Amin Saikal and William Maley in today's Times write a scathing deconstruction of Afghanistan's dysfunctional political system. Their main points: A strong executive government under the presidency of Hamid Karzai goes against Afghanistan's more consensus-driven traditions. It's locking out swaths of Afghan interests while fostering massive corruption within government and equally massive disillusion among Afghans. meanwhile, the Taliban is making strides. Saikal and Maley (Saikal is the author of Modern Afghanistan, Maley is the author of Rescuing Afghanistan) propose re-writing the Afghan constitution and establishing a parliamentary system.

They have a point. But they miss another glaring problem with Afghanistan's constitution, a problem most westerners tend to ignore as well. The problem won't be corrected merely if a parliamentary system is substituted for a strong-executive presidential system, and it's this: Afghanistan's protections for religious freedoms are non-existent, and its protections for press freedom are quickly vanishing. In many cases, the Afghan government and its courts are acting no differently than did the Taliban--condemning individuals to death for "apostasy" (that is, for converting to Christianity or translating the Quran) or for blasphemy (for just questioning such questionable proscriptions as polygamy for men but not for women).

Here's a run-down of the most extreme cases of "Taliban-Lite" repression (as the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom calls it) since the liberation of Afghanistan from the Taliban in 2001.

See Also:

• Afghanistan: Country Profile
• "The Kite Runner" Controversy: Afghanistan Retreats Into Chaos