Women Guaranteed in Afghan Assembly
Associated Press
March 31, 2002 at 12:42:34 p.m.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Organizers unveiled plans Sunday for the 1,500-member ``loya jirga,'' or national grand council, that will convene in June to establish Afghanistan's new government. They set aside hundreds of council seats for women, refugees and academics, but only six for Islamic scholars.

``We hope the loya jirga will be the symbol of national unity,'' said the chairman of the organizing commission. But the seat allocation, a break from an Afghan past dominated by Muslim clergy, drew an immediate rebuke from a prominent Kabul cleric, who called it a ``humiliation.''

The commission chairman, Ismail Qasimyar, also said Afghanistan's former king, Mohammad Zaher Shah, whose homecoming had been postponed because of security concerns, would return from his long exile on April 16.

The ex-monarch will formally convene the loya jirga June 10 for its scheduled six-day session, during which it is to name members of a transitional government to rule for 18 months leading to national elections.

The head of the current interim regime, Hamid Karzai, has said he hopes the council will continue him as government chief through 2003. Some Afghans also want it to install the returned Zaher Shah as head of state. But others oppose any sign of reviving a monarchy deposed 29 years ago.

The loya jirga, a concept deeply rooted in Afghan tribal society, was part of an agreement negotiated among Afghan factions in Bonn, Germany, last December after a U.S.-led war toppled the Islamic extremist Taliban government. The Bonn accords also established the current Karzai administration.

The 21-member commission's plans for the assembly, whose makeup may sharpen regional, ethnic and tribal antagonisms in this fractious land, were formulated in two months of nationwide consultations.

Under the announced procedures, 1,051 loya jirga members will be indirectly elected, beginning with a traditional consensus-style designation of electors at the village level, via mosque or schoolroom gatherings. At the district level, these village delegates will vote secretly for loya jirga members, chosen from among themselves and allocated proportionally nationwide according to population.

In addition, the plan guarantees allocation of 464 seats among special groups. Women will be assured of at least 160 seats, for example, Afghan refugees 100 representatives, universities 39 seats, and the current interim government 30 seats.

``You see for the first time in our national life, our modern history, a loya jirga that has and enjoys the most and broadest legitimacy,'' Qasimyar, a specialist in constitutional law, said at a news conference. ``Especially significant is the number of women who will be represented.''

Later Sunday, a prominent Muslim clergyman, Kabul's Ayatollah Sadiqi Parwani, told The Associated Press he supported the idea of significant representation for women. But he expressed displeasure at the allocation of only six seats to ``religious personalities'' - Islamic scholars.

``It's a humiliation to have so few,'' said Parwani, a leader of Afghanistan's Shiite Muslim minority. ``Six seats is nothing. We'd be better off with none.''

Additional clergymen can be expected to be seated in the loya jirga from the districts, via the indirect election process. But Parwani said the small number of guaranteed seats for clerics contrasts sharply with past loya jirgas. Clergymen made up a large percentage of a loya jirga convened in 1964 to write a constitution, he said.

After 23 years of war, much of it among Afghanistan's homegrown factions, many here fear possible armed intimidation and violence in the coming weeks aimed at influencing the choice of individuals for the loya jirga.

``Our hope is that all Afghan parties will honor the Bonn agreement in letter and spirit,'' special U.N. representative Karl Fischer told reporters.

Qasimyar, the commission chairman, was vague about safeguards against such pressure, saying it was the responsibility of the current, weak central government to provide security - although it has no national police force and only an embryonic army. He said extension of an international security force to the provinces is ``under discussion'' at the United Nations in New York, but that such a move was only a ``small possibility.''

The United States, in particular, has opposed the expansion of the current 4,500-member U.N. peacekeeping force here in Kabul, the capital, to other Afghan cities.