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WIVES FACE SCHOOL BAN
By IWPR contributors in Kabul
Institute for War & Peace Reporting (10.11.2003)/ HRWF Int. (1.11.2003) C Website: http://www.hrwf.net/ - Email: info@hrwf.net - Enforcement of old law banning married women from the classroom sets back female education cause.
Thousands of young Afghan women have been expelled from school simply because they are married.
It's a big blow for female students, who had been denied the right to be educated under the hard-line Taleban regime, and hoped for more opportunities under the transitional administration. A mid-70s law stating that married women cannot attend high school classes was upheld in September by President Hamed Karzai's government - and the education ministry has ordered all regions to enforce this rule.
Deputy education minister Sayed Ahmad Sarwari, told IWPR that he didn't know the exact number of women who've been expelled, but that it was "possibly more than two or three thousand".
After the Taleban were overthrown, one of the first signs that the authorities were putting the past behind them was the reopening of girls schools - and while the law on married women remained it was not implemented.
Supporters of the legislation say it protects unmarried girls in school from hearing "tales of marriage" - in other words, explicit details about sex - from their wedded classmates. Orders from the central authorities usually take months to be put into force but some regions are complying already.
Khurshid, one of those recently banished from classes in Kapisa, a province just north of Kabul, told IWPR, "We thought that after the fall of the Taleban, the government would give priority to education, but unfortunately they are taking us towards a great darkness - the administrators have
expelled us from school.
"We are very disappointed. Why expel us from school at a time when we are at the end of our education? ... We were told that because we were married we should leave school. On the day we were expelled all of us were crying."
Mohammad Anwar, the principal of Ushtergram High School in Kapisa, explained that he was merely doing the government's bidding, "We expelled these pupils according to the orders of the education ministry."
Although married women are not permitted to attend classes, they are still allowed to sit their final exams.
"We still give them the opportunity to... gain their certificates," Sarwari told IWPR. "We recently excluded more than one hundred women from a high school in Kabul, but we helped those students take the exam which is a privilege for them."
But this is of little compensation to women who had hoped that after the dark years of the Taleban they would be granted the right to go to school, irrespective of their marital status.
Zakia Zaki, headmistress of Jebulo Seraj Girls' High School in the Parwan province, said, "Even though excluded women are few in Parwanan, these women...were very intelligent..[and]..they say that they would prefer not to have the grade and the certificate without an education."
Khalida, a former pupil in the northern Balkh province, said, " I didn't know that if I got married this would happen, otherwise I might have got married after my education.
"I was married during the Taleban because schools were not open for women. Now I am told I can take an exam, but how can I? After all the years I have stayed at home, I have forgotten everything!"
Fahima Hadi, principal of Marim High School in Kabul, said some of her pupils were "so afraid they will be expelled from school they are now refusing to get married".
Women's affairs minister Habiba Surabi told IWPR she sympathised with married female students and suggested that the authorities would do more to address their needs. "In the past we had a different educational resource for married women, a society called Mermana Tolana [Women's Association] where they could study," she said. "We are currently developing government-approved professional high schools [for married women] in four provinces, but they have not yet been inaugurated because of financial problems. However, these students should apply to us and we will try to do what we can."
Elsewhere, international NGOs are also doing their best to better the plight of Afghanistan's lost generation of pupils, setting up literacy classes for girls who could not attend schools. But these classes, too, have been banned by religious leaders.
One literacy centre student, who wished to remain anonymous, said some of the female students "are confronting a lot of problems. Local religious scholars prevent us from education and threaten our fathers, saying they must not send their daughters to school. But we want to be educated. Most of my [classmates] were not permitted to study even though our teachers were female. We don't see any religious problem here so we must defend our rights because Allah has given us the right to learn."
Reflecting the views of these critics, Mawlawi Abdul Haq, one of the ulema in the regions, insisted that women should be denied education "because Allah says in the holy Quran that women should at stay home and not expose their beauty".
At the literacy centres, the girls may be seen by male strangers visiting the classes, he said.
FUNERAL WOES FOR HINDUS
By Shahabuddin Tarakhel in Kabul
Institute for War & Peace Reporting (10.11.2003)/ HRWF Int. (1.11.2003) C Website: http://www.hrwf.net/ - Email: info@hrwf.net - Hindu and Sikh community wants to reopen Kabul cemetery for cremations, but locals object.
Kabul's Hindu and Sikh communities are finding it hard to hold funerals because local residents object to open-air cremations. Despite the objections, Afghanistan's religious affairs ministry has promised to let Sikhs and Hindus reclaim their traditional sites and use them to cremate the dead.
Awtar Singh, who represented the Sikh community at last year's Loya Jirga or grand national assembly, estimates that there are 64 Hindu and Sikh temples and 20 cremation grounds in Afghanistan, although most have been destroyed in years of war.
The Hindu and Sikh communities - traditionally involved in trade - have shrunk from tens of thousands in the Eighties to just a few thousand, as most left the country because of the continual conflict or the prejudice they faced. As non-Muslims, they had an especially tough time under the hard-line Taleban regime, which announced plans to make them wear badges that would mark them out.
Those who remained, or are now returning, find it difficult to reclaim their religious sites. Sometimes this is because powerful people have seized the land. In the case of the cremation site in Khamdan Qalacha in south-eastern Kabul, the objections come from local people who do not want funeral pyres so close to their homes.
"After ten years, we wanted to burn our corpses in the Kabul cremation ground, but people in the area won't let us because 95 per cent of them are against us burning our dead bodies there," said Awtar Singh.
Both Sikhs and Hindus - who in Afghanistan are generally referred to collectively as Hindus - currently have to travel to other towns to cremate their dead. "A 70-year-old woman died, and we had to take her to Ghazni in spite of the fact that the government has announced several times that Hindus and Sikhs should be given their rights," Awtar Singh told IWPR. "But our rights are being trampled on."
Inder Singh Majboor, 42, who also transported a body to Ghazni to be burnt, appealed to the authorities to back the community's claim, "I ask the government to give us our Hindu cremation ground back in Kabul, so that we can perform our duties close by.... Our fathers and ancestors burned their dead here."
In the years that the site was in disuse, housing sprang up closer and closer to it. Now the residents say that despite the high walls surrounding the grounds, they are against the cremations resuming.
"If Hindus bring their corpses here they will be faced by popular resistance, because the people of this area - male and female, young and old - don't want Hindus to burn their dead bodies here," said Abdul Wali Sahi, 43, a community leader in Khamdan Qalacha.
Local Muslims say their objections are based not on religious prejudice, but on practicalities. Sahi says the Hindus can build anything they want on the site, "but we can't accept their cremation ground".
Abdul Salam, 52, who lives with seven family members about 200 metres away from the cremation ground, said lighting funeral pyres is inappropriate in a residential area, "The Hindus have not burned their dead bodies here for ten years now. Our children will be very shocked if they begin to do this again. They could be frightened and have mental problems."
Sikhs and Hindus face similar difficulties elsewhere in Afghanistan.
In the southern province of Khost, Charan Singh Sachdev said his community has been forced to carry out cremations at a private home because the site gifted to them in the Eighties has been seized by a local mujahedin commander and a tribal leader. Religious rites are carried out at a school because the temple was destroyed by rocket-fire in the early Nineties.
Ataurahman Salim, an under-secretary at the Haj ministry which oversees religious affairs in Afghanistan, told IWPR that the authorities were doing their best to look after the rights of religious minorities, and would not allow their temples and cremation grounds to be appropriated by anyone else.
"We look on the 'Indian' Afghans as we do other Afghans," he said. "Kabul's Hindu cremation ground has a 200-year history. We are sending a delegation to the people of that area [to tell them] not to disturb these Hindus, and to let them burn their dead." Salim added that his ministry would be working with the Indian government, which has offered to help restore three temples in Jalalabad, Kabul and Ghazni, as well as three mosques in Kapisa, Kabul and Paghman districts.
Shahabuddin Tarakhel is an independent journalist in Kabul.
Afghanistan weighs use of Islamic law
By Burt Herman
AP (28.10.2003)/ HRWF Int. (31.10.2003) C Website: http://www.hrwf.net/ - Email: info@hrwf.net - Judge Khoja Ahmad Saddiqi could order a thief's hand amputated as punishment, as the former Taliban regime did under their extremist interpretation of Islamic law, known as Shariah.
But in the two years since the Taliban were forced from power, Saddiqi, head of the Afghan Supreme Court's judicial and criminal division, hasn't yet ordered the knife to be used on any crooks.
"If we implement Shariah correctly, there's no need to cut off a hand," and rarely would an execution be handed down by the courts, said Saddiqi, whose thick black beard and swirling turban indicate his status as a mullah, a Muslim cleric who also leads prayers at a Kabul mosque.
As Afghans mark the start Monday of Ramadan the holiest time of year for Muslims, when they believe God began to reveal the holy book Quran to the Prophet Muhammad the framers of the country's post-Taliban constitution are debating just how much of those 1,400-year-old lessons to include.
A constitutional commission has been laboring over a draft for months, and its much-delayed release is expected in the coming days. An assembly of representatives from across the country is to consider the draft in December, paving the way for nationwide elections in June 2004.
The implementation of Shariah is especially sensitive here, given its harsh imposition by the Taliban who forced men to grow beards and pray, banned women from schools and most jobs, and toppled walls onto homosexuals to crush them to death.
While recognizing the fundamental fact that Afghanistan (news - web sites) is an Islamic nation with a nearly 100 percent Muslim population the latest version of the constitution shies away from mentioning Shariah.
The spirit of the current draft is of "a society that's moderately Islamic but also lives in peace and understanding with the rest of the world," said Jawid Luddin, President Hamid Karzai's spokesman.
Early drafts of the document included Shariah, and conservatives have continued to push for making it the basis of all laws, said Ahmad Nader Nadery, spokesman for the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission. The group has lobbied the constitution's drafters to remove Shariah and include freedom of religion in the draft law.
"It's very easy to misuse Shariah against the basic rights of people," Nadery said.
Instead of Shariah, the constitution is set to include an article stating that "no laws shall run counter to the sacred principles of Islam," as written in an earlier draft copy obtained by The Associated Press. The country will be officially known as "the Islamic republic of Afghanistan."
It will be left to lawmakers later to iron out how that translates into the specifics of the criminal and civil code. They also will decide whether to legislate other tenets of the Islamic faith, including whether to prohibit alcohol, make adultery a crime and how to sentence thieves.
Especially critical will be how far the laws go to protect women's rights, recalling the harsh discrimination they suffered under the Taliban who forced their virtual disappearance from all public life.
Judge Saddiqi thumbed a white paperback copy of the criminal code from 1976, when Afghanistan was ruled by King Mohammad Zaher Shah, that he still uses today although he said Shariah law remains his first reference in tricky cases.
He said the Taliban's lightning-speed trials sentencing a thief one week and having a doctor using anesthesia cut off his hand the next bore no resemblance to real Shariah law.
Instead, Saddiqi said courts observing Shariah must look at the circumstances surrounding the crime.
"If this thief is stealing out of poverty, if his children are crying for bread, then we should consider this" in the verdict and consider more lenient measures, he said. Saddiqi said women should wear veils according to the Muslim faith, but that doesn't mean they must be cloistered at home as the Taliban required.
"There's a big difference between Taliban law and Shariah law," he said.
While most Arab states define themselves as Muslim nations in their constitution, some call Shariah the basis of their laws and some do not mention Shariah at all. Saudi Arabia enforces a version of Islamic law that is somewhat less strict than the Taliban's.
At Kabul's dilapidated Daral-e-Hafuz madrassah, or religious school, students huddle in windowless classrooms in the half of the building left untouched by rockets and bombs. They were emphatic they don't want anything that comes from the Taliban but still said Shariah must be part of Afghan law.
For example, Abdul Karim, 17, said banning only the public consumption of alcohol wouldn't be sufficient to comply with Shariah. "At that time we will raise our hands" in protest, he said.
"We do want Islamic law, we want Shariah in our constitution," said the school's deputy director, Mohammadullah, who like many Afghans uses only one name. "We want democracy too, but not like in Western countries, democracy that can respect Islamic laws."
New Afghan constitution juggles Koran and democracy
By Carlotta Gall
New York Times (19.10.2003)/ HRWF Int. (21.10.2003) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net/ - Email: info@hrwf.net - The question now facing Afghans is: how to devise a constitution that combines the country's deep-rooted Islamic traditions and its aspirations for democracy?
The answer Afghans find in the next few weeks will be closely monitored by Iraqis, who have to write a constitution of their own over the next year. In Afghanistan, the process has not been easy.
After months of tortuous discussion, consultations around the country and thousands of comments sent in by the public, a commission of lawyers and experts has drawn up a draft constitution to put before the Afghan people.
"This is a moment for Afghanistan to ensure its survival or go back to the darkness," said Prof. Muhammad Amin Ahmadi, a member of the constitutional commission. "The crisis of Afghanistan has its roots in illegitimate power. We must have legitimacy and responsibility."
Last touches are still being made to the proposed constitution at the insistence of President Hamid Karzai, who has followed the drafting closely. The final version will be published within days, his aides said on Saturday. That should allow six weeks or more for public discussion before 500 delegates convene for a constitutional loya jirga, or grand assembly, that is scheduled to convene here in Kabul, the Afghan capital, on Dec. 10 to debate and approve a final version.
The commissioners say they have found a balance between the need for guarantees for both democracy and Islam. The country will be named the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. "If the name did not include Islam, people would not feel confident," said Professor Ahmadi.
The country will be governed by civil laws as long as they are in keeping with Islam. The draft contains the same language as the country's 1964 Constitution to guarantee that "in Afghanistan no law will be made which will oppose Islamic principles."
The chief justice of Afghanistan, Fazel Hadi Shinwari, an Islamic scholar and a conservative, said he was satisfied with the draft. "Previous constitutions have been in keeping with the Koran, and this one is, too," he said. "Afghans and Muslims living in Afghanistan will accept it."
But the fine balance may not survive debate at the 500-member grand assembly, commissioners conceded. Diplomats fear that Islamic hard-liners will try to force a stronger Islamic rule.
The commissioners, who will attend the assembly to defend and explain their draft, will argue that any constitution must recognize that Afghanistan cannot survive without international protection and assistance, and that the Western powers want to see democratic standards and human rights protected in the new constitution.
The constitution will set the parameters for national elections next summer. The commissioners said the draft called for a directly elected president, supported by a vice president and a prime minister, a strong central government rather than a provincial federation, a two-chamber parliament with significant representation for women and an independent judiciary.
There are guarantees protecting the human rights and civil rights of all citizens, democracy and pluralism, as well as recognition of international conventions and measures for an open-market economy with an independent central bank.
The former king, Mohammad Zahir Shah, will continue to hold the symbolic title of "father of the nation," but there will be no return of the monarchy.
"The spirit of this constitution will provide an opportunity for the country to move on the path of democracy," said Interior Minister Ahmed Ali Jalali after the draft was put before the interim cabinet and approved a few weeks ago.
A new constitution will be an important milestone. Since the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan has been ruled under the United Nations-sponsored Bonn accords of December 2001. Those accords laid out a plan for a new constitution and national elections within two and a half years.
President Karzai was named leader of an interim administration and later approved by a traditional loya jirga for an additional two years, until June 2004.
The constitution will not solve all of Afghanistan's problems. Warlords, drugs and the Taliban remain serious threats. But the commissioners said the new constitution was a start.
"The country cannot go on in a legal vacuum," said Prof. Musa M. Maroofi, a constitutional lawyer at Kabul University, who was one of eight co-authors of a first draft. "There should be a constitution. There should be the rule of law."
Members of an expanded commission of 35 people have traveled around the country holding public meetings as they have reworked the draft. Nearly half a million questionnaires were sent out, asking people what principles should guide the state, what rights should be guaranteed and what system of government they wanted.
They received 100,000 questionnaires, 10,000 written opinions and 300 cassettes of ideas recorded by illiterate people, said Abdul Ghafoor Lewal, spokesman for the Constitutional Review Commission.
Standing at their elbow throughout the process were representatives from the United Nations and several foreign experts to advise them.
"People want peace and security, and a government that will stop the gunrunning, warlordism and other crimes," Mr. Lewal said. "Generally, they want Afghanistan to go toward government by the people."
People also expressed an overwhelming desire for Islam to rule their lives. "There was to be no compromise on Islam," said Fatima Gailani, one of eight women on the constitution commission.
There was widespread anxiety that Afghanistan would become a secular state, Professor Maroofi said.
"The collapse of the Taliban regime created the concern for a large number of people that maybe this government, or a future government, would be so secularist that they would completely make religion irrelevant," he said. "So people needed some kind of assurance through this constitution that Islam is still the official religion of the country."
"Afghanistan is a Muslim country that wants freedom, peace and food," said Anwar ul-Haq Ahady, chairman of the Central Bank and leader of Afghan Millat, a political party. "But never such a freedom or peace at the expense of Islam."
Many expect difficult arguments at the national assembly over the structure of government, in particular the powers of the president and prime minister and parliament, as well as ethnic issues like the choice of a national language.
The draft as it stands creates a strong presidency, with powers to appoint the prime minister and cabinet, and to preside over cabinet meetings.
"The reason for this is to create stability," said Professor Ahmadi. But members of the Tajik ethnic group, the second largest group in Afghanistan after the Pashtuns, are pushing to give more power to the prime minister.
The balance of power in Afghanistan is inextricably tied up in the ethnic groups, and language will be a very sensitive issue at the grand assembly.
Pashtuns, the traditional rulers of Afghanistan, will want Pashto named as the national language, even though that means little more than having the national anthem in Pashto. But the Tajiks, who dominate the present interim government, are insisting that the two main languages, Dari and Pashto, are both made official languages, and that the national anthem be sung in both.
Afghan Constitution proposes Muslim state
By Daniel Cooney
AP (28.09.2003)/ HRWF Int. (02.10.2003) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net/ - Email: info@hrwf.net - A new constitution that will be put forward soon for ratification declares Afghanistan a Muslim state but stops short of imposing Islamic Shariah law, a contentious issue in this conservative nation, an Afghan official told The Associated Press on Sunday.
As they draw up a constitution aimed at unifying the fragmented nation, conservatives and secularists have been hotly debating how to enshrine Islam into law after years under the Taliban, who enforced a harsh version of Shariah that some Afghans recall with horror but others support.
The hard-line Taliban militia banned women from working, barred girls from school and ordered men to grow their beards long and pray five times a day, as well as carried out executions and amputations for a range of crimes.
Ratifying a constitution is crucial for Afghanistan as it lays the foundations for its first democratic elections in decades, scheduled for June. The rebuilders of Afghanistan hope that vote will be a cornerstone for political stability after 23 years of war.
A 10-day meeting of a 500-member loya jirga, or grand council, will debate and ratify the constitution. The gathering was pushed back by two months to December after President Hamid Karzai demanded more time to finish the document.
After 11 months of work by dozens of constitutional experts and three months of public consultations in which 150,000 people submitted suggestions, a draft will likely be released this week.
The question of Shariah has been "a huge struggle" in the work on the constitution, said an Afghan official involved in the drafting.
"So far, the focus has been on trying to find a consensus," the official told the AP on condition on anonymity. But, he said, "a balance has been found."
The document's preamble declares, "Afghanistan is an Islamic state" and says its laws must be in accordance with Islam, but it does not impose Shariah, the official said.
The Taliban, who ruled most of the country from 1996 to 2001, ignored the former constitution altogether and imposed their interpretation of Shariah. After their removal, an interim administration was established and Shariah law was dropped. It is operating under an amended version of a 1964 constitution drafted under former King Mohammad Zaher Shah.
Some in Afghanistan support the version of Shariah imposed by the Taliban, others argue that Islamic law should be the law of the land even if it's not the interpretation practiced by the Taliban, who emerged from hard-line religious schools in Pakistan.
While most Arab states define themselves as Muslim nations in their constitution, some call Shariah the basis of their laws and some make no mention of Shariah at all. Saudi Arabia enforces a version of Islamic law that is somewhat less strict than the Taliban's.
Karzai has been given a draft of the constitution for review and will release it to the public "in the next few days," Constitutional Review Commission spokesman Abdul Ghafoor Lewal said. He declined to comment on the content of the document.
Another official said it would be released Thursday or Friday, after Karzai returns from an overseas trip.
Even though the 35 members of the Constitutional Review Commission have finally agreed to the wording of the text, it is far from certain whether members of the loya jirga will reach a consensus. Many of the council's members are warlords and may feel their authority will be undermined by a strong national constitution.
Karzai's administration has little authority outside of the capital, Kabul, and many initiatives to expand his power have failed because of opposition from the warlords, who have private militias and rule their territory as if they are fiefdoms.
Other contentious issues have included ensuring women have rights equal to men in a society where they have long been discriminated against; and which of Afghanistan's many ethnic languages will be made the national one.
The structure the future government will take has also been hotly debated. It is expected to have a president and prime minister, however, how mush authority each post will have is yet to be decided.
Karzai, who is widely expected to win the June elections, is pushing for the presidency to have broad powers, the official involved in drafting the constitution said.
As a Pashtun, Afghanistan's largest ethnic group, Karzai would then be expected to appoint a Tajik, the second largest ethnic group, as prime minister and Tajik politicians have been pushing for the prime minister's position to be powerful, the official said.
The commission sent 460,000 questionnaires out to the public this year and held meetings in villages across the country seeking public input.
"So many people replied, including women who said they wanted more rights and good education," Lewal said. "The illiterate sent cassette tapes and we got tens of thousands of letters."
He said the commission has also studied the constitutions of 80 other countries especially those nations with large Muslim populations or ones that have recently emerged from years of war.
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'Climate of fear' rules Afghanistan
Reuters (22.04.2003)/ HRWF Int. (24.04.2003) - Website: www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - Afghan warlords terrorize the population with a ``climate of fear'' and religious fundamentalism is rising in Afghanistan 18 months after U.S. forces toppled the ruling Taliban regime, a rights watchdog said on Tuesday.
Even the opening of schools and colleges for women -- a widely hailed product of the collapse of the Taliban in late 2001 when U.S. troops entered the country -- is under threat, New York-based Human Rights Watch said.
``The international community has allowed warlords and local military commanders to take control of much of the country,'' its representative Loubna Freih told the U.N. Human Rights Commission, now ending its annual six-week session in Geneva.
She said instead of providing security, the warlords were terrorizing the local population in many parts of the country, with kidnappings, arbitrary arrests, armed robbery, extortion and beatings widespread.
Freih said the warlords had in some places maintained law and order ``by creating a climate of fear, not unlike under the Taliban.''
Political opponents, journalists and ordinary Afghans ``are attacked and intimidated into silence,'' she added.
An Afghan regional commander said Tuesday the Afghan government needed to take courageous action against unruly warlords if it was to extend its rule around the country. He said the government's authority did not extend much beyond the capital, Kabul.
Soldiers and police, who were to have been retrained by U.S. and other troops involved in an international security force also largely limited to the capital, ``regularly abduct and rape women, girls and boys,'' Freih said.
Girls' education at risk
``Religious fundamentalism is on the rise, with new restrictions on freedom of expression and movement of women and girls. Gains in education are now at risk as many parents, afraid of attacks by troops and other gunmen, keep their daughters out of school,'' she said.
Under the hard-line Islamic Taliban, women and girls were largely restricted to their homes and were only allowed out if fully veiled and in the company of a male relative.
Washington sent troops into Afghanistan to try to destroy the Taliban which was accused of harboring Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. The United States blames bin Laden and al Qaeda for the Sept. 11 attacks.
The Bush administration hailed education for women as one of the successes of the operation.
There are some 11,000 U.S. and allied troops still in Afghanistan, many hunting Taliban leaders and members of al Qaeda. Bin Laden and Taliban chief Mullah Omar are still at large.
The U.N. Human Rights Commission is considering proposals to replace its current investigator who has a special mandate to look into the rights situation in Afghanistan with a ``special expert'' whose mandate would be much less clearly defined.
Sources close to the commission say the United States has been opposed to any resolution at all on Afghanistan this year as well as to creation by the U.N. body of an international commission of inquiry into past rights abuses in the country.
In her speech, Freih said creation of such a commission was ``crucial in establishing the rule of law.'' Without it, efforts to break a ``cycle of impunity and the stranglehold of gunmen are unlikely to succeed,'' she added.
Hindus still face prejudice
By Shahabuddin Tarakhel
IWPR (28.01.2003)/ HRWF Int. (04.02.2003) - Website: www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - Afghanistans Hindus and Sikhs, the countrys only significant non-Muslim minorities, say they continue to face prejudice and problems educating their children over a year after the collapse of the Islamic fundamentalist Taleban regime.
Their number, which was as high as 200,000 in this overwhelmingly Muslim country under the communist-backed Najibullah regime, has dwindled to a few thousand after the great majority fled to India over the past decade - driven out by war and religious prejudice.
Now some are seeking to return to the land in which they have lived for centuries. But many more are put off by a lack of housing - their homes having been destroyed in savage fighting between mujahedin and Soviet forces and later rival Islamic groups - and, above all, problems with education.
Our children cant study in ordinary schools because the Muslim children tease them for their hair and bracelets, said Avtar Singh, head of the only Hindu school in Kabul and leader of the community in the capital, whose remarks refer equally to Sikhs.
So our children can only study in our temple, where we can teach only four subjects C Maths, English, our own language and religion.
We have run a school in a temple in the west of Kabul for the past 35 years. Before the wars, 5,000 students were studying there and others studied in ordinary establishments alongside Muslims.
Before the wars there was love and understanding between all the communities, and our children studied happily in Muslim schools. Now the Muslims themselves are turning against each other, so what chance do we have?
Prejudice against Hindus, which emerged with the arrival of mujahedin forces battling the Soviets, heightened in 1992 after Hindu extremists demolished the 16th century Babri Mosque in Ayodhya, India, saying it was built on the site of razed a Hindu temple.
Hindu and Sikh homes and temples across Afghanistan C in this country both groups are generally referred to as Hindus - were looted and burned.
The hard line Taleban regime which took power in 1995 announced it was planning to order Hindus to wear labels identifying them as non-Muslims - recalling the Nazis policy towards the Jews in the Second World War - which provoked an outraged reaction from around the world.
Asked why they did not take their case to the ministry of education, Otar Singh said, We want our children to study with Muslims in ordinary schools, with the help of the ministry. But at present we cant because, firstly, our children dont even know their own language properly, so how can they learn Dari (Persian). Secondly, other children will know that they are different, from their hair, bracelets and names, and will tease them.
Kamal Jeet, 10, who was doing religious studies in the temple, told IWPR, If we study alongside the Muslims they make fun of us, so we dont do it.
A Hindu woman, who declined to give her name, said, Before the wars I studied in a local school near the Hindu temple. There were no problems between Hindus and Muslims then. Now our population has dwindled, and our children are unhappy studying with Muslims, and also have language problems.
Amer Parkash, a Hindu from Ghazni province, south-west of Kabul, who was in the capital on business, said, In Ghazni we dont have a single Hindu school, and most of our children cant read or write properly.
During the wars a lot of bad things were done to us, and our children are still afraid to go out to buy groceries. We would like all of us to live and study together as we did in the past.
In some schools this appears to have already happened. In Ghazi Ayob Lycee, in the west of Kabul, 13-year-old Manish Kumar, a lone Hindu in a Muslim school, said he had experienced no problems and got on well with his class-mates. I translate Indian songs for them in my free time, he said proudly.
When I came to this school a year ago I didnt face any problems. I go out of the classroom when the rest do Islamic studies. We are all Afghans, and we should all serve our country.
The principal of Ghazi Ayub school, Sadat, told IWPR, Hindu boys and girls wont face any problems if they want to come here. Before the wars, half of our students were Hindus, and they all got on well together. We have told Manish Kumar that if he has any problems he should come straight to us.
Deputy Education Minister Zabihullah Esmati said, Hindus are Afghans, and they have a right to go to school with Muslim children. The doors of every school are open to everyone. If anyone teases or bullies them they can complain to the school principal. And failing that, they can come and tell us their problems.
Constitutional process proceeding
IRIN (15.01.2003)/ HRWF Int. (24.01.2003) - Website: www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - Afghan constitutional experts and former lawmakers have had mixed reactions to the announcement that the first draft of the country's new constitution will be made public in March, following a consultative process by the nine-member Constitutional Drafting Commission inaugurated late last year.
"This is a welcome step, but the commission should have included more legal experts and jurists," the exiled Afghan legal expert, Roastar Tarakai, told IRIN from the French city of Lyon on Wednesday. "It is a very sensitive time for our country, and this task needs careful deliberation," he said, adding that the supreme law should reflect the wishes and aspirations of the Afghan people and the realities of their society.
According to a spokesperson for the UN Mission in Afghanistan, once the first draft is completed, wide consultation with civil society and experts in all 32 provinces, as well as among Afghans in other countries, would follow. A final draft is expected to be ready by October, and will be submitted to the Constitutional Loya Jirga or grand council later this year.
At a press briefing in Kabul on Monday, Vice-President Ne'matollah Shahrani said the future constitution would be based on Islamic principles and Afghan legal traditions, as well as on international norms and standards. "The new constitution will move the country away from isolation, and show the world that Afghanistan wants to be integrated into the international community," he said.
But some Afghans remain cautious. "I think that they are rushing the process ahead of time," Siraj-ud Din Mangal, a member of the lower house of parliament when it adopted the 1964 constitution, told IRIN from Germany. "The constitution should only be formed after legislatures are democratically elected. It's their job," he said. "The whole political framework of the state depends on the constitution. It's the basis indeed."
The first Afghan constitution was adopted in the 1920s when the reformist king, Amanullah, declared independence from Britain. In 1932 King Nadir Shah gave the country another constitution, only to be replaced by a more democratic one in the reign of his son, Muhammad Zahir Shah, in 1964. As the Bonn agreement draws heavily from this constitution, it was partially restored last year. Subsequent regimes in the 1970s and 1980s also gave Afghanistan new constitutions, but they failed to gain universal acceptance.
Although Tarakai and Mangal backed a formal role for Islam in the new constitution, the former stressed the need for containing political Islam, while the latter highlighted the need for Islamic Shari'ah law to be enshrined in the constitution in the deeply conservative Islamic country. But Tarakai said "there should be religious freedom in the country with everyone free to practice their religion".
Regarding one of the more sensitive issues, Tarakai maintained that Afghanistan should remain a unitary state, while guaranteeing the rights of all ethnic groups and regions. "This will end warlordism and will also promote national unity," he said.
Interview with the head of Islamic Injunctions Department
IRIN (23.10.2002)/ HRWF Int. (24.01.2003) - Website: www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - The notorious Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice as it was known during the rule of the Taliban, is up and running once again, but under a different name - the Islamic Injunctions Department - and has different priorities. In the past, the ministry was known for its harsh rules and regulations that often discriminated against women.
Denying recent reports that Bollywood movies and female voices had recently been banned from the airwaves, officials at the new department say they are merely trying to promote what they describe as "the correct version of Islam".
In an exclusive interview with IRIN in the capital, Kabul, the head of the Islamic Injunctions Department, Dr Sayed Abbas Qasemi, said his department was promoting Islamic values but not forcing them on people like the Taliban had done.
QUESTION: Why was this department set up?
ANSWER: This is the General Department of Islamic Injunctions [Riyasat-e Omumi-ye Ershad-e Eslami: literally: General Directorate of Islamic Guidance], which is the part of Ministry of Religious Affairs [Vezarat-e Ershad va Owqaf: literally: Ministry of Guidance and Religious Endowments] of the Afghan Transitional Government. This department was formed during the presidency of Burhanuddin Rabbani (1994-96) and named of [the Ministry for the] Promotion [of] Virtue and Prevention of Vice as a part of the presidents office. It continued under the Taliban, but they changed some of the rules.
After the Mujahidin retook Kabul [December 2001], a decree restored all the departments and its personnel formed during Rabbanis rule. As the Taliban's Ministry of Vice and Virtue abused people's rights, because of the atrocities against people carried out under this ministry, the new leaders changed the name to the Department of Islamic Injunctions.
Q: Why is it important for Afghanistan to have this department?
A: Afghanistan is an Islamic country and 99 percent of its citizens are practising Muslims. This department, as part of the Ministry of Religious Affairs, serves the people by promoting Islamic values.
Q: What exactly do you promote? Can you explain in detail?
A: We work under the guidance of the Minister of Religious Affairs, who is part of the transitional cabinet, which is responsible as a whole to President Hamid Karzai. So we work under the supervision of the cabinet and the ministry.
Our work is three-dimensional. We have a communication unit, which produces a magazine by the name of Payam-e Haq [Message of Truth]. We also produced two publications containing the works of contemporary and past Islamic writers. We also arrange training, learning and academic seminars and conferences on Islam. We hold religious functions in the mosques and other places of worship, educating people about Islam. The staff of the Ministry of Religious Affairs also consults us on religious matters.
Q: Do you feel that the people of Afghanistan have lost the meaning of Islam because of years of fighting?
A: All over the world, people engage in and promote their view of Islam by propagating it through media and other sources of communication and information. We don't know if people have lost the real meaning of Islam. We just want to remind them of the correct meaning of Islam. As Afghanistan is an Islamic county, we promote the Islamic culture and civilization because it is our heritage.
Q: How important is religion in Afghanistan, and do you think it is being respected by foreigners working in the country ?
A: From the day the Afghans embraced Islam, we have always sacrificed for it and promoted it. Islam is an integral part of our culture. For example, during the Anglo-Afghan wars [in the 19th century] and during the Soviet invasion, Afghans fought to defend their homeland and religion. Afghan culture is Islamic, and religion is deeply entrenched in our national character. For example, prayer is our culture, veiling is our culture, so Islamic tenets are part of the Afghan culture. We want to preserve our culture and the foreigners should also respect our culture.
Q: How have the rules in the ministry changed from the Taliban times - for women in particular?
A: The Taliban stopped women from working and getting education. But under the Islamic democracy today they are free to work and attend school. We also have a separate department for women which promotes Islamic teachings about women. In Kabul city you can notice a big change in people. Both men and women [are] pursuing their livelihood in a peaceful and democratic atmosphere.
Q: What is your position on women working and foreign Muslim women in Afghanistan?
A: The high position given to women by Islam is unmatched. Islam is not against the presence of women in political, cultural, economic and social and even military spheres of life. We follow Islam, and it has given women tremendous rights. So women can play their roles in all spheres of life, and they should defend their rights.
We welcome all Muslim and non-Muslin foreign women, who are here to serve our countrymen. We welcome them as respectable guests. The Taliban, who justified their tyrannies in the name of Islam, no longer rule Afghanistan.
Q: Do you permit Afghan women to travel alone in the country?
A: It depends on them. If they have their own vehicles and security they can travel alone.
Q: Do you accept Afghan women on radio and television?
A: Yes, but only under the umbrella of Islam. Which means they must adhere to dress codes.
Q: Do you feel that the foreign women working in the country are a bad influence on Afghan women in terms of dress etc?
A: Afghanistan is a democracy now and nobody is forced to do anything, unlike under the Taliban. Everybody is free to act according to their own upbringing while respecting the civilized human values. I am convinced [of the need] to respect the people who are serving humanity. We are Muslims, but we tolerate other cultures and religions. Islam is a religion of nature. We do not force people to accept something. Islam is for Muslims only and non-Muslims cannot be forced to accept it.
Q: I understand that people from your department are talking, going out to mosques to talk to people about Islam. Why are you using this method ?
A: We do not go to people or force them to listen to us. They voluntarily come to us to learn and seek guidance in religious matters.
Q: What kind of Islamic country you would like Afghanistan to be ?
A: I am familiar with many Islamic countries and I prefer those who are participating in the reconstruction of our country. We would prefer an Islam where Allahs will is obeyed by the way of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). Unlike the Taliban, which imposed personal beliefs by force, we would like the true Islam to prevail in our society.
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