Rabbani backs Tajik for speaker of Afghan House

Dubai: 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.

But today's contest pits former president Burhan-uddin Rabbani, an ethnic Tajik, backing failed presidential candidate Younus Qanooni against dreaded Pashtun leader Abdul Rasul Sayyaf.

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.

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.

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.

Karzai, informed sources say, chose to back Sayyaf over Rabbani after US prodding.

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.

Hard Truth
Lawmakers squabble over warlords

President Hamid Karzai plans to set up a South African-style truth and reconciliation commission. But the move to bring human rights abusers to justice will prove difficult as demonstrated yesterday when the first full session of Afghanistan's new parliament almost broke down after Malali Joya, a lawmaker, demanded that all human rights abusers and "criminal" warlords some 40 are delegates be brought to justice. Delegates responded by pounding their fists on the tables to demand she sit down.

Joya refused. She said the future of parliament was "very dark because of the presence of warlords, drug lords and those whose hands are stained with the blood of the people".