 Less than 24 hours after inauguration Afghanistan's parliament faces its first challenge with today's election of Speaker. Former president Sibgatullah Mojadeddi was yesterday elected as chairman of the Upper House, the Senate.
| Sibgatullah is one of those ineffectual guys that everybody can agree on because he doesn't have a mob... |
But today's contest pits former president Burhanuddin Rabbani, an ethnic Tajik, backing failed presidential candidate Younus Qanooni against dreaded Pashtun leader Abdul Rasul Sayyaf.
| I'd go with Qanooni without hesitation if I was Karzai. Rasool Sayyaf is a creature of the Saudis, a slippery deal maker who'd sell out his Mom and probably give a discount. Qanooni did a right fine job as interior minister during the transition period. He was a follower of Masood, and I think he's a man of caliber in his own right. His disadvantage in politix is being a Tadjik. |
In a race already marred by charges of vote buying at $600 a vote, factions have forged new alliances that shed ethnic differences for political gain. Sayyaf is accused by rights groups of human rights violations in the civil war that followed the end of the 10-year Soviet occupation in 1989.
| In this case they're right... |
Abdul Sayyaf's comrade is former Qanooni ally, Haji Mohammad Mohaqiq, the fierce Hazara leader who heads Hizb-e-Wahdat, with whom Abdul Sayyaf's forces once clashed. Like Sayyaf, he is accused of rights abuses during the 1992-96 civil war that killed 50,000 people in Kabul.
| Mohaqiq leads a Shia faction. I can't see him getting along really well with Rasool's Salafists. But I believe Iran owns him, so maybe that accounts for it. |
Qanooni won over Ahmad Shah Massood's faction and Uzbek strongman Rashid Dostum. The mujahideen hero, married to a Pashtun, hopes to woo Pashtuns, former mujahideen and first time women lawmakers. Shukria Barakzai, one of 68 women parliamentarians could eat into his vote.
| She's a Pashtun, I believe, but she's a female, which makes her a Pashtun of little consequence. And she's closest thing Afghanistan has to emancipated wimmin, so I'd guess she's a place-holder... |
Karzai, informed sources say, chose to back Sayyaf over Rabbani after US prodding.
| My guess would be that's the Soddies, working through tame undersecretaries in our State Department. Being generous, we'll say they don't know any better. It's for sure they weren't paying any attention in the 80s, assuming they were around then. |
He must find a way of circumventing Abdul Sayyaf's war crimes record, projecting the Paghman chief's Pashtun credentials. Karzai will draw on support from "Pashtuns, independents, democratic intellectuals, women, former communists and Taliban", said analyst Neik Mohammad Kabuli of the National Democratic Institute (NDI) in Kabul. Analysts say the Abdul Sayyaf versus Qanooni contest pits Pashtuns, who make up 50 per cent of the population, against a coalition of minorities.
| Who make up the other, more savory, 50 percent. |
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