News
Thier Speaks on Islam, Afghanistan's Constitution
by Ryan Wisnesky
News Staff Writer

On Wednesday, January 14th, J. Alexander Thier, a consultant to the Asia Foundation, spoke to a small but distinguished group of academics in Encina Hall about the relationship of Islam to Afghanistan's recently drafted constitution. Mr. Thier has spent several years in Afghanistan and has served in an advisory position to several UN committees working in Afghanistan. The talk was sponsored by the Stanford Institute for International Studies.

After a brief introduction, Mr. Thier delved directly into the recent development of Afghanistan's constitution. With 14 constitutional articles mentioning Islam, "this is an Islamic constitution... an Islamic state by and for Muslims" he said. The constitution declares Islam to be the official religion of Afghanistan. The constitution also requires that Afghanistan's education system be Islamic and that the President be Muslim. However, article 3 of the constitution is perhaps the most controversial. Article 3 specifies that no law can be contrary to the laws and provisions of Islam. "Thus they run the risk of the Supreme Court being the arbiter of what Islam is," Mr. Thier commented. Elaborating, he said that it is rumored that if the Supreme Court, currently made up of Islamic extremists, supports the election of Hamid Karzai as president this year, the current Supreme Court will not be reformed after the election and the constitution has been enacted.

Elaborating on the court system, he noted that before 1964, Afghanistan had two separate court systems, one based on civil law and one based on traditional Islamic law. In 1964, the two court systems were unified. However, since then, only Islamic law has been the subject of academic development. He said that one could obtain a judicial doctorate in Islamic law, but that there was no equivalent for secular law. He also noted that the Supreme Court regularly issues decrees about Islamic law, something that it does not do for civil law.

After speaking about the actual process of creating the constitution, Mr. Thier began to analyze the implications for Afghanistan and the world. "The most significant failing" of the Afghani constitutional convention, he said, "is that fundamentally, the constitution should be the distillation of power sharing between factions. Unfortunately, this process did not create a consensus." The constitution has "failed to allow factions to see their future", he said. Because the various tribes are used to autonomy, Mr. Thier said that he is unsure if these groups will be able to accept a winner takes all election system like the process for electing the president.

Because of the winner-takes-all nature of the presidency, Mr. Thier speculates that the selection of the president is absolutely key in preventing the presidency from becoming an autocracy. Although Hamed Karzai, the current interim president of Afghanistan is heavily supported by the United States and is expected to win the presidential elections, Mr. Thier noted that there is simply not any other candidate that the United States would be willing to accept. "The Vice-President is terrible," he said. That, coupled with Hamid Karzai's "famous indecisiveness", according to Mr. Thier, makes the job of reconstruction and nation-building quite difficult. "The assassination of Hamid Karzai would be unmitigated disaster", he said.

Expanding on his earlier remarks, Mr. Thier noted that he believed one of the reasons the United States pushed so hard to have a winner takes all election process is that although the president "would not be an [American] puppet, it is easier to go through one guy than many". He said that he believes the urgency of the Afghani election is also tied to domestic politics, as American elections happen in Novemeber of this year.

Mr. Thier also made a few remarks about Afghanistan's economy. Afghanistan's opium trade currently accounts for about 50% of that country's GDP. With $2.5 billion a year in foreign economic assistance, Afghanistan's economy clearly needs to grow. Factionalism is still rampant in the countryside however, and this in addition to the fact that the Taliban still has support in some areas could make economic recovery difficult until stability is achieved and infrastructure is restored, he said. Mr. Thier summarized by saying that the four largest economic issues confronting Afghanistan are terrorism, general trade, illicit trading, and the opium trade.

Mr. Thier fielded questions from the audience for the second half of the talk. During the process, Mr. Thier touched on a number of issues, including the political relationship between Afghanistan and the rest of the world. "Afghanistan is the only nation that voted against letting Pakistan into the UN", he said, noting that because the countries are both Islamic and share a common border, any friction between the two could be dangerous. However, he also noted that because relationships between Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India are all currently in flux due to the war on terror, perhaps the traditional relationships between all three countries might improve for the better.

Mr. Thier concluded his speech by saying that he was optimistic but cautious about Afghanistan's future.

Page last modified on Thursday, 02-Mar-2006 00:27:37 MST.