From World Encyclopedia of Parliaments and Legislatures, ed. George Thomas Kurian. 2 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, Inc., 1998), 3-4.

AFGHANISTAN

OFFICIAL NAME: Islamic State of Afghanistan (Pashtu, De Afghanistan Islami Doulat; Dari, Doulat-e-Islami Afghanistan)

CAPITAL: Kabul

POPULATION: 22,664,000 (1996 est.)

DATE OF INDEPENDENCE: August 19, 1919 (from the United Kingdom)

DATE OF CURRENT CONSTITUTION: None

FORM OF GOVERNMENT: Transitional

LANGUAGES: Pashtu, Dari, Uzbek, Turkmen

MONETARY UNIT: Afghani

FISCAL YEAR: March 21-March 20

A landlocked country in Central Asia, Afghanistan has been rent by military conflict almost without stop since 1979, when Soviet armed forces entered the country to prop up the Marxist government that had come to power in a military coup the year before. The legislature established in 1988 by the Marxist regime, the National Assembly (Meli Shura), was dissolved in April 1992 following the regime's ouster by mujaheddin fighters. There is no functioning parliament in Afghanistan today, and the possibility of establishing a constitutional and democratic government is remote.

BACKGROUND

Conquered by Alexander the Great (329-327 b.c.), Jenghiz Khan (c. 1220), Tamerlane (late fourteenth century), and others, Afghanistan was at the crossroads of Persian, Indian, and central Asian civilizations. In the nineteenth century the land of present-day Afghanistan remained the scene of conflict and intrigue, as Great Britain and Russia vied for influence in the region. An agreement signed in 1907 by those two powers granted Great Britain foreign policy prerogatives over a nominally independent Afghanistan. After World War I the emir of Afghanistan freed his country of British influence by invading British India, which induced the British to grant full Afghani independence through the Treaty of Rawalpindi in 1919.

From 1919 until 1973 the country was ruled by traditional Islamic emirs, some of whom styled themselves "king" and undertook limited modernization in politics, social relations, and economic development. In July 1973 Mohammad Zahir Shah was overthrown by military officers who, in league which a small but restive middle class, blamed the king for a failing economy, recurrent famine, and insufficient political reforms.

The Republic of Afghanistan proclaimed in 1973 under Lt. Gen. Mohammad Daoud Khan lasted five years. Daoud was overthrown April 27, 1978, in a left-wing military coup. The coup plotters announced the formation of the Marxist Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and the appointment of Nur Mohammad Taraki, secretary general of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, as prime minister. An appointed Revolutionary Council was formed in lieu of a legislature. Taraki, possibly with Soviet backing, almost immediately became engaged in a power struggle with Hafizullah Amin, whose hardline policies toward the increasingly restive Muslim tribes was fueling the organization of antigovernment mujaheddin guerrilla bands.

SOVIET INVASION AND AFTERMATH

Taraki died under mysterious circumstances sometime in late September 1979. Soviet troops entered the country three months later, and Amin was killed during the initial intervention, also under mysterious circumstances. The Soviet Union installed Babrak Karmal to power, but the mujaheddin were no more amenable to Karmal than they had been to Amin. The Soviet military fought side-by-side with Afghani government troops in a futile effort to protect the regime until February 1989, when they withdrew.

In April 1988, in preparation for the Soviet withdrawal, the governments of the United States, Pakistan, Afghanis-tan, and the Soviet Union signed a series of agreements that provided for, among other things, the formation of a representative legislature, the National Assembly (Meli Shura). The mujaheddin, however, holding the upper hand on the battlefield and distrusting the government, refused to participate in the elections. In May 1988 the Revolutionary Council was abolished and the National Assembly assumed its functions. But the National Assembly was never a functioning legislature, and it was eclipsed within months by a newly created Supreme Council for the Defense of the Homeland.

The Marxist regime, headed by Mohammad Najibullah, who had succeeded Karmal in May 1986, fought on without direct Soviet military involvement until April 1992. Mujaheddin forces compelled Najibullah's resignation on April 16 and entered the capital, Kabul, at the end of the month. They abolished the National Assembly that had been established in 1988 and created a fifty-member Leadership Council.

Fitful attempts made between 1992 and 1994 to hold national elections and convene a legislature fell victim to civil war. The mujaheddin had never been a monolithic fighting force. Like Afghanistan itself, the mujaheddin were divided by ethnicity (Pashtun, Tajik, Hazara, and Uzbek, primarily), by region (the regions corresponding to ethnicity), by clan and tribe, and by religion (the country is roughly 84 percent Sunni and 15 percent Shia, and there is divergence even among members of these branches of Islam). Indeed, even at the height of Soviet involvement the various factions spent much energy fighting one another.

In 1994 a potent new force, Taliban (meaning "Islamic theology students"), arrived on the scene with little warning, vowing to install a traditional Islamic government. Formed by theology students studying in the neighboring provinces of Pakistan, Taliban steamrolled through government opposition. The predominantly Pashtun (and southern) Taliban overthrew the largely Tajik (and northern) Leadership Council, capturing Kabul in September 1996. But Taliban faces potent opposition from rival ethnic groups and clans, and the civil war continues to simmer.