Content area
Full Text
On 4 January 2004, nearly all 502 members of the Constitutional Loya Jirga (Grand Council) meeting in Kabul silently stood to approve a new constitution for the "Islamic Republic of Afghanistan." President Hamid Karzai signed and officially promulgated the document on 26 January 2004, inaugurating Afghanistan's sixth constitution since King Amanullah Khan promulgated the first in 1923. Delegates hoped that this relatively liberal Islamic constitution would provide a framework for the long task of consolidating basic state structures, as the country struggled to emerge from decades of anti-Soviet jihad, interfactional and interethnic civil war, and wars of conquest and resistance by and against the radical Islamists of the Taliban movement. In his speech to the closing session of the Loya Jirga, President Karzai explained why he thought that the new constitution-which mandated a presidential system with a bicameral parliament, a highly centralized administration with unprecedented rights for minority languages, and an Islamic legal system safeguarded by a Supreme Court with powers of judicial review-would meet the needs of a desperately indigent but proud country searching for a period of stability in which to rebuild.
The constitution was the next to last step in the road map to "reestablishing permanent institutions of government" outlined in the Bonn Accords of 5 December 2001. Afghans signed that agreement under UN auspices as the United States was completing the job of routing the Taliban regime that had given refuge to Osama bin Laden. The constitution provided a framework for the "free and fair elections" to choose a "fully representative government" that were to complete that process. But two and a half years-the time frame of the Bonn Agreement-could hardly suffice to turn a failed state into a stable democracy. Whether the constitution, and with it the international effort in Afghanistan, could achieve its stated goals still depended on efforts beyond its scope, such as demobilizing militias and eradicating the drug trade and other illicit activities that accounted for more than a third of the Afghan economy.
Unlike some postwar agreements, the Bonn Accords set out a process rather than a detailed settlement of major political issues. This reflected the time pressure under which the Accords were forged, which set a speed record as such things go. Afghanistan had been...