Michael Ubaldi, September 13, 2005.
Quite an anniversary: in five days, Afghans will hold their second free election in history to build a parliament for President Hamed Karzai who was, last October, given the people's consent to rule.
A declaration of ideological fealty to liberalization has come from south Asia's most powerful democracy in the form of a simile. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh spoke publicly of elections, pluralism, and dates of importance in constituent history, promising New Delhi's support for Afghan democracy to be as strong as a chinar tree. The prime minister must know that his deepening relationship is resplendent with symbolism: as his country is helping raise the Afghan Parliament House, so will it help Kabul fill the building with statesmen.
Some of those statesmen will be women. Although the misogynistic legacy of the Taliban lingers as an unpleasant tint to Afghanistan's traditionalism, five hundred women have vowed to bring modernism to the country slow but steady — in this election, and the next, and the next.
