In this bulletin:

• Afghanistan per capita income increases
• Afghan Parliament Starts Debates On Proposed Cabinet
• Afghan parliament launches debate on cabinet
• Turkish Engineer Killed in Afghanistan
• 4 Policemen Killed at Afghan Checkpoint
• Clash in S. Afghanistan leaves 6 Taliban dead, villages retaken: official
• Landmine kills five in Pakistan near Afghan border
• U.S. Warns of More Afghan Violence in '06
• Afghan clerics threaten trouble over convert
• Afghanistan Eyes Membership of European Security Group
• Kazakh FM met with President of Afghanistan
• Ottawa stands behind handover deal with Afghanistan
• Why should Canada's soldiers protect a government like this?
• War: Canadian-style - Part 2
• Afghan-Canadian opens guest house in Kandahar
• Analysis: The fallout from Rahman's release
• TRUDY RUBIN: Afghan case shows challenge of democracy
• The West in an Afghan mirror
• Islamic Constitutionalism

Afghanistan per capita income increases

KABUL, Afghanistan, April 3 (UPI) -- Afghanistan's national per capita income has reached $293, up from $200 a year earlier, a report given to the president has said.

Central Bank President Noorullah Dilawari told Afghan President Hamid Karzai that the per capita income likely will increase to $335 by this time next year, Pajhwok Afghan News reported Sunday.

Dilawari, in a statement released by the presidential palace, said, "The growth rate of our economy last year (2005) was 14 percent, while it was 8 percent a year before (2004)."

During the past 12 months, Afghanistan's inflation rate remained below 10 percent and food prices fell. Only housing rents and oil prices rose. One of the main agendas in Karzai's 2003 presidential campaign was increasing the national per capita income from $200 to $500 by 2008.

Afghanistan has one of the lowest per capita incomes in the world, even in comparison with neighboring Pakistan, whose per capita income is $600.

Afghan Parliament Starts Debates On Proposed Cabinet

KABUL, April 3, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Afghanistan's lower house of parliament, the Wolesi Jirga, today began to debate the composition of the new cabinet proposed by Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Members of parliament told RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan said the process could last two weeks.

Each minister proposed must win a separate vote of confidence. Other details have yet to be resolved. Some members of parliament, for example, want each nominee to present a specific plan to the Wolesi Jirga.

Other members of parliament say they do not want the result of any vote to be counted or announced until all of the nominations have been debated and voted on separately.

A third group of parliamentarians has asked that the votes of confidence be conducted by secret ballot. They cite concerns about personal safety if the votes are made public. Karzai is attending today's parliamentary session, along with his first vice president, Hamad Zia Massoud, and the 25 proposed ministers.

Afghan parliament launches debate on cabinet

Kabul (Reuters) - Afghanistan's parliament began a debate on President Hamid Karzai's new cabinet on Monday, with opponents seen likely to criticize and perhaps reject some of his choices.

Karzai, who has been leading Afghanistan since shortly after the ousting of the Taliban in 2001, announced a limited cabinet reshuffle last month that included the appointment of an adviser on foreign affairs, Rangeen Dadfar Spanta, as foreign minister.

Under the constitution, the parliament elected in landmark legislative polls last September must approve the members of Karzai's team with a vote of confidence.

"It is a matter of great happiness that the people of Afghanistan themselves are deciding on their new cabinet," Yunus Qanuni, the president of the lower house of parliament, told the assembly after Karzai's team was introduced.

The assembly will question ministers individually and then vote on each by secret ballot. The process is likely to take at least a week, and perhaps longer.

Serious opposition to many of Karzai's choices could undermine the president's authority. Last September's general election, held on a non-party basis, produced a disparate group of former communist officials, several ex-Taliban members, as well as technocrats and women's rights activists.

But the 249-seat lower house is dominated by members of former Mujahideen, or holy warrior, factions that battled Soviet occupiers in the 1980s, fought a civil war for much of the 1990s and helped U.S. forces overthrow the Taliban in late 2001.

Qanuni, a former top political official in one of the strongest factions that helped oust the Taliban, urged members to put aside ethnic and factional affiliations and think of the national interest when voting for ministers.

The debate comes days after the lower house strongly criticized Karzai's government over the release of a Christian convert who had faced death under Islamic law for abandoning Islam.

Qanuni and many other members of the assembly said last week the release of the convert, who was quickly spirited away to asylum in Italy, was illegal. Karzai's ministers are likely to face a range of questions, over issues such as their expertise and the problems facing their ministries.

But analysts said it was very difficult to predict how the debate in Afghanistan's first elected parliament in more than 30 years would go. "They're still coming up with their own procedures, they're still getting to know each other, they're definitely still getting to know the issues," a Western political analyst said.

"To judge from earlier statements, there will be questions and some level of significant opposition to some of the candidates, definitely, but it's very hard to predict how many, or who will face a tougher ride than the others," he said.

Last month's cabinet changes were aimed at improving government efficiency and came after protracted negotiations between political and ethnic factions.

Unlike previous cabinets, the new line-up contains only a handful of old faction commanders, and more well-educated technocrats, but some Afghans complain there are still not enough qualified people in the team. If a minister is rejected, the president will put forward another candidate for that post.

Turkish Engineer Killed in Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan, April 2 (Reuters) — Gunmen believed to be linked to the Taliban movement shot dead a Turkish engineer in Afghanistan on Sunday, the governor of Nimroz Province said. It was the second attack in a week on foreigners working on a road project in the western part of the country.

In a separate incident, gunmen on motorbikes who were also believed to be linked to the Taliban attacked a police post outside a jail in the southern city of Kandahar, wounding as many as five officers, said the provincial governor of Kandahar, Assadullah Khalid.

The Turkish engineer was traveling with three police guards in an area on the border of Farah and Nimroz Provinces when gunmen forced them to stop, said Gov. Ghulam Dastagir Azad of Nimroz Province.

"They pulled him out, shot him and burned his body," Mr. Azad said. The gunmen disarmed the three guards and let them go, he said. Mr. Azad did not identify the engineer or his company. Officials at the Turkish Embassy were not available for comment.

A roadside blast in the same area last week killed five people, including two foreigners working for a company that provides security for road construction crews.

Violence has flared since the Taliban said last week that they had begun a spring offensive to oust foreign forces and overthrow the Western-backed government.

In an incident on Friday night, an insurgent who had pretended to be a traveler seeking a place to sleep shot dead four policemen as they slept.

The policemen had allowed the man to stay at their checkpoint and had given him dinner, but later that night he grabbed a policeman's rifle and killed the officers, said Amanullah, a police official in the southern province of Helmand.

4 Policemen Killed at Afghan Checkpoint

Kandahar (AP) - A Taliban rebel posing as a traveler shot dead four policemen at a remote checkpoint in southern Afghanistan after eating dinner with them and sleeping in their quarters, officials said Sunday. A fifth officer shot the rebel dead.

The assailant asked the officers if he could spend the night with them late Friday because he was walking alone along a stretch of road in Helmand province, a hotbed of insurgency and the country's main poppy growing region, said Helmand provincial administrator Ghulam Muhiddin.

After the officers had gone to sleep, the man grabbed one of their rifles and opened fire, killing the four instantly, before the fifth officer woke up and shot him dead, Muhiddin said.

A Taliban spokesman, Qari Mohammed Yousaf, telephoned The Associated Press to claim responsibility. The insurgents have stepped up attacks on Afghanistan's fledgling police recently and a series of ambushes in Helmand has seen scores of officers killed.

Also in Helmand, rebels attacked a convoy of civilian trucks Saturday that had just dropped off equipment at a U.S.-led coalition base in the region, said Amanullah, a local police chief who uses only one name. The militants burned the trucks but freed the drivers unhurt.

Clash in S. Afghanistan leaves 6 Taliban dead, villages retaken: official

Six Taliban militias have been killed in a clash with government troops since Friday in Kajaki district of Helmand province and the government troops have pushed back the militants from villages, a local official said Saturday.

"Besides killing six Taliban rebels we have re-taken back the control of three villages where the Taliban were present," Deputy provincial governor Amir Mohammad Akhundzada told Xinhua. But a man, Dr. Hanif who claims to speak for the Taliban, said that the militants are still in the control of the three villages in Kajaki district.

It is the first time the militants claim taking control of villages since their ouster from power in late 2001. The militia in the past usually stormed government and foreign troops' interests and after exchange of fire fled away.

Hanif, however, said that only two Taliban fighters had received injuries in the conflict. On the other hand, the Corps Commander of Kandahar General Rahmatullah Raofi downplayed the Talibans claim and said Afghan and U.S. forces had begun clean up operation in the area to root out the militants.

Helmand, Kandahar, Zabul and Uruzgan in south Afghanistan commonly known as the heartland of Taliban have been the scene of increasing militancy since last year. Taliban-linked insurgency has left some 200 people, including 13 American soldiers, dead since the beginning of this year. Source: Xinhua

Landmine kills five in Pakistan near Afghan border

Miranshah (reuters) - Five people including two women were killed in a land mine explosion in Pakistan's restive tribal region near the Afghan border on Monday, intelligence officials said.

The incident occurred in the North Waziristan tribal region where around 200 tribesmen were killed in clashes with security forces last month after they answered a call to arms by militant Muslim clerics following a special forces assault on an al Qaeda camp.

The victims were traveling in a vehicle in Dattakhel area near North Waziristan's main town of Miranshah when it struck a land mine. "Five people were killed on the spot while the sixth is in critical condition," said an intelligence official.

The incident took place a day after one soldier was killed and 10 people wounded in clashes in the region, which is infested with al Qaeda and Taliban fighters and their local sympathizers.

President Pervez Musharraf, a key ally in the U.S.-led war on terror, last month warned foreign militants hiding in the tribal region to leave Pakistan or face annihilation.

A large number of al Qaeda remnants and Taliban fled to Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal belt after U.S.-led forces toppled the radical Taliban regime in Afghanistan following the September 11, 2001 attacks on Washington and New York.

U.S. Warns of More Afghan Violence in '06

Kabul (AP) - Violence is likely to increase in Afghanistan this year as foreign security forces expand into new areas and the government steps up its campaign against a booming trade in opium and heroin, a senior U.S. official warned Monday.

Already last year was the deadliest in rebel violence since U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban in 2001. Some 1,600 people, including 91 U.S. troops, were killed last year, more than double the total in 2004.

Recent weeks have seen a rise in attacks — often around four a day — as warmer spring weather melts snow on high mountain passes Taliban rebels use.

Richard A. Boucher, the assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia, said the rebels "certainly have the ability to continue doing what they are doing for a while and be very nasty."

"We will probably see a rise in violence this year as NATO spreads into areas in a more dense fashion, as the insurgents try to test the new forces (and) as the government takes on the narcotics traffickers in new areas," he said.

NATO is gradually assuming control of security in Afghanistan from a U.S.-led coalition. By midyear, NATO troops are set to take over volatile southern regions and by September they are expected to control the entire country.

The United States will keep about 16,000 soldiers here, down from their current levels of about 19,000, but they will be under NATO command. The British, the Dutch and the Canadians have deployed thousands of soldiers in recent months.

Many Afghans believe the U.S. drawdown indicates the start of a gradual withdrawal, but Boucher suggested otherwise. "We are here. We are going to stay here. People are going to see us here for a long time to come," he said.

Over the weekend, a Turkish road engineer, nine police and a prominent lawmaker were killed. A botched suicide bombing killed the assailant, but no one else, and five U.S. troops were wounded in a roadside blast.

U.S. Ambassador Ronald Neumann, speaking alongside Boucher, said the Taliban have the impression that with time, they will gradually wear out the patience of foreign governments to keep their troops deployed here.

"There was a Taliban leader who said to one of our folk that the coalition has all the clocks, but we have all the time," Neumann said. "That is the way they tend to see the world, that they can out-wait the foreigners."

The insurgents are believed to be heavily armed and well funded, partially from profits derived from the booming drug trade. Afghanistan supplies nearly 90 percent of the world's opium and heroin.

The government, backed by hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. and British money, has begun a campaign to forcibly eradicate poppies in many areas — a move that is believed to have caused fighting in some areas.

Afghan clerics threaten trouble over convert

MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Afghan clerics and their followers threatened violence against the government on Sunday over the release of a Christian convert, saying he had to be brought back from Italy and put on trial.

There has been fiery criticism of the government over the release of the convert, who was spirited out of the country last week, but protests have been few and peaceful.

The convert, Abdur Rahman, 40, was jailed last month for converting to Christianity and could have faced trial under Islamic sharia law that stipulates death as punishment for apostasy.

After a storm of Western criticism, led by the United States, Rahman was released and taken to Italy.

About 1,000 people gathered in a mosque in the northeastern town of Kunduz and demanded that Rahman be brought back from Italy and sentenced to death.

"This act of the government is illegal," Sheikh Mohammad Baqir, a cleric and organizer of the rally, said, referring to Rahman's release.

"Either he should be tried or the government should go. We urge other provinces to raise their voices and if the government doesn't listen, we will resort to violence," he said attracting calls of "Allahu akbar" (God is Greatest) from the crowd.

Police refused to let the gathering leave the mosque and march through the town. A police official said they were worried about violence if a march was allowed.

Afghanistan saw violent protest in February over cartoons of Islam's Prophet Mohammad published in European newspapers. Violence also broke out last year during protests over a magazine report U.S. military interrogators had desecrated the Koran.

Many conservatives in Afghanistan had insisted Rahman be tried under Islamic law. The lower house of the Afghan parliament also said his release was illegal.

Afghanistan Eyes Membership of European Security Group

KABUL, April 3 Asia Pulse - The visit of Belgian Foreign Minister Karel De Gucht on Friday to Afghanistan has refreshed hopes for the country's membership in the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), one of the world's largest security groups.

The Belgian minister, who is Chairman-in-Office of the OSCE, held extensive talks with President Karzai during his stay in Kabul. Several issues were discussed which also included Afghanistan's membership in the organisation, said spokesman for the Foreign Ministry Naveed Moez.

"No doubt, relations and cooperation would improve between Afghanistan and other countries if we get OSCE's membership," said Moez, while speaking to Pajhwok Afghan News.

However, the spokesman expressed ignorance about conditionalities involved in the process for Afghanistan to become member of the OSCE, which had included Central Asian states in its folds.

Analysts say, if materialised, the step would go a long way in improving the international position of Afghanistan. Abdul Ghafoor Liwal, Director of the Regional Studies Centre and a Kabul-based analyst, said Afghanistan's accession in OSCE would no doubt improve the country's image and its position on the international level.

Afghanistan would benefit from the privileges available to other member states of the OSCE, said Liwal, who added it would be better if neutrality of the country remained unchanged and its sovereignty unharmed.

Qasim Akhgar, another analyst and a university professor said OSCE membership would help boost Afghanistan's status worldwide. At the same time, Akhgar added, the country would be able to get more assistance on democracy and security fronts.

The OSCE deployed a special team to monitor the presidential elections of 2004 and parliamentary elections in 2005 in Afghanistan. The country's links with the organisation were established under the Partner for Cooperation Scheme in April 2003.

The programme is meant to assist Afghanistan in achieving the standards to get membership of the 55-nation organisation. Presently, it has 10 partners for cooperation, including six in the Mediterranean region and three in Asia - Japan, South Korea and Thailand. (Pajhwok Afghan News)

Kazakh FM met with President of Afghanistan

ASTANA. April 3, 2006. KAZINFORM /Dina Yermaganbetova/ In the framework of the working visit to Republic of Afghanistan Foreign Affairs Minister of Kazakhstan Kassymzhomart Tokayev met with its President Hamid Karzai.According to official representative of Kazakh MFA Yerzhan Ashikbayev, it was the first visit of the head of Kazakh Foreign Ministry to Afghanistan in the history of bilateral relations.

In the course of the talks the sides positively estimated development of mutual political, commercial economic and humanitarian cultural ties, Y. Ashikbayev stated. Within the framework of the visit K. Tokayev gave a speech at the international conference “Partnership, trade and development of Great Central Asia”.

Ottawa stands behind handover deal with Afghanistan - MICHAEL DEN TANDT – The Globe and Mail 4.3.06

OTTAWA -- The federal government will not revisit an agreement between the Canadian military and the Afghan government that offers weaker human-rights safeguards than does a similar deal struck with the Dutch, a spokesman for Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor said yesterday.

"There's no plan to review the arrangement between the two levels of government," said Étienne Allard, communications director for the Defence Minister.

The Globe and Mail reported Thursday details of a two-page agreement signed by Chief of the Defence Staff Rick Hillier on Dec. 18.

The 13-clause document, published Thursday afternoon on the Department of Defence website, stipulates that prisoners taken by Canadian troops and handed over to Afghan authorities must be accessible to visits by the International Committee of the Red Cross "at any time."

The deal also requires Canadian and Afghan authorities to maintain "accurate written records accounting for all detainees that have passed through their custody," and to make these available to the Red Cross when asked.

The Conservative government is comfortable that those safeguards are adequate, senior government sources said yesterday. "The Afghan government clearly stated their intention to follow the Geneva Conventions," one said. "For us, this is acceptable."

The Netherlands's agreement with the Afghan government is considerably more stringent than Canada's. It requires that in addition to the Red Cross, Dutch diplomatic and military officials also have access to any prisoners turned over to the Afghans by Dutch troops.

The Dutch agreement also requires the Afghans to notify the Dutch embassy if any former Dutch prisoners are transferred or released, or if any legal proceedings are initiated against them. The Canadian agreement contains no such safeguards.

Former defence minister Bill Graham, now Opposition Leader, last week strongly defended the Canadian agreement.

Meantime, federal officials yesterday discounted a report over the weekend that no government flags have been lowered in honour of the three Canadian soldiers who died in Afghanistan this year.

In a letter sent to the news media yesterday, Mr. O'Connor said Canadian flags were lowered in four locations after the deaths, according to DND policy.

Why should Canada's soldiers protect a government like this?

By Guylaine Spencer, Hamilton The Hamilton Spectator (Apr 1, 2006)

Re: 'Afghan Christian seeking asylum' and 'Canadian soldier killed in firefight' (both March 29)

So let me get this straight: the government of Afghanistan spent this week debating whether or not to execute one of its citizens simply for having converted to Christianity 16 years ago.

In the end they decided to drop the charges against him because of "lack of evidence and suspected mental illness."

A 22-year-old Canadian soldier was killed outside Kandahar while protecting that same Afghan government from being "destabilized" by other Afghan people (the Taliban) who don't like the government.

Is this the best we can do with Canadian tax dollars? ... and lives? Who's crazy here?

War: Canadian-style - Part 2 - Mar. 12, 2006 Toronto Star

T he Afghan with one eye sits fidgeting through the Canadian platoon leader's monologue. Capt. Schamuhn has made the Canadian case abundantly clear, via an Afghan interpreter.

"I cannot promise to solve all your problems," Schamuhn tells the leaders of the tiny village of Kundalan, who are gathered in an impromptu shura — an Arabic word that means "consultation" — at the request of their announced guests from Canada.

"What I can do is help your government solve your problems for you. You must understand that these are not Canadian problems, these are Afghan problems. The Canadians are here to help the Afghan government find solutions.

"But I want to emphasize one point — we will not be here forever. We are only here temporarily to help get your government back on its feet. My concern is for after we leave. You are the men who must take the initiative to become actively involved in solving your problems, so you will have better lives after we're gone."

The one-eyed man raises his hand, announcing dramatically, "Now it is my turn to speak."

He is not the leader of Kundalan, that title belongs to one Salah Makmad, who had opened the meeting by describing the plight of this wholly illiterate village of some 130 families. Water is the biggest issue; rather, the inability to store water. When the spring runoff subsides in the coming weeks, Kundalan will run dry through yet another parched summer.

Schamuhn's assistant, Lieut. Trevor Greene, 41, has already taken down the details. As Canada's civil-military co-operation officer on the ground with 1st Platoon, Greene is a dove among the hawks of Canadian combat.

He has already learned that when the people of Kundalan get sick, one of two things happen. Maybe they go to Kandahar, he is told. Or maybe they just die. And Greene has already learned that Kundalan's leaders, however much they welcome a school, will not allow the education of girls. Not even if a separate school is constructed.

The one-eyed man draws breath and unleashes his torrent of doubts and reservations. Firstly, he says, the village has already seen American soldiers come with notepads in hand, dutifully writing down all that ails Kundalan. The village has nothing to show for all their promises.

It may be that Canada is trying to help a government that has no intention of helping this village, he continues. And even if Canada's help makes it to Kundalan, he concludes, the village then runs the risk of inviting attacks from Taliban fighters.

Schamuhn acknowledges the concerns but stands firm. He tells the villagers that they must make a choice. The Canadians are ready to do their best for Kundalan, but Kundalan has a critical role to play.

"Already we have been bombed," Schamuhn says. "Lieut. Trevor was in the vehicle that was bombed. And the Canadian base at Gombad came under rocket attack 10 days ago.

"As much as I want to help you and focus on humanitarian aid, I cannot do that if we're always fighting people."

The one-eyed man softens at this news and, in the next breath, his combative tone vanishes. "If you give us a school, a medical clinic, we can keep security in these places. We can help you. The Taliban is not made of Afghans. It is made of Pakistani people who come here to fight," he says.

The sudden Afghan warmth is sanctified by the serving of tea and bread. With it comes the rest of the villagers, who until now had stood at a distance. The Afghans remark favourably on the Canadians' willingness to share in the ritual, noting that when U.S. soldiers came to visit, they refused the offer of the sweet tea.

"My American friends have weak stomachs," laughs Schamuhn, raising his glass to salute his hosts. "So when they drink your chai they get sick."

Schamuhn cannot help but pay an additional compliment, commenting on how the village elders have spent an entire hour squatting on bended knee.

"I am a young man from Canada, much younger than you," he tells them. "But I could not sit in such a position for more than a few minutes without feeling pain. The Afghan people obviously have very good genes."

A round of handshakes follows and the Canadians withdraw, satisfied that an ice-cold village has begun to show the first signs of thaw. On the march out of Kundalan, a special-forces adviser accompanying the party points to fist-sized plants growing on one of the village's fields.

"Poppies," he says to no one in particular.

Afghan-Canadian opens guest house in Kandahar

Updated Sun. Apr. 2 2006 - CTV.ca News Staff

An enterprising Afghan-Canadian has opened a guest house for tourists in Kandahar, Afghanistan, while Canadian troops continue to fight insurgents in the violence-stricken country.

"I see the opportunity for business," Shershah Wardak told CTV News.

Wardak opened his guest house two months ago. Since that time, he has hit obstacles like power outages that last for hours, and training staff to deal with the high expectations of tourists.

But most of all, Wardak has struggled with Afghanistan's lack of security. On Sunday, five policemen were shot dead by Taliban militants, a hospital doctor told The Associated Press.

Canadian troops have also suffered losses. Three soldiers have died and at least 16 have been injured in accidents in recent weeks since Canada took on a bigger role in Afghanistan operations.

Just last Wednesday, Pte. Robert Costall, 22, was killed during an intense gunfight with Taliban insurgents in nearby Helmand province. U.S. National Guardsman 1st Class John Thomas Stone, 52, was also killed during the battle.

Wardak remains optimistic, hoping his business will improve as prosperity and calm return to Afghanistan, thanks to the efforts of Canadian troops.

"Kandahar has very nice nature," Wardak said. "The only problem is the security, but I'm hopeful that the security will be changed for the better."

Wardak added there are many amenities that travelers can enjoy, like free cable television and Internet access. Tourists are also treated to homemade Afghan cooking, although alcohol is prohibited.

But guests are rare, despite an advertisement Wardak paid for in a local paper.

Wardak's wife and three daughters, living far away from the violence in Calgary, think he could have found a safer place to open a guest house.

"It's a second Baghdad," his wife Gharny Wardak said, describing Kandahar. "It's very scary every time. It's exciting to open a guest house but not in Kandahar. Maybe somewhere else."

Meanwhile, Wardak fondly looks to the country to which he emigrated in 1997, and that he still considers home, despite being on the other side of the world.

"I miss everything that's in Canada," he said. "Especially my family and my children."

What keeps him in Kandahar is the belief that he is helping a country devastated by war-- even if only a little.

"I was thinking that this is my part to contribute to the rebuilding of Afghanistan," he said.

With a report by CTV's Ellen Pinchuk in Kandahar

Analysis: The fallout from Rahman's release

By Roland Flamini - UPI Chief International Correspondent - March 31, 2006

WASHINGTON -- Abdul Rahman, the Afghan Muslim who last week faced possible execution for converting to Christianity was safe in Italy Thursday, but left behind him a heated controversy over his aborted trial. The Taliban issued a statement calling for a Jihad (holy war) against President Hamid Karzai, who had intervened on Rahman's behalf under strong pressure from President Bush and the international community. The fundamentalist movement said the release of the Christian convert proved that Karzai was nothing but "a puppet," with foreigners pulling the strings.

"Afghan judges are no longer independent," said the Taliban statement distributed in Kabul, the Afghan capital. "Their decisions are dictated by foreign elements." Their protest echoed the sentiments of many Afghans even though they have no love for the Taliban, for the Rahman case had brought to the fore the underlying tension between the secular government and a society that is traditional, tribal, and deeply chauvinistic.

"Karzai will pay a political price for this at some point, although we don't know what it will be," Afghan expert Vali Nasr, senior fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs at the U.S. think tank the Council on Foreign Relations told United Press International. "The perception is that he caved in under Christian pressure."

Rahman, who became a Christian 16 years ago while working as a medical aid at a Christian mission in Pakistan, was caught in possession of a Bible, and was arrested earlier this month. The Afghan constitution recognizes Islam as the national religion, but says followers of other religions are allowed to practise their respective faiths. Still, under Sharia law, the Islamic code which is also recognized by the constitution, the punishment for a Muslim who converts to another religion is death. Such cases are rare these days and experts say that judges tend to find interpretations that avoid the death penalty. But the conservatives seized on the Rahman case as a chance to challenge Afghanistan's new secular constitution, and to put the Karzai government on the defensive. In a country where even half the tribal chiefs, warlords, and others who sit in the Afghan parliament are illiterate, it was a simple issue, clear-cut and easily grasped by all.

When word of Abdul Rahman's likely fate became known, appeals for clemency poured in to President Karzai, including a personal letter from Pope Benedict XVI, and a direct request from the White House. To Westerners, it was a human rights issue, also involving freedom of worship. But, says Nasr, "Muslims see conversion to Christianity as a mark of cultural treason, a sort of colonialism, and the convert as a kind of Uncle Tom character." Last week, many prominent Afghan clerics and lawyers were calling for Rahman's execution as a signal to the population that in the midst of change, the old rules still applied on issues involving the Muslim faith.

On Tuesday, the trial was stopped and Rahman was released, with the Sharia court saying it lacked sufficient evidence to proceed with the case. However, media in Kabul reported that Karzai, caught between international pressure and the clamor from Afghan conservatives, had stepped in to free the Christian. With the help of the U.N. mission in Afghanistan, Rahman applied for refugee status in Germany, where he had lived for the past nine years. Berlin, though, was reluctant to accept him, fearing that it could put at risk the sizeable German peacekeeping presence in Afghanistan. Germany is currently the lead country in the NATO force in Afghanistan, with 3,000 troops. Italy stepped into the breach, offering Rahman asylum, even though there are 1,775 Italian soldiers in the NATO force. But the press in Rome pointed out that Italy has long standing sentimental ties with the Afghan people. For one thing, the last king of Afghanistan, Mohammed Zaher Shah lived in exile in Rome for 30 years. The ex-king now lives in Kabul.

Tom Keonig, head of the U.N. Mission in Kabul, said the United Nations stepped in because this was a human rights case, and also because "We saw a grave danger for Afghanistan's relations with many of its most committed international supporters." Karzai's government still relies heavily on aid from the United States and other countries. Yet though Rahman has left the scene, the fallout from the case continues to beset Karzai. On Wednesday, the Afghan parliament called on the government to prevent Rahman from leaving the country -- but the bird had already flown: the Italian government announced that Rahman was coming to Rome only after he had already landed in Rome. There have also been street demonstrations against his release in some Afghan towns. The core of the conflict, says Nasr, is "about Islam and the West -- modernity in Afghanistan."

TRUDY RUBIN: Afghan case shows challenge of democracy - 4/2/2006 - Daily Journal

The trial in Kabul of Abdul Rahman - an Afghan who faced possible death for converting from Islam to Christianity - should jolt any illusions about the ease of bringing democracy to Afghanistan or the Middle East.

The promotion of "freedom around the globe" has become a centerpiece of administration foreign policy. The new U.S. national security strategy touts the creation of "effective democracies" as the key to undercutting terrorism.

Having watched many Muslim countries languish under authoritarian regimes for years, I would love to see Mideast democracies bloom. Arab democrats deserve our support.

But the idea that Afghan, Arab or Iranian democracies will undercut the terrorists' appeal anytime soon is a delusion. Such misconceptions left us unprepared for postwar Iraq; now they undermine the antiterror struggle. The Kabul trial shows the need to abandon such exaggerated hopes.

Afghanistan is a deeply conservative Muslim country with a tradition of consultative councils, at which the king discussed issues with tribal and religious leaders. But liberal, secular democratic values as we know them are foreign to most people there.

Religious courts - The 2004 Afghan constitution leaves certain crimes to the jurisdiction of religious courts, including the sharia law crime of converting from Islam. On this issue, Afghan President Hamid Karzai is squeezed between his Western backers and the conservative Afghan clergy, whose support he needs.

President Bush was justly appalled when he heard of the trial and is getting pressured on the case by his Christian conservative base. "They had assembly elections," he said, about Afghanistan. "We expect them to honor the universal principles of freedom."

But what if many Afghans interpret those principles very differently than we do?
The president's promotion of "universal principles" makes little allowance for local culture. It reminds me of the warning I got from a Syrian intellectual named Mohammed Shahrour, who is active in his country's tiny democratic opposition.

"Our culture is based on justice, not freedom," he said. "Justice can be provided by a dictator, and a just dictator' is common in our culture." Arab regimes, he added, feel free to arrest thousands but would be wary of trampling on orthodox Muslim religious rights. "The concept of human rights,' " he said, "is barely beginning to penetrate" the region.

Perhaps it's time someone reminded the White House that the Mideast and Afghanistan aren't in Eastern Europe, where authoritarian regimes tumbled one after another after the Berlin Wall fell. A false comparison with the demise of communism, promoted by neocons and ex-Soviet dissidents like Natan Sharansky, underlies the president's expectations in the Middle East.

"The way the cold war ended shaped the thinking of (pro-Bush, neoconservative) supporters of the Iraq war," writes Frances Fukuyama in a much discussed essay in the New York Times magazine. "It seemed to have created the expectation that all totalitarian regimes were hollow at the core and would topple with a small push." Such illusions, says Fukuyama, were a main reason why the Bush team failed to plan adequately for Iraq after Saddam.

Eastern European Christians - Eastern Europeans, however, are Christian and were eager to be part of the West from which they were severed by Soviet domination. The relationship of the Middle East to the West is far more fraught. Memories of colonialism, along with Arab nationalism and religious differences, create ambivalence about the very idea of Western democracy.

Fukuyama's thinking is particularly interesting because he was himself a noted neoconservative intellectual, whose "end of history" theory was cited by Bush supporters as proof that liberal democracy was destined to triumph. He now says his thinking was misunderstood and that the ascendancy of liberal democracy is a "long-term process of social evolution."

Neocon ideologues, he says, thought they could speed up that historical process "with the right application of power and will." But factors of culture, religion and geography could not be so easily moved.

Thus in Lebanon, Egypt, the Palestinian territories - and Iraq - the primary beneficiaries of elections have been Islamic religious parties. Most (with some Iraqi exceptions) are anti-American in outlook; Lebanon's Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas are on the U.S. terrorist list.

None of this means we should abandon support for Arab or Afghan democrats. Far from it. But one can't base a policy on the hope our values will soon triumph.

Foreign policy - and the anti-terror struggle - can't be based on the illusion that Afghans and Iraqis are Poles and Czechs. The trial of Abdul Rahman should debunk that analogy once and for all.

Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Readers may write to her at: Philadelphia Inquirer, P.O. Box 8263, Philadelphia, Pa. 19101, or by e-mail at trubinphillynews.com.

The West in an Afghan mirror - Asia Times Online By Spengler 3/28/06

Death everywhere and always is the penalty for apostasy, in Islam and every other faith. It cannot be otherwise, for faith is life and its abandonment is death. Americans should remove the beam from their own eye as they contemplate the gallows in the eye of the Muslims. Philistine hypocrisy pervades Western denunciations of the Afghan courts, which were threatening to hang Christian convert Abdul Rahman until the case was dropped on Monday.

Afghanistan, to be sure, is a tribal society whose encounter with the modern world inevitably will be a train wreck. The trouble is that the West has apostatized, and is killing itself. There turned out to be hope for Rahman, but there is none for Latvia or Ukraine, and little enough for Germany or Spain. That said, I wish to make clear that I found the persecution of Rahman deplorable.

The practice of killing heretics has nothing to do with what differentiates Islam from Christianity or Judaism. St Thomas Aquinas defended not just the execution of individual heretics but also the mass extermination of heretical populations in the 12th-century Albigensian Crusades. For this he was defended by the Catholic philosopher Michael Novak, author of learned books about the faith of the United States of America's founding fathers

Western religions today inflict symbolic rather than physical death. One's local priest does not like to preach such things from his post-modern pulpit, but the Catholic Church prescribes eternal hellfire for those who come into communion with Christ and then reject him. Observant Jews hold a funeral for an apostate child who is spiritually dead to them (retroactive abortions not being permitted).

The last heretic hanged by the Catholic Church was a Spanish schoolteacher accused of Deist (shall we call that "moderate Christian"?) views in Valencia as recently as 1826. Without Napoleon Bonaparte and the humiliation of the Church by the German and Italian nationalist movements, who knows when the killing of heretics would have stopped?

"Where are the moderate Muslims?" sigh the self-appointed Sybils of the Western media. Faith is life. What does it mean to be moderately alive? Find the "moderate Christians" and the "moderate Jews", and you will have the answer. "Moderate Christians" such as Episcopalian priests or Anglican vicars are becoming redundant as their congregations migrate to red-blooded evangelical denominations or give up religion altogether. "Moderate Jews" are mainly secular and tend to intermarry. There really is no such thing as a "moderate" Christian; there simply are Christians, and soon-to-be-ex-Christians. The secular establishment has awoken with sheer panic to this fact at last. In response we have such diatribes such as Kevin Phillips' new book American Theocracy, an amalgam of misunderstandings, myths and calumnies about the so-called religious right. [1]

The tragedy of Abdul Rahman also is the tragedy of Western religion. Islam differs radically from Christianity, in that the Christian god is a lover who demands love in return, whereas the Muslim god is a sovereign who demands the fulfillment of duty. Christian prayer is communion, an act of love incomprehensible to Muslims; Muslim worship is an act of submission, the repetition of a few lines of text to accompany physical expression of self-subjugation to the sovereign. The People of Christ are pilgrims en route to the next world; the People of Allah are soldiers in this one. Contrary to all the ink spilled and trees murdered to produce the tomes of Karen Armstrong and John Esposito, Christianity and Islam call forth different peoples to serve different gods for different reasons.

But the fact that Christianity and Islam educe different peoples for different gods should not obscure that one cannot be either Christian or Muslim without belonging to a People of God in flesh as well as spirit. Christianity demands that the gentile, whose very origin is redolent of death, and whose heathen nature is sinful, undergo a new birth to join God's people. Whether this second birth occurs at the baptismal font for a Catholic infant or at the river for an evangelical adult is another matter. The Christian's rebirth is also a vicarious death - the death of the Christian's heathen nature - through Christ's sacrifice. No vicarious sacrifice occurs in Islam; the Muslim, on the contrary, sacrifices himself (The blood is the life, Mr Rumsfeld!, October 5, 2005).

Where is the moderation? The Christian either joins the People of God in its pilgrimage to the Kingdom of Heaven, or he does not; the Muslim either is a soldier of the ummah, or he is nothing. Religious conversion is not mere adaptation to another tradition. It is a change of people. If God is "able of these stones to raise children of Abraham" (Matthew 3:9), Christians are the Gentiles made into sons of Abraham by miracle. In Islamic society, the convert to Christianity instantly becomes an alien and an enemy.

God may be able to raise sons of Abraham from stones; that is not necessarily within the power of earthly churches. European Christianity, as I have argued often in the past, made a devil's bargain with the heathen invaders whom it made into Christians in the thousand years between the fall of Rome and the conversion of the Balts. It permitted them to keep one foot in their national past and another in the Catholic Church, under the umbrella of universal empire. The peoples revolted against church and empire and reverted to their pagan roots, and then fought one another to a bloody standoff in the two great wars of the 20th century.

In parallel to Christianity, but in a different way, Islam made its own compromise with the nations it absorbed. It would defend the pure traditional society of tribal life against the encroachment of the empires that encircled them: first the Byzantines and Persians, then Christian Europe, and now America. Traditional life inevitably must break down in the face of globalization of trade and information, and the ummah closes ranks to delay the time when the descendants of today's Muslims will look with pity upon ancestral photographs, as they turn momentarily from their video game.

Europe's Christians could not summon up the "moderation" necessary to tolerate their Jewish neighbors until after 1945, when Europe was conquered and rebuilt by the Americans. Once the ambitions of Europe's peoples were crushed in the world wars, European Christianity became "moderate" indeed, so moderate that Europeans no longer bother about it. They also do not bother to reproduce, so that the formerly Christian populations of Europe will disappear, starting with the captive nations of the former Soviet Union.

No Christian People of God emerged from Europe. In a century or two, few European peoples will exist in recognizable form. Americans, by contrast, arrived in the New World with the object - at least in the case of the Massachusetts Bay Colony - of becoming a new People of God in a new Promised Land.

In a December essay in First Things titled Our American Babylon, Father Richard John Neuhaus argues that the United States itself is not the Promised Land or the Kingdom of God; it is still another place of exile. In Christian theological terms that is quite true. But the stubborn fact remains that if the English Separatists who founded Massachusetts had not deviated from Christian theology, and set out to become a new chosen people in a new Promised Land, we would not be talking about the United States of America to begin with. Christianity drew the notion of a People of God from the Jews, upon whose trunk it proposes to graft the reborn Gentiles. But the graft did not take except where radical Protestants emulated the Jews, and set out to make a new people in a new land.

Kevin Phillips, author of American Theocracy, warns that America's religious right is "abetting far-reaching ideological change and eroding the separation of powers between church and state", giving the Republican Party "a new incarnation as an ecumenical religious party, claiming loyalties from hard-shell Baptists and Mormons, as well as Eastern Rite Catholics and Hasidic Jews". On the face of it, this is a nonsensical statement, for how can a coalition of Baptists, Mormons, Catholics and Jews oppose separation of church and state, a doctrine promulgated by dissenting Protestants to protect their own religious practice against the persecution of an established church?

The fact that the US boasts roughly 200 major Christian denominations, none of which can aspire to a plurality of members, ensures that no possible theocracy ever could emerge. When Phillips uses the word "theocracy", he simply means the emergence of a religious vote on such issues beloved of the secular left as homosexual marriage, abortion, or censorship of pornography. But there is nothing theocratic in people of faith forming occasional coalitions to impose what the law calls community standards.

American Christians are migrating en masse to denominations that preach Christ crucified and the saving power of his blood, eschewing the blancmange Christianity of the old mainline sects ('It's the culture, stupid', November 5, 2004). But the United States is unique among the nations, an assembly of individuals called out from among the nations, where Christian identity is compatible with a secular definition of peoplehood. Even in the US Christians find that one cannot be half-pregnant: either one is saved, or one is not.

Islam does not know moderation or extremism: it only knows success or failure. Unlike Christianity, which prevailed only through the improbable project of abandoning its old center to create a new land altogether, Islam cannot exist outside of traditional society, which by definition knows no doubt. Nowhere else but in the United States has personal conscience rather than religious establishment succeeded as the guiding principle of Christianity. "Moderate Islam" is an empty construct; the Islam of the Afghan courts is the religion with which the West must contend.

Islamic Constitutionalism – The Claremont Institute

There has been a good deal of interesting discussion in the blogsophere, by Richard Reeb ( below) and others, of the case of Abdul Rahman. Now that he's been released, perhaps some final thoughts are in order, for the case sheds interesting light on the problem of liberal democracy in the Islamic world.

In brief, Abdul Rahman is an Afghani who was born and raised a Muslim but who converted to Christianity several years ago. Last month, he was arrested in Kabul to be tried on charges of blasphemy. Blasphemy being a capital offense in Islamic law, and Islamic law being incorporated into the laws of Afghanistan, Rahman would probably have been executed had he been convicted. The Afghan government received complaints from all over the West, and found a way out.

It appears that Rahman was released because he has been deemed to be of unsound mind. As Big Lizards notes, this is a nice bit of reasoning. Since, from the perspective of Islam, the truth of the Koran is self-evident, anyone who denies its truth must be insane. Hence, someone like Rahman is unfit for trial.

There has been much rejoicing over the dismissal of the charges. If the reports are true, however, they do not indicate that the Afghanis have acknowledged freedom of religion in principle. They merely have made it difficult to convict someone of blasphemy.

This result, however, is probably the best that we can expect, at least for the time being. The Afghani constitution is at war with itself. Consider the first three articles of the first chapter of the Afghani Constitution

Chapter I The State

Article 1 [Islamic Republic] Afghanistan is an Islamic Republic, independent, unitary and indivisible state.

Article 2 [Religions]
(1) The religion of the state of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is the sacred religion of Islam.
(2) Followers of other religions are free to exercise their faith and perform their religious rites within the limits of the provisions of law.

Article 3 [Law and Religion]
In Afghanistan, no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam.

The state, in other words, is attempting a pas de deux–-embracing both Islamic law and free exercise of religion. the principle their own.

In an interesting article in The American Thinker Andrew G. Bostom points out that Islamic law has tended to frown upon free exercise of religion, as the phrase is understood in the West. To be sure, he notes, the Koran suggest that “there is no compulsion in religion,” yet, at the same time, that verse has to be understood in light of the larger context of the Koran and the Islamic tradition. The truth of the Koran being self-evident, one may doubt, but only to allow the truth of the Koran to shine through more clearly. One may not deny. After all, as a thinker or two in the American tradition notes, one does not have the right to do a wrong. According to a Muslim, of course, denying the Koran is a wrong. Bostom points to another passage in the Koran:

They desire that you should disbelieve as they have disbelieved, so that you might be (all) alike; therefore take not from among them friends until they fly (their homes) in Allah’s way; but if they turn back, then seize them and kill them wherever you find them, and take not from among them a friend or a helper.

These and other passages have led Islamic law to be rather unfriendly to those who would leave the faith, and even those to publicly express doubts about it or support other faiths. Hence, a Muslim would be within his rights to interpret the Afghani constitution as saying that one has the liberty to perform religious rights that the Koran grants.

The Rahman case indicates that the constitution might go in another direction, a direction more consistent with religious liberty. In 1776, slavery existed in all thirteen American states, and by the time the government began under the constitution in 1789, slavery was still legal in most states. The principles upon which Americans declared independence and ratified the constitution were irreconcilable with slavery; in time either slavery had to die or those principles had to be purged from the American regime. It took a nasty war, but the principles prevailed. So too, perhaps, with the Afghani constitution. The promise of free exercise of religion is at war with Islam, at least as it has usually understood itself. In time, we can hope, the principles of liberty will prevail in the Islamic world.

Some of my colleagues may complain there is a flaw in the Afghani constitution, but I’d read the situation differently. It might be the best we can do, at this point in time. In his great treatise on constitutional theory, The Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, John Adams pointed out that, “there can be no way of compelling nations to be more free than they choose to be.” Adams was pointing to a paradox inherent in republican constitutionalism. The Declaration notes that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The people of a state creates a new government, “laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”

Problem: what to do when the vast majority of people want their constitution to include a religious establishment? The lawgivers cannot simply impose free exercise on their countrymen, for that would itself be an act of tyranny. It would violate the very liberty of conscience that the lawgivers wished to protect. It would not create a government consistent with what th people thought was necessary to their own happiness. On the other hand, they cannot simply sit back and write tyranny into the constitution without any resistance. The best solution, might be to put contrary principles into the constitution and hope that in time the free principles will triumph. That’s what many of the leading lights at the constitutional convention tried to do when they drafted the U.S. constitution. They allowed slavery as a matter of prudence, and worked to set the nation on a path which would lead to the extinction of slavery.

What about religious liberty? There, the example of the Massachusetts Constitution might be a useful case study. John Adams supported religious liberty, and yet he knew that a majority of his fellow Massachusettsians wished to retain their church establishment. What to do? Adams drafted Article II of the state Declaration of Rights, which guaranteed religious liberty, but left it to others to draft Article III, which created an establishment. The history is complicated, but to make a long story short, Article II, in time, rendered Article III untenable. So to, we may hope, with the Afghan constitution. If we wish to see religious liberty in the Islamic world, we must help Muslims learn to make..

[Disclaimer: The content of this news bulletin does not necessarily reflect the view or policy of the Afghan Government, unless specifically stated as such. The collection of articles and commentaries from Afghan and international news sources is provided for informational purposes, and accuracy of the news is the responsibility of the original source.]