The future of religious freedom in the rebuilt Afghanistan may be in grave danger — and the United States should avoid similar problems as it rebuilds Iraq, according to a federal panel’s annual report.
Those observations were among several found in the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom’s annual report, released May 12.
The commission is an independent and bipartisan federal panel charged with monitoring religious liberty conditions worldwide. The commission is also empowered, under the terms of the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act that established it, to make foreign policy recommendations to the administration regarding religious freedom.
In a press conference announcing the report’s release, Commissioner Nina Shea said promoting religious freedom in Afghanistan and Iraq has been “a major focus for the commission” for more than a year.
“This is not a theoretical matter but a very real concern in both Afghanistan and Iraq,” Shea, director of the Washington-based Center for Religious Freedom, told reporters. She noted that, despite the United States’ overthrow of Afghanistan’s theocratic Taliban regime and installation of an interim government, Afghan secularists and moderates are increasingly “on the defensive.”
The report noted deficiencies in Afghanistan’s newly adopted constitution that may undermine its theoretical protections for religious freedom.
“Though the constitution provides for the freedom of non-Muslim groups to exercise their various faiths, it does not contain explicit protections [for the right to religious freedom] … that would extend to every individual,” it said.
In addition, the commission pointed out that Afghanistan has two more constitutional problems that pose risks to religious freedom — a “repugnancy clause” that bars any laws “contrary to the beliefs and practices of Islam” and provisions for the country’s judicial system that have been interpreted to allow it to enforce Islamic law in some instances.
The report said the country’s chief justice has told commissioners he rejects the concepts of equality of the sexes and freedom of expression and religion.
“With no guarantee of the individual right to religious freedom and a judicial system instructed to enforce Islamic principles and Islamic law, the new constitution does not fully protect individual Afghan citizens against, for example, unjust accusations of religious ‘crimes’ such as apostasy and blasphemy,” the report said.
Shea told reporters, “Arrests and imprisonment for alleged blasphemy … have already occurred in the new Afghanistan.”
The commission’s report recommended that, among other things, U.S. officials give greater support to moderate elements in Afghan society and assign to the U.S. Embassy in Kabul personnel solely charged with monitoring the status of religious freedom and other human rights in the nation.
Likewise, Shea said, the commission is concerned that the United States “ensures what happened in Afghanistan does not happen in Iraq” as that nation rebuilds under U.S. control.
Shea noted that religious freedom advocates had some success in getting guarantees for individual religious freedom included in Iraq’s interim constitution. However, it still contains a clause similar to the Afghan one disallowing any laws or practices contrary to Islamic principles.
Among the commission’s recommendations were for the U.S. administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, “to appoint a team of advisers … to advise on religious affairs and to monitor human rights violations” and for U.S. officials to advocate for language in the country’s permanent constitution that would more explicitly protect individual religious freedom and other human rights. (ABP)
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