Progress and Pitfalls of “Peace-Building”

in Afghanistan continues .....

Mr Miakhel criticised the current ‘puppet government’, pointing out its helplessness being extremely dependent upon the donor nations. He further went on to state that the UN is the de facto government in Afghanistan.

Zubair Popalzai, an Afghan officer associated with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) pointed out that the Bonn Agreement was an exercise in imperial state building with no regard to the realities on the ground and is based on faulty assumptions. He further pointed out that the Bonn Agreement was the weakest link between Afghans and their desire for their choice of an Afghan state in that it was based more on process than on substance.



Under the Bonn Accords, 2003 was to be a year of government under the Transitional Administration, during which various commissions would work on civil service and human rights issues and write a constitution. The most successful of these efforts produced a draft constitution in November, 2003, in time for the convening of a Constitutional Loya Jirga in December, which, in a spirited and contentious debate, ratified a new Afghan constitution in early January 2004.

The new Constitution provides for a powerful presidency, which

Karzai insisted upon, arguing that the alternative model of a strong

parliamentary system with a prime minister might lead to a return to the

internecine violence of the 1992-95 period, when factions headed by then￾President Burhanuddin Rabbani and then Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar destroyed Kabul fighting each other.

According to the Constitution, the President will have substantial executive powers, similar to those of the American president, such as the ability to veto legislation and to appoint ministers and Supreme Court judges, subject to the approval of the lower house of the National Assembly.

Afghanistan will have a bicameral legislature, with a directly elected lower house, the Wolesi Jirga,

or House of the People, of 250 members, and a smaller, indirectly elected

and appointed upper house, the Meshrano Jirga, or House of Elders.

To be continued....