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Afghan woman calls warlords 'criminals'
KABUL, Afghanistan -- Afghanistan's constitutional convention burst into uproar Wednesday after a 26-year-old woman delegate denounced her country's powerful factional warlords as "criminals" who "should be brought to justice."
Malalai Joya provoked roars of anger and threats from former guerrillas whose factions expelled the Soviet army in 1989. Like millions of Afghans, Joya reportedly lost loved ones in the years of brutal civil war among the factions that followed the Soviet defeat.
Female delegates surrounded Joya to protect her and later ushered her from the large tent where the assembly is being held to a United Nations office.
The incident highlights questions of gender, religion and civil liberties that divide the 502 delegates, 100 of them women. The traditional convention, called a loya jirga, is trying to establish a stable government after 28 years of war.
"I think this issue, the issue of women, will be here for the rest of the loya jirga," said delegate Mohammad Usman Tariq.
The U.S.-backed president, Hamid Karzai, is pushing the assembly to adopt a draft constitution giving the president wide powers. His opponents, drawn mainly from the ranks of disaffected regional warlords and their factional militias, favor a parliament and prime minister to dilute presidential powers.
Analysts said Karzai was building support for a presidential system by co-opting warlords, including some alleged war criminals and drug traffickers, with promises of government posts and international legitimacy.
On Wednesday, as delegates were preparing to break into committees, Joya took a microphone and blasted the warlords. "Why don't they take all the criminals to one committee so we can see what kind of government they are making, to which situation they would bring the nation?" she demanded.
"In my opinion they should be taken to the world court," Joya said as scores of men leapt from their seats and the microphone was cut off.
It was the second clash involving women delegates. On Monday, the convention's chairman, Sibghatullah Mojaddedi, offended many women when he rebuffed their request that a woman be named one of his three deputies by noting that a woman's word was worth only half of a man's. "This is God's decision, not man's," he said.
Mojaddedi, a reputed Islamic moderate who has Karzai's backing, was assailed by protests. He later created a new deputy post to be held by a woman and said female delegates had misinterpreted his remarks.
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