Afghanistan's Constitution

Amin Tarzi in the RFE-RL Weekly Afghan Report is analyzing the new Afghan constitution. This week he covered the powers of the President the role of religion. Two key points:

1.) Assertions that the President could become dictatorial apparently have some merit. The President gets to appoint one third of the upper house of Parliament, and can circumvent the legislature by convening a loya jirga on key issues. He can't go against the entire country that way, but the amount of power vested in him is impressive nonetheless, especially in a system likely to be dominated by patronage for at least the immediate future.

2.) Islam is enshrined in the constitution as the official state religion, and it is specified that that no law can contravene shari'a (Islamic law). As Tarzi points out, however, the document also vests the people rather the God with sovereignty, which suggests the danger of an ideological theocracy is small. If this is all the constitution says, I'm not worried about it, because the interpretation of Islam is left to the people, and they are unlikely to pass laws which go against their religious values anyway. Given what Juan Cole says about how the Constitution mandates a Parliament that is at least one-sixth women, I think we need not worry about a political Talibanization of the type some fear.