We have already reported about the latest addition to the Afghan political party landscape, Hezb-e Haq wa Edalat (Right and Justice Party), which had been launched in Kabul on 3 November. This is an Afghan take on the new party, by our guest blogger Ahmad Shuja* who argues that it is stepping into new territory and might create an Afghan political centrism.
The Haq wa Edalat Party, launched amid considerable buzz recently (see our initial blog about the event here), has a diverse set of leaders and attempts to position itself as a centrist party. It boasts leaders from all major ethnic groups and is neither decidedly with Karzai nor with his opposition. These two characteristics of the party – its diversity and its centrism – are its biggest assets as well as its Achilles’ heel.
Arguably Afghanistan’s most successful experiment with multi-ethnic parties occurred in the 1970s and 1980s, when the communist-inspired parties were able to attract and put in power figures from traditionally underrepresented ethnic groups. Individuals like Sultan Ali Keshtmand (in the Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistan/PDPA) and Akram Yari (in the Maoist movement) rose to political prominence, working at the helm of their respective parties; Keshtmand even served as Prime Minister. This experiment effectively ended with the termination of Soviet aid, the withdrawal of its troops, increased friction between, and within, these parties and a strong challenge from the mujahedin.
What followed was the civil war of the 1990s, fought along very clear ethnic lines, with factions claiming to represent particular ethnic groups. The militant Taliban movement and their militant opposition parties also had very clear ethnic overtones.
Beyond this short historic window, organized political parties in the modern sense of the term did not exist in Afghanistan. Therefore, to see a major political party that attracts figures from various ethnic groups and does not have a strong political polarity is a welcome development.
But Afghanistan hasn’t really had a strong tradition of political centrism. You were either with the King or against him, or either with the Khalq or with the Parcham faction of the PDPA. Similarly, polar alignments have also been true in the case of Jihadi factions and the Taleban – if you weren’t with the Taleban or one of the multitudes of tanzim, you were effectively against them. As a consequence, few current Afghan leaders are used to, or adept at, manoeuvring at the centre. Even fewer have broad popular appeal.
Under such circumstances, it is difficult to imagine that the motley leaders such as Hanif Atmar, Kabir Ranjbar and Jalaluddin Shinwari – with their leftist and Taleban pasts – will always agree on the deeply divisive issues that their new party is going to face. Even when there is consensus, a group with four spokespersons has too many cooks for one pot.
On top of that, the new phenomenon of political centrism in today’s Afghanistan with its democratic trappings faces the challenge of clearly defining the issues and finding their constituency that can translate into votes. For example, it is hard to see that they can mobilise voters in Bamian and Panjsher with “negotiations with the Taleban” on their platform, particularly when these provinces have fought the Taleban tooth and nail, and already have populist leaders who oppose negotiations. On the contrary, Haq wa Edalat appears to oppose federalism or a stronger parliamentary system, ideas that have at least some support in these areas because they stand to gain from a devolution of power.
Owing to Afghanistan’s polarised past, its people have also generally exhibited polarised attitudes. As a survival tactic, significant blocks of people have often tacitly or actively backed certain armed groups. The political culture that has thus arisen is not positively predisposed to electoral centrism because the same ethnic lines that once defined the civil war are now manifested in the polls.
Perhaps, then, the biggest contribution of Haq wa Edalat is that it exists – that a miscellany of leaders can abandon their polar leanings and converge around a centre. To be sure, other groups in today’s Afghanistan have attempted to do the same, but this new party might gather the critical mass that can help pull the discourse away from the extremes.
Haq wa Edalat has stepped into new territory, attempting to blaze a trail where none existed. But when its strength is also its weakness, progress can become a Sisyphean struggle.
(*) Ahmad Shuja is an Afghan writer, blogger and analyst based in the United States. In addition to writing for the UN Dispatch and contributing to the Huffington Post, he maintains his own blog, Afghanistan Analysis.
Amendment (9 November)
The Right and Justice Party has meanwhile published the list of the 56 members of its Interim Council (find the original list here):
Members of interim council of Right and Justice Party of Afghanistan
by Right and Justice Party of Afghanistan on Monday, November 7, 2011 at 10:53pm
- Sheikh Ali Fukkur
- Azita Raf’at
- Maulana Jalaluddin Shinwari
- Fatema Hufyani
- Sharifa Zurmatai
- Kobra Dehqan
- (Pohanmal) Mu’in Mrastyal
- Eid Muhammad Arefi
- Abdul Ahad
- Eng. Najjaf Ali Khudayar
- Sakhidad Ebrar
- Muhammad Sulaiman Kakar
- Eng. Muhammad Salim Qayyum
- Ahmad Jawed Qazizada
- Ghulam Hossain Reza’i
- Dr Frahmand
- Amir Fuladi
- Eng. Assadullah Falah
- Eng. Khial Shah
- Dr Muhammad Alam Zirak
- Muhammad Hassan Talwar
- Sayyed Abdullah Gharib Shah
- Wakil Ghazi Waziri
- Haji Gul Ahmad
- Muhammad Amin Omarkhel
- Muhammad Yunos Fukkur
- Prof. Shujauddin Khorassani
- Ahmad Sa’idi
- Abdul Karim Bahman
- (Pohanmal) Sayyed Abdul Ghaffur Ghaffuri
- Abdul Wahed Ahadpur
- (Pohanmal) Habibullah Shafaq
- Dr Mu’in Gul Chamkanai
- Wakil Zarin Zarin
- Nasrullah Qazizada
- (Pohandui) Ali Hossain Nadam
- Eng. Eshaq Ali Zirak
- Ra’is Abdullah Anwari
- Asef Ashna
- Sardar Muhammad Roshan
- Dr Kabir Ranjbar
- Mir Ahmad Joyenda
- (Prof.) Hamidullah Faruqi
- Muhammad Alem Kohkan
- Assadullah Walwalji
- (Prof.) Ezzatullah Hamed
- Khudainazar Sarmachar
- Muhammad Ehsan Zia
- Eng. Hakim
- Muhammad Hanif Atmar
- Eng. Abbas Noyan
- Assadullah Munalai
- Saifuddin Nezami
- Ahmad Fahim Hakim, as Advisor to the Party on Human Rights
- Dr Azam Dadfar, as Advisor to the Party on the Fight against Administrative Corruption
- Dr Sima Samar, as Advisor to the Party on Human Rights
Revisions:
This article was last updated on 9 Mar 2020
Tags:
Government
Justice
