Kabul/Brussels, 12 June 2003:
A unique opportunity to create democratic institutions and ensure the future stability of Afghanistan will be wasted unless far greater efforts are made to broaden and deepen public consultation on the drafting of a new constitution. A report published today by the International Crisis Group (ICG), Afghanistan's Flawed Constitutional Process* says the political process needs to be substantially rethought and recast.
ICG Asia Program Director Robert Templer said: “The Constitutional Loya Jirga planned in October 2003 should be dropped. Instead, national elections mandated for 2004 should be used to create a national assembly that can conclude work on and adopt a new constitution. This can be done within the spirit of the Bonn Agreement of 2001 which calls for a Constitutional Commission tasked with preparing for a Constitutional Loya Jirga to be convened no later than January 2004”.
ICG Afghanistan Analyst Aziz Huq said: “The current process of designing a constitution for Afghanistan is unlikely to provide a stable basis for the settlement of future conflict. Current insurgencies in the south and factional conflicts in the north are likely to worsen in the absence of legitimate central institutions for sharing power ”.
The Afghan Transitional Administration (TA) and United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) have not acted in a transparent way. Both the Constitutional Drafting Commission and the Constitutional Commission were appointed without public process and were heavily influenced by the Panjshiri Tajik Shura-yi Nazar faction, which dominates the TA. Because of this, few Afghans are likely to accept them as representative or neutral bodies. UNAMA has also actively resisted attempts to broaden the process of informing and consulting with the Afghan public.
UNAMA says three concerns justify the lack of wider consultation – security for members of the Constitutional Commission and the public, the risk that the process might be hijacked by extremists, and the danger of public confusion. But none of these preclude a pubic process; all are amplified by the current process.
Afghanistan has had many constitutions that failed because they lacked public legitimacy and tried to subsume underlying political fault lines rather than addressing and negotiating them. Those managing the drafting of the new constitution should learn from the errors of the past and craft solid foundations for a stable political future. Without vigorous public debate, even a well-drafted constitution reflecting compromises will lack negotiated consensus and thus legitimacy.
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*Read the full ICG report on our website:
www.crisisweb.org
The International Crisis Group (ICG) is an independent,
non-profit, multinational organisation, with over 90 staff members on five continents,
working through field-based analysis and high-level advocacy to prevent
and resolve deadly conflict.
