reports 1/2001, SwissPeace Foundation, 2001); Michael Pugh and NeilCooper with Jonathan Goodhand, War Economies in aRegional Context: Challenges of Transformation (Boulder:Lynne Rienner, 2004): 45-89.

20. Kanti Bajpai, “Managing Conflict in SouthAsia,” in Paul F. Diehl and Joseph Lepgold (eds),Regional Conflict Management (Lanham: Rowman andLittlefield, 2003): 233.

21.Securing Afghanistan's Future: Accomplishments andthe Strategic Path Forward (Kabul: Government ofAfghanistan, Asian Development Bank, UnitedNations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan, UnitedNations Development Program and The World BankGroup, 17 March 2004): 11.

22.William Maley, The Afghanistan Wars (New York:Palgrave Macmillan, 2002): 281.

23.William Maley,“Twelve Theses on the Impact ofHumanitarian Intervention,”Security Dialogue 33, no. 3,(2002): 270.

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There are few countries in the world with astronger sense of Islamic identity thanAfghanistan.One might therefore assume that

it would be here that radical forms of Islam wouldhave their greatest opportunities for recruitment andthe most popularity. But in fact radical Islam has hadmuch less political traction in Afghanistan than inneighboring Iran or Pakistan. To understand thisseeming contradiction we must distinguish betweenIslam as a political ideology and Islam as a way of life.Afghanistan is an example of the latter.

When religion is a way of life it permeates allaspects of everyday social relations and nothing isseparate from it. The influence of religion is everpresent in people’s everyday conversations, businesstransactions, resolving disputes or in making moraljudgments.There is no relationship, whether politi-cal, economic or social, that is not validated by reli-gion. Hard bargaining is often brought to a calmending when a bystander intervenes and says,“Agreeand let’s pray over this transaction.” Both sides thenhave to smile and be polite to one another. Similarly,when opposing parties in a dispute refuse to giveany ground because to do so might show weakness,a mediator will resolve the impasse by declaring, “Iam asking you to do this in the name of God.”Andwho can refuse a request like that?

In such a society it is impossible to separate reli-gion from politics because the two are so closelyintertwined. It is therefore very hard for mostAfghans to conceive of the separation of “churchand state” because how can you cut out a single areaof life such as politics and ask people to determinewhat the role of religion should play in it? It wouldbe like asking a fish to separate itself from the waterit swims in. (Such a pervasive role for religion wasalso characteristic of Christianity in medievalEurope when questions of salvation often tookprecedence over more material concerns, but therise of the modern west was characterized by theretreat of religion as the dominant influence in soci-ety.) Because Islam is so much a part of everyday

life, Afghans assume that any government must beIslamic to be legitimate. However what they meanby an “Islamic government” is one that is composedof good Muslims, not one that has a particular reli-gious agenda. In particular it is not one that definesand enforces a specific variety of Islamic practice.

Radical Islamic ideologies, by contrast, do defineand propose to implement specific practices that theydefine as Islamic, to the exclusion of all others. Suchradical ideologies most often arise in societies thathave become fragmented and where cultural identi-ty is under challenge. There is no longer a system ofvalues generally accepted and practiced by everyone;instead key values become hotly debated and enterthe political arena. This situation is compoundedwhen people perceive themselves under threats forwhich there are no simple answers. These mayinclude challenges caused by rapid economic andsocial changes, a history of political vulnerabilityarising from colonial domination or dissatisfactionwith an existing political order, or wars that producedisplaced and dislocated refugee populations.

Proponents of radical Islam join the contendingfactions in these debates and argue that their brandof religion is what is necessary to cure any problem.They contend that the source of societal difficulty isa consequence of people having lost their religiousroots, or at least having strayed from the path of

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Radical Political Islam in an AfghanContext

THOMAS J. BARFIELD

Thomas J. Barfield is professor of Anthropology and chairman of the Department of Anthropology, BostonUniversity.

righteousness. For example, clerical supporters ofthe Islamic Revolution in Iran played on the frac-tures produced in that country’s rapid pace of mod-ernization and urbanization under the Shah andproposed their own Islamic order as an alternative.In Pakistan, political Islam plays to the country’sinsecurities about the role that religion should playin a state that demanded separation from India onthe grounds that Muslims needed their own state;but its founders identified the Muslim communityprimarily in social and political terms rather thanreligious ones. In ex-Soviet Central Asia, we findradical Islamic groups both filling a vacuum in aregion where Islam was long suppressed, and moreimportantly, becoming the locus for more generalpolitical discontent against regimes that have sup-pressed all other forms of opposition.

Radical Islam, or indeed radical ideologies of anyvariety, has less resonance in Afghanistan because thecountry’s cultural identity remains strong despitetwenty-five years of warfare. Afghans never experi-enced colonial rule and successfully resisted foreignoccupation in both the 19th and 20th centuries,having forced both the Russian and British to with-draw from Afghanistan. The Afghan economyremains largely based on subsistence agriculture andfew of the country’s natural resources have everbeen developed. The country has been largely iso-lated from the world economy. Most importantly,identity is still strongly rooted in local communitieswhere ties of ethnicity, sect, region and kinshiptrump political ideology. As a result,Afghans tend toaccept no authority but their own, whether in cul-tural, political or religious matters. Indeed Afghanssee themselves as superior to all of their Muslimneighbors, let alone more distant foreign non-Muslim societies. They feel empowered to ignoreany criticism of Afghan ways by outsiders. Theyrejected both the materialist Marxism of thePeople’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) aswell as the puritanical strain of Islam imposed by theTaliban and its backers, which were seen as foreignimports that ran against the grain of Afghan culture.

Because of the political weakness of the Afghanstate, both the PDPA and the Taliban were able toachieve state power and attempted to impose theirideologies on the population. In both cases, howev-er, they failed to change basic Afghan attitudes. Thefailure of the PDPA may seem to be easy to explain

in cultural terms, but the failure of the Taliban andtheir foreign Muslim allies requires more scrutiny.Although the resistance to the Soviet occupation bythe mujahidin described jihad (holy war) in religiousterms, this terminology had more to do with thestructure of aid to the resistance. Pakistan restrictedinternational assistance to the seven Sunni partiesthat it recognized, and resistance fighters had to joina party to receive aid. Support from the Gulf Arabssimilarly went to leaders among these parties whoshared Wahabi values. Iranian aid to the Shia partiestook a similar form. The majority of resistancefighters inside Afghanistan who were actually doingthe fighting had little interest in the political ideol-ogy of the parties. They joined because they need-ed aid and their choice of affiliation was determinedby practical reasons or personal ties of clientship.When the PDPA collapsed in 1992, the practicalnature of these alliances became all too clear, as rad-ical Khalqi communists joined radical Islamists ofHekmatyar because they were all Pashtuns. The civilwar that followed was clearly one that centered onachieving power, not transforming Afghan society.

In wake of the disruption caused by the civil war,particularly in Kandahar and Kabul, the Talibanarose and became dominant by 1995. At first theywere welcomed because they at least brought order,but their religious ideology became more unpopu-lar the longer they stayed in power. Indeed, theydrew the bulk of their recruits from refugee Afghanyouth trained in Pakistanis madrassas. It was inrefugee camps that kin ties and cultural identitywere most fractured, so the appeal of a radical ideol-ogy had much more resonance there than it had toAfghan villagers. In particular, the Taliban’s varietyof Islam banned all entertainment (particularlymusic), condemned such Afghan religious customsas decorating tombs and venerating shrines, and washostile to long existing Sufi orders. But perhaps theTaliban’s greatest offence was to declare there wasbut one variety of Islam with specific practices thatall must follow. A religious police was organized toenforce its edicts.

If Afghans believed one thing above anythingelse, it was that they were born Muslims whose faithwas so strong that they need not prove it to others.A man who missed some or all or his daily prayersnever considered himself any less a true Muslimthan a man who prayed constantly. Similarly there

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was a basic assumption that all customary practicesin Afghanistan must be in accord with Islam becauseAfghans were good Muslims. They usually ignoredAfghan clerics who had the temerity to argue oth-erwise. They particularly ignored Arabs whoclaimed they had a better knowledge of Islam thanAfghans. After all the Afghans had won their jihadagainst the Soviets, and surely God knew his ownbest. For this reason Afghans were unwilling to cedeto anyone the right to define what Islam was orexactly how it should be practiced. The Talibanalienated not only Shia groups that they consideredheretics, but other Sunnis who objected to theTaliban’s attempt to control personal behavior. In asociety that values personal autonomy above all else,the interference in the practices of everyday life(beard regulations, obligatory prayers, entertain-ment, work rules) was particularly offensive. TheTaliban’s draconian restrictions on women was alsoan insult to local standards of honor because it gavethe state the priority of regulating behavior that byrights belonged to the family.

The strongest evidence of this Afghan centeredview of Islam comes from what did not happen inAfghanistan. Although Osama bin Laden and alQaeda set up numerous training camps and recruit-ed followers for training from all over the world, veryfew Afghans ever joined this movement. In the longlist of al Qaeda operatives, one strains to find anAfghan, particularly an Afghan born and raised inAfghanistan as opposed to in a refugee camp. Therewere a number of reasons for this but the strongestwas that ethnocentric Afghans were willing to die ina jihad in their own country but were not willing todie in other people’s fights. Even the Talibanappeared concerned only with Afghanistan andnever bought into the international vision of Islamicjihad of its foreign jihadi allies. At a tactical level too,Afghans have refused to participate in suicide bomb-ings because they had too much respect for the valueof their own lives. A true Afghan warrior may die inbattle, but martyrdom is a consolation prize and nota goal to be sought for its own sake. They need notprove a faith they feel they already have in full.

The rapid collapse of the Taliban in the face of anAmerican invasion should not have been a surprise.It had become widely unpopular, even if the peopledid not have the means to remove them from power

themselves. Although the Taliban cloaked them-selves in the garb of Islam, they had not won overthe Afghan people to their ideology any more thanthe PDPA had won them over to Marxism.Paradoxically it was the strength of Afghanistan’s his-toric Islamic religiosity that inoculated it against theTaliban’s radical interpretation. Already viewingthemselves as superior Muslims they saw no need toadopt a new and alien interpretation of their ownfaith. Afghans also had culturally ambivalent atti-tudes toward clerics who made up the leadership ofthe Taliban. Educated clerics, the ulema, had alwaysplayed a role in government, but as in most Sunnistates they were historically subordinate to the rulerwho was not a cleric. The local village mullah, min-imally educated and hired by the community,ranked much lower: a figure to be respected but alsothe butt of humor. That the Taliban’s leadershipconsisted primarily of village mullahs raised topower did not sit well with traditional elite groups,even in Pashtun regions.

The failure of the Taliban does not, however,reduce the importance of religion in Afghan poli-tics, which has now returned to more traditionalthemes. In particular, Islam has returned as a bannerof unity for the country. There was no debate overdeclaring Afghanistan an Islamic Republic in thenew constitution, for example. Similarly, the beliefthat state laws in Afghanistan should be in line withIslamic law also saw little debate. Indeed, for the firsttime, Shia legal schools were recognized along withSunni interpretations. In a country divided by trib-al, ethnic and regional differences traditional Islamhas always played a bridging role that works bestwhen its specifics are left undefined.

Political movements may, in the future, use Islamas a banner of resistance in Afghanistan, but unlikethe Taliban their goals will not be religious. Thestruggle between the state’s desire for centralizedpolitical control and local communities’ desire tomaintain their autonomy has historically taken anIslamic form because it is easier to gain the cooper-ation of rival tribes under the guise of religious lead-ership. But even in these circumstances, ideology (ofany type) has rarely been the key to politics inAfghanistan. Local questions of power, resources,and individual or community advantage are muchmore important.

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My sisters and male supporters inAfghanistan have requested that I sharethe following points with you in the

hope that solutions devised for Afghanistan addressthe reality as experienced by Afghans on theground. In so doing, I will highlight both theopportunities and challenges confronting Afghanwomen in a post-Taliban government.

The U.S. government intricately linked itsbombing campaign to saving Afghan women vic-timized by the cruel and egregious acts of theTaliban to justify the war against the Taliban and alQaeda bases in Afghanistan in 2001. By promisingfreedom, democracy and restoration of humanrights, the United States renewed the hope of theAfghan people. As an American-Afghan woman Iam here to say that Afghanistan and its female popu-lation rightfully expect that these promises be keptby the United States.

Immediately after the Taliban were toppled inAfghanistan, peace talks to establish a post-Talibangovernment were held in 2002 in Bonn, bringingtogether various political parties to negotiate thecreation of a new government and putting PresidentKarzai in power.The Bonn accords, although his-toric and encouraging in nature, neglected toaddress security, narco-terrorism, demobilizationand other impediments to peace. As such there weremajor flaws in the Bonn Agreements, chief amongwhich was the bestowing of legitimate power on agroup of warlords who were and still remain thesource of illicit trade, drug trafficking and humanrights violations. Moreover, powerful warlordsgained important positions in the government andtoday continue to fuel corruption and undercut thesecurity of the common Afghan person. In Bonn,the warlords won by keeping critical issues such asdisarmament, demobilization, and illicit drugs thatfuel terrorism, off the bargaining table. As PresidentKarzai noted,“Drugs in Afghanistan are threateningthe very existence of the Afghan state.”According toa UN report, revenues last year from illicit drugs

produced about US$2.3 billion, equivalent to half ofAfghanistan’s gross domestic product.

From the outset it was evident that the bargain-ing power of the warlords was greatly influenced byAmerica’s war on terrorism. Afghans contend thatthe U.S. aided and abetted the warlords, providingthem with funds and weapons while looking theother way when the warlords abuse power. In fact,Afghans rightfully lament that the American warwas not meant to liberate the Afghan people fromtyrannical forces, but rather to save American livesfrom terrorist forces who had found safe haven intheir land. By day the warlords fight alongside U.S.troops, and by night they rape, loot, and terrorize theAfghan people. Although the reviled Taliban are nolonger in Afghanistan, improvements in the lives ofwomen remain a hollow promise. The promulga-tion of the new law of the land enshrined in theJanuary 2004 constitution grants equal rights forwomen. No constitution in and of itself can guar-antee peace and stability, but it is a crucial step toaddress barriers to the establishment of a civil socie-ty. Despite the trumpeting of women’s issues, a pal-try sum has been committed to fund women’s pro-grams in the political and civil society arenas. This isAfghanistan’s sixth constitution, with the first prom-ulgated by King Amanullah in 1923.The constitu-tion of 1923 and those following, included gender

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Afghan Women: Reconstruction, CivilSociety and U.S. Policy

SIMA WALI

Sima Wali is president and CEO of Refugee Women in Development, Inc., and served as one of the three female del-egates to the U.N. Peace talks on Afghanistan and represented the former king of Afghanistan at the Bonn talks.

equality and were readily accepted by women. The2004 draft constitution, however, was indeed asource of consternation for moderate Afghans andwomen in particular. At the grand council (LoyaJirga) which formed the traditional venue for debat-ing the draft constitution, the gender imbalanceswere hotly challenged by the most outspokenwomen. Afghan women fought for the inclusion oftheir voice with their presence and used their voteat the Loya Jirga for the preservation of their rights.But these rights still remain at peril of harsh Islamicinterpretation of laws by a highly conservative judi-ciary trained in former Taliban madrassas.

Women’s hard fought battles won them equalprovisions in the 2004 constitution, including 25percent of the seats in the upper house of parliamentand the creation of a Ministry of Women’s Affairs.Visible strides in post-Taliban society continue tobeg for long-term strategies that will be required forremoving restrictions against women which denythem equal access to education, health care, employ-ment and security. By keeping women disenfran-chised in the economic and political spheres, theyremain at the bottom rung of the human develop-ment index. Afghan women have just begun theirlong battle for equity and will not settle for symbol-ic advances.

Today, I can attest that roads have been built,schools reconstructed, allowing girls and boys toenroll, but little has altered daily Afghan life from thedays of the Taliban. Upon closer investigation we seethat the quality of education is dismal, teachers arenot trained, children attend school for only 2-3hours per day, and textbooks and school supplies aretotally insufficient. Despite relative advances for agender-balanced post-Taliban government, grossinequities toward women remain. Capable institu-tions are absent, narcotic trafficking is rampant, theflow of arms are not curbed, security is grossly inef-ficient, and warlordism and violence against womencontinue. Yet, this time around violence is not com-mitted by the Taliban but by renegade militias andwarlords supplied with arms and dollars by theUnited.States. In essence, lawlessness and genderapartheid continue to occur with internationalimpunity. Afghans remain baffled by the UnitedStates’ continued support for warlords who under-cut the transfer of power to the Afghan people—atransfer needed to shift from a lawless country sup-

ported by foreign intervention to finally establishingthe rule of law and democracy.

So what is America to do? Should the UnitedStates continue to legitimize a warlord class that hasalready lost the support of the Afghan people? Orshould we help the Afghans to build a tolerant andopen society? Now that the Afghan people finallyhave an opportunity, after more than two decades offoreign intervention that spawned ethnic divisionsand gender apartheid practices, it is time to do theright thing—transfer power back to the Afghanpeople.

President Bush promised a “Marshall Plan” forbuilding the Afghan nation. While such a plan hasbeen proposed for Iraq, no strategy is in place forAfghanistan. Spending for Afghanistan representsless than 1 percent of the supplemental bill for Iraqand Afghanistan. The US$20 billion request for Iraqreconstruction funding is 25 times larger than therequest for Afghanistan. An average of US$64 perperson for 2002 pales in comparison with donationsamounting to approximately US$258 per person inBosnia or US$336 in Iraq. Afghanistan has roughlythe same size population as Iraq, yet it has sufferedmore war devastation, its economy is in shambles,its communication network is sparse. The Bushadministration touts its successful reconstruction ofAfghanistan, but this disparity of funding continuesto hinder the actual reconstruction necessary torebuild a viable civil society.

In April of this year at the donors conference inBerlin, the Afghan government asked that its futurebe secured by guaranteeing US$27.6 billion overseven years. The United States. pledged an addition-al US$1.2 billion in aid. It also increased and sped upthe US$180 million project to build the Kabul-Kandahar highway necessary for military operations.As generous as the pledges were, the filtering downof international aid to Afghans on the ground isanother matter. Afghans contend that much of theassistance funding is siphoned by military operationsand a large share is run through American contrac-tors. It is estimated that almost 40 percent of moneygoing to U.S. and international contractors is notreaching the ground after deducting staff salaries andthe high administrative costs. Inadequate funds,administered at a slow pace, undermine the Karzaigovernment as well as the reconstruction process.Moreover, Afghans are not the power behind the

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reconstruction process. Their expertise has been lefttotally underutilized while foreign “experts” reapreconstruction benefits.

Afghanistan cannot rebuild a nation by focusingonly on militarism. Afghans are heartened that therecent Berlin conference elicited much neededreconstruction aid but are lamenting the costs of $12billion yearly for military assistance which does notinclude expansion of the domestic security forces.Over two years into the new government, we arelosing momentum to build on the initial goodwillof the Afghan people toward the United States. Inmy discussions with scores of Afghan women, it isevident that there is a heightened frustration thattoo little of the resources necessary to create peaceand democracy for the common Afghan is tricklingdown. What I experience during my work inAfghanistan and what is touted in the United Statestell two very different stories. For example, whatwomen in Afghanistan experience is a communica-tion system in disarray, sporadic electricity, scarceclean water, high unemployment, and on-goingatrocities against women.

The status of women today still ranks among theworst in the world. Maternal and infant mortalityratios are the highest in the world. Every 30 minutesa woman dies in childbirth or due to pregnancy-related complications. Over 300,000 children dieeach year from preventable diseases. Eighty-fivepercent of women are illiterate, further limitingwomen’s advancement. Female suicide and self-immolation continue to plague the society. Womenare rapidly losing hope. They occupy the most eco-nomically disenfranchised segment of the Afghansociety, yet they constitute an estimated 60 percentof the Afghan population. Unless immediate andcomprehensive measures are taken to address thegender inequity today, the Afghan society’s thrusttoward reconstruction will be undermined and theU.S. pledge toward nation building will be greatlychallenged both domestically and internationally.

The diversion of US$700 million fromAfghanistan to Iraq by the United States flies in theface of every Afghan woman whose suffering wasinvoked to secure congressional aid. I therefore urgeon behalf of every Afghan woman and man that thismoney be returned to its rightful owners, the people

of Afghanistan, with interest—and that 60 percent ofthe funds be earmarked and set aside for the benefitof women and girls of Afghanistan, who are 60 per-cent of the population.After all, it was in the nameof their freedom from oppression that the U.S. initi-ated the bombing campaign in Afghanistan. Criticsnote that a nation requires both the human resourcesembodied in its men as well as its women to advance.Simple economics demand and fortify the logic thatbuilding Afghanistan with only 40 percent of its citi-zenry is not sound economic or gender politics.

Rebuilding Afghanistan requires a comprehen-sive plan that focuses on long-term stability. Nationbuilding cannot be done in a haphazard or piece-meal fashion—one road or a few schools at a time.What is needed is a long-term comprehensive planto secure the peace, disarm the militias, displace thewarlords, and to confront the highly lucrative narco-terrorism that plagues the Afghan nation and itspeople. Most of all it requires rebuilding of the shat-tered institutions destroyed by years of warfare. Sofar, the institution and capacity building needed toestablish the rule of law, to hand over Afghanistan toits rightful owners, is completely missing from thelarger plan. In the absence of viable institutionbuilding resting on a sustainable peace and democ-racy, the United States will lose Afghanistan again tothe growing threat of al Qaeda and the Taliban.

The stark reality of today's Afghanistan is thatwere it not devastated by decades of conflict, thecountry’s annual per capita gross domestic productwould be about US$500. Invoking Afghanistan as asuccess story will be achieved when there is a bal-ance between military and human developmentassistance. Only when Afghan men and women arelifted from poverty, when their civil society institu-tions serve the local people, then and only then willthe campaign to win the hearts and minds ofAfghans be on the right path to deliver true justiceand democracy.

“Human security” lies at the core of rebuildingwar-torn nations, constituting a necessary conditionto peace. As stated in a United NationsDevelopment Report, “The world can never be atpeace unless people have security in their daily lives.The search for security in such a milieu lies in indevelopment, not in arms.”

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Political transition in Afghanistan—from warand violence to peace and justice—is a dar-ing task, and its success can be measured

only by the improvement of justice, the democraticparticipation of people, and the rise of civil society.Addressing this task after years of war, drought, andmassive societal dislocations is impossible withoutthe long-term commitment of the internationalcommunity. As President Hamid Karzai stated in hisopening remarks at the Berlin conference on the roleof the international community on March 31, 2004,“The challenges of the last two years have provedthat the recovery of Afghanistan is beyond the abili-ty of the Afghans. . . . these challenges can’t beaddressed by Afghans alone.”1 Throughout the pasttwo years,Afghans have been suffering from the con-tinuation of violence and human rights violations(especially toward women) at the hands of warlordsand, to a certain extent, government security forces.A lack of funds has limited the government’s abilityto pay salary and wages, which has in turn caused anuncontrollable reign of corruption, extortion, andbribery within the government bureaucracy.2 Theshortfall of reconstruction programs is negativelyaffecting people’s perceptions about the current tran-sition process, undermining the value of forming anew constitution, the positive outcomes of enrollingmillions of boys and girls into schools, and thehumanitarian efforts of the UN and NGOs.

THE POLITICS OF TRANSITION

The current political transition of Afghanistanappears more complex than originally perceived bythe Afghan leaders and international actors led bythe United States immediately following the fall ofthe Taliban regime two years ago. This complexitybecomes even more apparent when one reviews theremarkably distinct interpretation of the transitionprocess, which for many meant controlling the cap-ital and setting up a new government—a model

with failures that have been well documented inrecent Afghan history. For instance, the People’sDemocratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), whichtook control of the government in 1978, failedwhen it began to expand its authority across theland.3 The Taliban regime experienced a similar fateonce they started to impose their authority on thepersonal and communal domains of the Afghanpopulation. Regardless of the number of supporters,controlling the capital and the seizing the Kabulgovernment did not offer the political success thatthe PDPA and the Taliban leadership had envi-sioned. The PDPA’s legitimacy and claim to author-ity, rooted in the adherence of its leadership to asocialist ideology, appeared unrealistic within Afghanconditions, while the Taliban’s claim of “righteoustheocracy” in the name of “Islam and Afghan tradi-tion” developed into a system of repression, genderdiscrimination, and intrusion into the social and cul-tural character of Afghans.4 Moreover, the PDPA’ssocialism and the Taliban’s brand of Islam conflictedwith local perceptions in respect to both politicalauthority and cultural traditions. Finally, bothregimes failed to deliver on the promises their lead-ers made to the Afghan masses. The failure of polit-ical transition under both the PDPA and the Taliban

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POLITICAL TRANSITION IN AFGHANISTAN

The Prospect of Justice and the PoliticalTransition of Civil Society: The RecoveryProcess of Afghanistan

NEAMAT NOJUMI

Neamat Nojumi is research associate at the Center for World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution,Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University.

regimes made evident that, while taking control ofthe Afghanistan government is not necessarily diffi-cult, controlling government bureaucracy and main-taining authority is a challenging task.

Lessons learned from Afghanistan’s history sug-gest that the availability of guns and fighters com-bined with the existence of large amounts of exter-nal military and financial assistance at the state’s dis-posal would be important only for the preservationof the state—but this has never endeared the state tocitizens. These lessons also illustrate that Afghanpublic expectation is strongly connected to people’slocal perceptions, which is influenced by their livingconditions. In this regard, people’s perceptionstoward state political authority is based on theexpectation and availability of certain services pro-vided by the institutions of the government. In thepublic arena, people measure transition by compar-ing and contrasting the past with the present andthe desirable future. In this regard, the value of thecurrent political transition in Afghanistan has muchto do with a genuine departure from years of polit-ical violence and militancy, grave violations ofhuman rights, and incompetent, oppressive regimes.For millions of Afghans, the application of thisdeparture means a restoration of peace, justice, andfreedom, and access to basic needs in which torebuild their shattered communities.

DEMOCRATIZATION AT THE GRASSROOTS LEVEL

In the past, political authority was based on the sym-biotic relationships between societal organizations(i.e., local communities, tribes, and families) and theagency of the state; both were influenced by Afghancultural traditions. For years, these cultural traditionshave formed a dynamic system of reciprocity andsustainability via the process of Jirga or Shura at thevillage level, which has provided a fertile ground forgrassroots democratization. Reestablishing such asymbiotic relationship via participation and demo-cratic representation of all ethnic, religious, and lin-guistic groups into the current political processwould foster the institutionalization of democracyinto the foundation of the current social and politi-cal development of Afghanistan.Yet such a develop-ment requires policies that fit within both Afghanpolitical and cultural traditions and the accepted

international norms and standards of civic rights andobligations. The first step toward this direction hasalready been taken in the ratification of the newlyformed Afghan constitution, which granted equalrights to all citizens (including women), regardless oftheir ethnic and religious backgrounds. The secondstep is scheduled to occur in September 2004,through the achievement of presidential and parlia-mentary elections.

However, internal obstacles, i.e., failing security,regional warlordism, and militant insurgency, arehindering the prospect of the democratic process atthis transitional phase. Additionally, Islamist groups,desiring to establish their brand of an Islamic stateand existing both inside the government and inarmed opposition to the government, pose seriousthreats as a result of the absence of a vibrant civilsociety and extremely weak democratic forces with-in the current political process. The reformist forceswithin the Transitional Islamic State of Afghanistan(TISA) are fragmented due to the politicization ofethnic tensions by radical elements, and they lack aconvincing national platform to strengthen theprospect of democracy that the masses can rallyaround. Undoubtedly, President Karzai, the firstpopular, democratic-minded state leader in decades,is caught in the middle and is therefore forced toopen his way ahead by using “old palace politics” toward off troublemakers and pacify threats to the“crown,” even while the majority of the country isunaffected by any social and political progress and isdisconnected from Kabul. This development hascaused a gap in the current political transition, evenwhile Afghanistan’s political and cultural traditionsoffer a constructive foundation for democraticprogress.

In contrast, the Afghan Islamist groups bothwithin and outside of the TISA are enjoying thesupport of a well organized and highly funded net-work of activists while capitalizing on their influ-ence over the regional warlords and their relationswith the outside world. In addition, the Islamistsexerted significant pressure to obtain control of thejudiciary and to block the registration of non-Islamist political parties to prevent them from par-ticipating in the presidential election or from win-ning any seats in the Afghan parliament.5 As a result,these groups may succeed in gaining the majority ofseats in the parliamentary election and blocking

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legal and political reforms even if Karzai is reelect-ed. In fact, some of the Islamists that control thearmed forces are already contradicting the electoralconstitutional qualification by registering under a“new” identity to maintain their control of theirforces by winning seats in parliament.6 A strongpresence of the Islamist political bloc in parliamentwould seriously obstruct Afghanistan’s transforma-tion from its war-torn past toward a more vibrantsociety. The irony in such a scenario is the fact thatAfghan Islamists in general, whether they be affiliat-ed with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood orMawdudi, Wahhabism, or militant Talibanism, areperceived by the local Afghan communities as suspi-cious groups with alien ideologies that conflict withtheir local understanding of Islam as a faith ratherthan a political ideology. As such, political Islam, or“Islamism,” is an ideological outfit that is rootedoutside of the land and the people of Afghanistan;this ideological alienation was the main contribut-ing factor to their inability to secure popular sup-port in Afghanistan during the 1980s and 1990s. Itwas also one of the main reasons that Islamistslaunched a massive campaign of terror that includedkidnappings and assassinations against moderateMuslim resistance forces and prominent politiciansin Afghanistan as well as in Pakistan in the 1980s.

Since Afghan civil society is weak and the TISAadministration is fragmented and underfunded, anypolitical victory of the Islamists would be at theexpense of the pro-democracy forces. In order toreduce the threat of the reemergence of politicalmilitancy, the current political transition ought to beformulated via a dual track process that simultane-ously improves the state’s capacity to implement theprevisions of the new constitution and helps localcommunities reestablish their societal organizationstoward achieving greater democratic participation.

Historically, the foundation for grassrootsdemocratization existed via the Jirga, which engagedlocal communities (especially rural populations) incommunal affairs and involved proportional repre-sentation at city, district and village levels. Due tothis foundation, the social consciousness of thedemocratization process already exists among thelocal communities via the local Jirga, which gives thedemocracy-building process a grassroots character.As such, the current strategy for humanitarian inter-vention and political transition in Afghanistan

should incorporate a support system geared towardlocal communities so that they may strengthen theircivic organizations. As U.S. Ambassador andPresidential Special Envoy to Afghanistan ZalKhalilzad stated:

Assistance agencies of donor nations shouldunderstand the power of working with villagecouncils [Jirga]. If we take advantage of thisapproach, there will be 20,000 engines for accel-erating the reconstruction progress, rather thanone centralized and inevitably bureaucratizedsource of decision making. These councils alsoprovide new opportunities for women, econom-ically and politically.7

The traditional local council process helped tobring about the emergence of a generation of tradi-tional experts and community leaders.Unfortunately, most of this generation was lost towar, migration, and drought, and this loss has beenchallenging for many communities as they attemptto reestablish their local institutions. Of course,many local communities are still under the influenceof those who have access to large deposits of cashand guns. Yet this situation gives those providinginternational assistance a pro-active role by directingtheir assistance to the village level in the rural areasand to a city district among the urban populations.During the 1990s, the NGOs and the UN did—toa certain extent—support the formation of theselocal forums in the urban centers and some ruralareas. The UN Habitat–sponsored communitydevelopment resulted in the establishment of anumber of local forums in Mazar-e-Sharif duringthe 1990s. Surviving even under the Talibanregime, this highly representative civic developmenteventually fell victim to local powerholders andarmed groups who began to manipulate the processand impose their handpicked loyalists on the repre-sentative body within the urban district of Mazar-e-Sharif after sensing the lack of attention by donorsand the UN over the last two years.8

Traditionally, Afghan males dominated the localJirga; women were represented either by their malefamily members or by their male representativeswithin their community. This characteristic of thelocal Jirga was perceived to be discriminatory towardbasic civic rights and jeopardized the welfare of both

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Afghan women and children. Indeed, to a certainextent, it has been an accurate reflection of theAfghan social condition wherein males and femalesmaintain separate social spaces. However, this doesnot mean that women cannot improve their condi-tion at least via their social space, affecting the per-sonal attitudes of men and positively influencing thesocial behavior of the general population. In fact,democratic participation and representation ofwomen at the grassroots level has already beenencouraged in certain parts of Afghanistan, especial-ly in rural communities, with the support of inter-national organizations. In the early 1990s, theUnited Natons Development Program (UNDP)had begun supporting the formation of a women’scouncil in Badakhshan, and it was welcomed by sig-nificant numbers of women and communityactivists.A local woman activist described this devel-opment in an interview with the UNDP’s StrategicMonitoring Unit:

Since five years ago there has been a women’sorganization established. It is not a politicalorganization but a society, but no one has stoppedus. Faizabad [capital of Badakhshan] has 60 partsand in each we have one representative, chosenfrom a meeting of women. Her role is to sortproblems, but the most problem is the econo-my…And we have women's council in 6 city dis-tricts. We invited 100 percent of all of thewomen in the districts to take part in the election[women council election in 1997] and this washow the council was set up. During the meetingwe discussed the objectives of the council andcandidates, we gave a biography and activities ofthese candidates. In district 2 there are 13mosques and 13 neighborhoods, and they eachsent their representatives to participate-13 repre-sentatives.…We have been going to villages toform village [women] councils. I personally havetraveled to 21 villages and we have establishedcouncils, and the village welcomes it. Traveling[for women] is no problem in Badakhshan, eventhey [the local authorities] cooperate with us.9

However, the existence of the women’s Shura inBadakshan has not yet been duplicated in other partsof Afghanistan; the lack of women’s participation inthe male-dominated Shura and Jirga forums is docu-

mented widely. Still, the UN Habitat and UNDPprograms in Balkh and Badakhshan throughout theearly 1990s have been outstanding examples ofachievement. Some of these initiatives have nur-tured democratic participation so strongly withinthe local communities at the grassroots level thatthey were able to survive during the Taliban’s con-trol of the north and the rigid and militaristic dom-ination of the Islamist groups in Badakhshan. Thiscreates an important role for the donors, especiallythe United States, and the UN, as the leaders ofdevelopmental and sustainable initiatives inAfghanistan.

Currently, the Afghan Independent HumanRights Commission (AIHR) is emerging as theleading civil system that monitors rights and inves-tigates abuses and violations in Afghanistan. Thecommission was the first independent organ in thehistory of the country to ensure that the Afghanlegal codes are in harmony with the internationalconventions of which Afghanistan is a signatory. Inaddition, the commission was responsible for playinga consultative role in the preparation of a nationalplatform for both transitional justice and the pres-entation of past violations.10 The commission wasable to develop close working relations with theUnited Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan(UNAMA) and the Afghan government and estab-lished satellite offices in a number of provinces.11

Since its establishment, the commission has receivedhundreds of complaints about human rights viola-tions and abuses, and has become the only source foraverage people to file a complaint without intimida-tion or fear of reprisal.12 However, the commissionneeds financial and professional resources to developpractical ways to support the newly established sys-tem of rights at the local levels, especially in ruralAfghanistan. As a result of resource shortages, theAIHR has only been able to serve one-fifth of theprovinces, and only in the urban centers, since itsestablishment in June 2002. Still, hundreds ofAfghans are risking their lives and sacrificing theiralready drained financial resources to travel to Kabulin order to file complaints at the commission’s officein the capital.

What has developed in Balkh and Badakhshanand what has been advanced so far due to the lim-ited work of the Afghan Independent HumanRights Commission and other civil societies would

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not have been possible without the integrated pro-grams of the UNAMA and other internationalagencies’ and donors’ support. Therefore, assistingthe Afghan government to rise above the burden oflow funds and to build local capacity is key toenhancing civic rights and democratic representa-tion. Certainly, this should be coherent with thegrassroots democratization programs, so that Afghancommunities at the village level become self-sus-tainable.

ENHANCING JUSTICE AND CIVILSOCIETY

Afghanistan is known to have a dual justice system:a formal judiciary guided by legislated laws andmanaged by the central government, and a tradi-tional legal system based on the notion of custom-ary law and local understanding of Shari’a jurispru-dence that is applied through the local council forarbitration and adjudication of local disputes. Priorto the Soviet invasion, the symbiotic relationshipbetween the formal and traditional legal systems, toa certain degree, jointly represented the interests ofboth the state and society in fostering justice andallowing the locals to enjoy greater individual andcommunity rights. Whether or not such a relation-ship was ideal for the state and its citizens can be thesubject of a different discussion, but what is impor-tant is that both systems assisted Afghans in pursuingagreeable social and political interactions. Thisallowed people the option of either bringing theirdisputes to the government courts, or of being satis-fied with the local remedies offered by the informalsystem of justice. The duality of the Afghan justicesystem was based on a modern as well as traditionalunderstanding of the laws and their applications.The formal legal system’s reliance on legislated lawsenabled the Afghan government to imply secularlegal notions based on the international conventionsof which Afghanistan was a member.13 Shari'a wasincorporated in the legal system as an availablesource of law that could be used by the judiciary ifit was needed. Afghan customary law, in contrast,was deeply rooted in local customs, often as a set ofnon-religious principles. In some cases, aspects ofthese local customs have even appeared contradicto-ry to Islamic teachings as well as human rights prin-ciples. Still, Islam has served as a significant source

of personal and communal morality rather thanpolitical ideology or legal jurisprudence. This mix-ture of the sources of laws and the influence of thelocal customs, including the local interpretation ofIslam, has given the Afghan society a great sense ofoptions in reaching consensus over a dispute. Thishas also helped local communities to form a socialsafety network, which has given families a supportsystem while providing the community limited butneeded harmony.

Yet three decades of war and long years ofdrought have inflicted serious damage on the sym-biotic relationship between the formal and tradi-tional system. Rebuilding this relationship is a seri-ous challenge for donors, implementing agencies,and the Afghan authority, but it is necessary forachieving democratic measures and justice withinthe current process of transition. As noted above,the main source of challenges stem from both theinability of the central government to provide serv-ices and enforce legislated laws, even at the levels ofthe 1970s, and from the weakness of the local com-munities to rebuild and sustain their traditional self-defense mechanisms like they did before the Sovietinvasion. The existence of such inability on the partof both state and society requires targeted assistancefrom donors and international organizations, as wellas genuine structural reform on the part of Afghangovernment. The function of the formal system ofjustice relies on the higher capacity of the centralgovernment, while the effectiveness of the localconflict resolution councils depends on the strengthand stability of village communities. Rebuilding theformal and traditional systems of justice would allowthe population greater access to justice. In the shortterm, both the informal and traditional systemscomplement each other and help people to settledisputes. In the long-term, this rebuilding wouldstrengthen that symbiotic relationship between thetwo systems within which the official system wouldbe able to influence the conduct of the second, viaintegrated as well as independent programs. Suchprograms should set up legal criteria for the func-tion of the traditional system of justice in a way thatis coherent with the international convention ofhuman rights, and especially women’s rights.Indeed, such a development requires consistentcoordination to ensure a durable strategy towardlegal reform—with respect to the reconstruction

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programs—by donors, implementing agencies, andthe Afghan authority.

CONCLUSION

Energizing democracy and civil society at thegrassroots level is necessary to help Afghans stabilizetheir war-ravaged communities. Supporting thedemocratic aspects of the traditional system of Jirgaor Shura would allow Afghans to make the best useof the available local resources while reinforcingdemocratic traditions at the foundation of theircommunities. Indeed, the active roles of Afghanwomen in local affairs via appropriate and effectiveprograms are crucially important. A democraticallyoriented political transition would improve women’srights and foster women’s social and political devel-opment. Supporting both democracy and humanrights should be strengthened further throughout thewar on terrorism. Donors and international agenciesare obligated to maintain pro-active policies on thisfront. Targeted assistance for judicial and administra-tive reforms, human rights, and local civil societiesmust be given priority in order to eradicate threatsrising from war-affected societies.

The direct influence of dominant armed politicalgroups, especially Islamists and powerful command-ers (within or outside of the TISA) has underminedpeople’s political, social, and economic rights andhas also taken away the remarkably reliable system ofconflict resolution and the viable system of informaljustice. Currently, the process of Jirga in all districtsthroughout the rural areas of Afghanistan is underthe pressure of special political and military interests.In most cases, the genuine process of the local Jirga,which is the indispensable source for democracy andcivil society, is being used to legitimize the monop-oly of power of the dominant groups that do notrepresent local interests. This has cost average vil-lagers their individual freedom, communal autono-my, and civic rights, under the auspices of the cen-tral government. A workable formal justice systemcould function only if balanced with the informaljustice system via creative methods to foster greatercontinuity between legislated laws, human rights,Shari’a, and customary law. In this regard, freedom toparticipate in a civil society and access to justice arethe dynamic forces that can mobilize the Afghan

social engine toward democratization. Otherwise,the current political transition will become yetanother example of failed regime change, but withone exception—this failure would be especiallycostly and would involve irreparable backsliding.

ENDNOTES

1. President Hamid Karzai’s opening remarks at theBerlin Conference, March 31, 2004.

2. For more information about the funding crisis ofAfghan reconstruction, see Barnett R. Rubin et al,Building a New Afghanistan: the Value of Success and theCost of Failure (New York University, Center forInternational Cooperation, March 2004).

3. For more information on the PDPA's politicaltransitions see Henry S. Bradsher, Afghan Communismand Soviet Intervention, (Oxford University Press, 1999).

4. For more detailed information on the Taliban'spolitical transitions see Neamatollah Nojumi, The Riseof the Taliban in Afghanistan: Mass Mobilization, Civil War,and the Future of the Region (New York: Palgrave, 2002).

5. For more information about the Afghan presi-dential and parliamentary election see “Election andSecurity in Afghanistan,” Kabul/Brussels: InternationalCrisis Group, March 30, 2004.

6. Ibid.7. Zalmay Khalilzad, “Democracy Bubbles Up,”

Wall Street Journal, March 24, 2004.8. Najib Paykan,Youth and Children Development

Program director, Mazar-e-Sharif, interview by author,December 9, 2003.

9. “Badakhshan” SMU Area Report, the StrategicMonitoring Unit Afghanistan, UNDP, May 2001, 17.

10. “Decree of the Presidency of the InterimAdministration of Afghanistan on the Establishment ofan Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission,”June 2002,Annex One,Article 9.

11. Afghan Human Rights Commissioners andregional/provincial directors in Kabul, Nangarhar,Herat, and Balkh, interview by author, October-December 2003.

12. Ibid.13. For more information about judicial process see

“Afghanistan: Judicial Reform and TransitionalJustice,” Kabul/Brussels: International Crisis Group,January 23, 2003.

RECENT ASIA PROGRAM PUBLICATIONS

Special Report No. 121 - The “Creativity Problem” and the Future of the Japanese WorkforceGerald Hane, Akiko Hashimoto, Misao Hayakawa, June 2004

Special Report No. 120 - The “Stategic Partnership” between India and IranC. Christine Fair, Jalil Roshandel, Sunil Dasgupta, P.R. Kumaraswamy, April 2004

Special Report No. 119 - The People vs. Koizumi? Japan-U.S. Relations and Japan’s Struggle for National IdentityNaoyuki Agawa, Masaru Tamamoto, Toshio Nishi, February 2004

Special Report No. 118 - Cross-Strait Economic Ties: Agent of Change, or a Trojan Horse?Ramon H. Myers,Terry Cooke, Tun-jen Cheng, February 2004

Special Report No. 117 - Japanese Political Reform: Progress in ProcessShin’ichi Kitaoka, Robert Pekkanen, Richard Samuels, Verena Blechinger-Talcott, Michio Muramatsu, Junko Kato, January 2004

Special Report No. 116 - Passing the Mantle: A New Leadership for MalaysiaBridget Welsh, Karim Raslan, M. Bakri Musa, September 2003

Special Report No. 115 - Uneasy Allies: Fifty Years of China–North Korea RelationsChen Jian, Samuel S. Kim, Hazel Smith, September 2003

Special Report No. 114 - The Evolution of a Taiwanese National IdentityJune Teufel Dreyer, Thomas B. Gold, Shelley Rigger, August 2003

Special Report No. 113 - The U.S.-Japan-China Triangle: Who’s the Odd Man Out?Ezra F. Vogel, Gilbert Rozman, Ming Wan, July 2003

Special Report No. 112 - Fighting Terrorism on the Southeast Asian FrontDavid Wright-Neville, Angel M. Rabasa, Sheldon W. Simon, Larry A. Niksch, Carolina G. Hernandez, June 2003

An electronic copy of any publication can be obtained by visiting the Asia Program’s Web site athttp://www.wilsoncenter.org/asia.

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POLITICAL TRANSITION IN AFGHANISTAN

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ASIA PROGRAM SPECIAL REPORT

THE WOODROW WILSON INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR SCHOLARSLee H. Hamilton, Director

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