Afghanistan: First elected parliament in 30 years convenes

Afghanistan’s first popularly elected parliament in more than three decades convened today, marking a major step toward democracy following the fall of the hard-line Taliban.

US Vice President Dick Cheney flew in to attend the opening session, which was held under intense security.

The session began with a reading from the Koran, the national anthem and a folk song by schoolgirls dressed in brightly coloured robes. After the delegates were sworn in, President Hamid Karzai called the gathering a display of Afghan unity.

“This gathering shows that all of the people of Afghanistan are unified,” Karzai said. “This is an important step toward democracy.”

He said the approval of a constitution and the establishment of the National Assembly “bring us all under one roof to discuss our problems”.

Karzai shed a tear as he closed his speech, saying that Afghanistan was “again standing on its feet, after decades of war and occupation”.

The 249-seat body is made up of an eclectic mix of tribal leaders, Westernised former refugees, warlords, women and ethnic minorities, in itself a victory for a nation recovering from a ruinous civil war.

Afghans voted for the lower house in September, and also elected provincial councils that then chose two-thirds of the 102-seat upper chamber. Karzai appointed the remaining 34.

The politicians, with little or no experience at governing and many lacking basic education, will have to learn quickly if they are to help pull Afghanistan out of poverty, rid it of terrorism and rampant drug trafficking, and end a stubborn Taliban insurgency that shows no signs of abating.

Afghanistan’s constitution vests little authority in the legislature. Most of the government’s power is still concentrated in the hands of the president, although parliament will be able to pass laws and veto his Cabinet selections.

The country has had no elected national assembly since 1973, when coups and a Soviet invasion plunged the country into decades of chaos that left more than 1 million people dead. Civil war raged in the early 1990s, followed by the disastrous rule of the Taliban.

After today’s largely ceremonial opening session, which closed after about two hours, security and stability were expected to be major issues in the weeks ahead.

The inauguration of the assembly formally concludes the political transition process agreed on by Afghan factions under UN auspices in December 2001, though Afghanistan is still a long way from stability.

Some 20,000 US troops are deployed there, along with thousands of Nato peacekeepers. But violence is rife in the country’s south and east, where remnants of the Taliban are waging an insurgency marked by near daily killings and bombings.

Just days before parliament was to open, a suicide bomber blew himself up in a car not far from the assembly building, slightly damaging a Norwegian peacekeeping vehicle.

The country’s economy also continues to rely heavily on the trade in illicit drugs – a threat Nato’s top operational commander, US Gen. James Jones, has suggested is more serious than the Taliban insurgency.

Opium production has boomed since the fall of the Taliban and Afghanistan and is now source of most of the world’s heroin.

Karzai acknowledged the drug problem is severe.

“I want the country to fight against this trade,” he said. “It is giving our nation a bad name.”

The makeup of the assembly itself has cast further doubt on whether it will be a positive political force. More than half of the new politicians are regional strongmen.

Among those in the parliament with bloody pasts are Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, a powerful militia leader accused of war crimes by New York-based Human Rights Watch, and Abdul Salaam Rocketi, a former Taliban commander who has since reconciled with the government.

Another winner was the former Taliban leader who oversaw the destruction of two massive 1,500-year-old Buddha statues during the fundamentalists’ reign.

“The international community will try to portray the opening of parliament as a triumph,” said Sam Zia-Zarifi, Asia research director at the New York-based Human Rights Watch. “But many Afghans are worried about a parliament dominated by human rights abusers.”

One former militia commander who won election wasn’t at the opening session - he was shot dead earlier this month. Eight parliamentary candidates were killed in the run-up to the September polls.