On Tuesday, April 27, 2021, the Afghan Institute for Strategic Studies (AISS), launched its recent research paper titled “Democracy Denied: The False Promise of Afghanistan’s Constitutional Order”. The launching ceremony was accompanied by an online discussion with Dr. Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, author of the research and associate professor of international affairs at the University of Pittsburgh; Dr. Hossain Ramouz, university lecturer and senior adviser to the Attorney General; Professor Thomas H. Johnson, research professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School; and Kawun Kakar, managing partner of Kakar Advocates Law Firm. The panel was moderated by Dr. Haroun Rahimi, assistant professor of law and researcher.
In the beginning, Dr. Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili presented a summary of the research`s findings. Murtazshvili said there was this strong assumption that there will be warlords if there is no strong central government. So, by weakening political parties, the whole process strengthened individual warlords. By weakening political parties, a lot of voices like civil society were not taken into consideration. According to her, around 2005 people were acutely aware of their rights; even though they didn't know every little detail; but people knew when their rights were being violated.
Kakar said that the 2004 Constitution in Afghanistan was the most transparent compared to any other Constitution in its history. Around the 2004 Constitution, people were very involved, and the process was very democratic, and most discussions focused on the form of the political system, and the presidential system was the most popular. He added, under the Constitution, one of the laws that should have been passed should have been the local governance, but it wasn't.
Johnson said that many problems that Afghans have faced have come out of Bonn. Loya Jirgas are not democratic at all. Democratic institutions were never developed in Afghanistan to succeed. According to him, elections do not equal democracy, and elections especially in Afghanistan were widely fraudulent. Further, he believes that one of the problems in Afghanistan has been ethnolinguistic fragmentation. "I didn't find a lot of Afghans in Southern provinces, especially Kandahar, that knew anything about democratic representation type of government or political system."
Dr. Ramouz said political parties were not popular in legalizing the political system of Afghanistan, because of the historic negative role that political parties had played in Afghan politics. Otherwise, I haven't seen any inclination among different groups in Afghanistan to have autonomy in Afghanistan. When we speak about decentralization, we think about a broad-based political system, so that people support human rights and development programs, and come around a common goal.
You can find the full research paper below:
https://aiss.af/assets/aiss_publication/Democracy_Denied-Eng.pdf