Only a start

Afghanistan has unveiled a draft constitution. But even if the document is approved and President Hamid Karzai wins next year’s elections, the country’s problems will be far from over



DRAFTING a country's constitution is no easy task. America's founders spent a sweaty summer in Philadelphia in 1787 agonising over theirs. The European Union has been trying to assemble one for at least three years, with little success so far. So it should be no surprise that Afghanistan's draft constitution—unveiled on Monday November 3rd at a ceremony with the country's president, Hamid Karzai, its king and the United Nations' special representative—arrived two months late. The real test is what the document contains; whether the loya jirga (the grand council) will approve it at its meeting next month; and, above all, how it will be implemented.

The draft echoes America's constitution in several respects. It calls for a strong president, directly elected by the people; a vice-president; and two houses of Congress, a House of Elders and a House of the People (some of the former will be nominated by the president). No prime minister is envisaged.

But unlike America's constitution, Afghanistan's does not separate church and state. It would designate the country an Islamic nation, formally named the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. “In Afghanistan, no law can be contrary to the sacred religion of Islam and the values of this Constitution,” the draft states, though it makes no mention of the harsh sharia law once enforced by the Taliban, who compelled women to stay at home, not go to school and wear burqas until being booted out by American-led forces in 2001.

Such overt references to Islam may alarm some in Washington. But in a traditionally religious country that houses a patchwork of different ethnic groups, devotion to Allah is a rare unifying force—and the omission of sharia law shows some resistance to religious conservatives. More worrying, perhaps, is a recent report from America's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that takes a pessimistic view of the country's political prospects. The constitution would clear the way for general elections next year (and Mr Karzai, a now-seasoned administrator from the dominant Pushtun ethnic group, looks to be the front-runner). But with Afghan civil institutions so weak, holding general elections next year may be difficult, the report says, according to the Financial Times.

As both Mr Karzai and America's policymakers recognise, a constitution is only one of the necessary ingredients for holding this vast and diverse country together. Even more important is security. A lack of security will “make political and economic reconstruction difficult”, said Gunter Pleuger, Germany's ambassador to the UN, during a visit to Kabul this week. He has a point: outside of the relatively stable capital, where a 5,500-strong international peacekeeping force operates, the country is mostly a mess. Plenty of Taliban types appear to be sneaking in across the porous border with Pakistan and targeting aid workers and others in southern Afghanistan, despite America's efforts to hunt them down. And opium production remains high.

Some progress is being made in dealing with these problems. Mr Karzai is trying to defang renegade warlords by bringing them into the central government. Last month, the UN Security Council passed a resolution allowing international peacekeepers to serve outside of Kabul. But the UN resolution will have little immediate impact, and clashes between warlords continue to destabilise much of the country.

The worries about the constitution and security are reminiscent of America's other, more recent occupation project. Afghans worry that they are being forgotten amid the hue and cry about Iraq. Even as America trumpets the $33 billion or so that nations around the world have pledged towards rebuilding Iraq, officials in Kabul are grumbling that the $4.5 billion or so promised to Afghanistan two years ago is not enough. Iraq's roads and schools are being rebuilt, so why not do more about Afghanistan's horrendous infrastructure? As for security, far more troops and intelligence officials have been turned loose on “foreign fighters” and Baathists in Iraq than on Afghanistan's warlords and Taliban troublemakers. Drafting a constitution may be one of the few ways in which Afghanistan is edging ahead of Iraq.

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