INSIDE AFGHANISTAN

October 2001
		Afghanistan after the Taliban: Two experts responded to your questions.

Forum introduction Would a Western-style democracy be best for Afghanistan? How do we prevent a repetition of the power vacuum after the Soviets left? Would a new Afghan government commit to freedom of religion? What is happening to commerce in Afghanistan? What do we know about the Northern Alliance? How can we endure the voices of women will be heard? Is there a feasible solution for a multi-ethnic Afghan state?     Online Special: The Response Online Special: Afghanistan Sept. 28, 2001: Two experts discuss the battle between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance. Sept. 20, 2001: A look at Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network.

David Norsa of Sydney, Australia asks: Will any of the parties to the new Afghan coalition commit themselves to freedom of religion? Particularly, do you think they would allow all Afghan people to practice Islam or any other religion in the manner that they see fit? Patricia Gossman responds: The group most likely to have concerns in this regard is the Hazaras, who constitute the largest Shia minority population in the country. The Taliban targeted Hazaras in part because they considered the Shia to be apostates. Hazara leaders have long fought for a degree of autonomy over their own affairs, and that will continue to be the case. Other "ethnic" struggles in Afghanistan have been determined along linguistic and tribal lines.   Thomas Gouttierre responds: I think that is one of the things we have to encourage the Afghans to put into any type of plan for the future. And I think we ought to encourage them along those lines as strongly as we can. I think because of what they have gone through with the Taliban there will certainly be many people who will be eager to see some kind of progressive form or more secularized form of government in Afghanistan. But at the same time we have to understand that after 28 years of warfare and instability in Afghanistan, people have clung to religion as the only thing that has been of solid nature to which they feel they can turn for succor of some kind or another. In working with those people in the grand national assembly – which before, by the way, had put the kind of freedom of religion idea into its constitution that this questions suggests – needs to be re-instituted in Afghanistan. In other words, it was an Islamic country but everybody – Hindus, Buddhists, whoever else -- who wanted to practice religion the way they wanted to should do it. What they did not do enough of is for the Shia minority of Afghanistan to feel like they were as much at home as the Sunni majority. It will be essential for the new governments of Afghanistan to declare that there is no particular form of Islam that is eminent in the legal system over another, but that just some form of general Islamic philosophy having an input on the foundation of what might be the constitutional format, not the specific kind of Islamic philosophy as opposed to another.