While praising the inclusion of women’s rights in Afghanistan’s new constitution, a major U.S. human rights group warned Thursday that the three-week process that led to the constitution’s ratification raised serious questions about whether the country can hold free and fair elections later this year.

New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said political intimidation, vote-buying and the lack of transparency characterized key parts of the Loya Jirga, or grand assembly, that put the finishing touches on and approved the country’s charter. In addition, a number of provisions included in the document were sufficiently vague to raise concerns about how they would be enforced in practice.

“Human rights protections were put on paper,” said John Sifton, HRW’s researcher on Afghanistan. “But there were a lot of missed opportunities, and complaints of corruption during the convention.”

Some of the same critiques were leveled by Anatol Lieven, a Central Asian specialist with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In an article published by the London Financial Times earlier this week, Lieven stressed that the final document was “not so much a constitution as an aspiration.”

While the assembly was “fairly representative” of Afghanistan’s diverse peoples and interests, he noted, it was “by no means fully democratic, in either its selection or its procedures.” He described the meeting as a “’top-down’ process” and stressed that the constitution would not have been ratified in the end “without arm-twisting by the U.S., the United Nations and the international community.”

All of this is worrisome both for the implementation of the constitution and for national elections planned for June, but which international analysts are already suggesting may have to be put off until September, if not longer.

HRW noted that the just-concluded meeting made “significant achievements,” the most important of which was a constitutional guarantee that women will hold a substantial number of seats in the country’s bicameral National Assembly. Approximately 25 per cent of the seats in the lower house are reserved for women, and the charter requires the president to appoint additional women to the upper body, called the House of Elders.

In addition, one provision provides that men and women should be treated equally under the law, including the specifically enumerated political, civil, economic and social rights that are recognized by the constitution.

But, according to HRW, the constitution lacks strong language ensuring that institutions created to uphold those rights are empowered to do so, while its failure to address the role of Islamic law and its relationship to human rights protections could be used by a conservative judiciary to implement interpretations of Islam that may run contrary to international human rights standards. The constitution provided that no laws should contravene basic Islamic principles.

HRW is also concerned about the constitution’s failure to address accountability for serious human rights abuses, including atrocities, that have taken place in the past. The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) — created by the December, 2001, Bonn Agreement after the U.S.-led military campaign ousted the Taliban regime — may be able to delve into the question, but the new constitution gives it no mandate to do so.

HRW said it was especially concerned about the machinations by various factions before and during the meeting to influence the outcome. It said the use of intimidation and bribery underlined fears that warlords and local factions continue to dominate Afghanistan’s political evolution.

“A constitution cannot itself reduce the power of the warlords,” said Sifton. “But an open political process in drafting it could have weakened their influence. Instead, the warlords flexed their muscles and proved they still hold a lot of power.”

London-based Amnesty International, which also observed the process, released a statement two days before the January 4 ratification that echoed HRW’s concerns.

“Dominance by strong political and armed factional leaders and the absence of the rule of law in many parts of the country contributes to an atmosphere of insecurity for delegates who wish to act independently of powerful political groups,” it said. “Some delegates fear for the safety of their families and for their own lives, especially after they return home at the end of the (Loya Jirga).”

Both HRW and Amnesty had documented numerous cases of death threats and corruption during the process that selected the delegates to the meeting, and UN officials told HRW that many of the delegates were proxies of local factional leaders. Much of the substantive discussion took place between allies and ministers of President Hamid Karzai and various factional representatives behind closed doors. As a result, key provisions in the constitution were never the subject of serious debate.

Karzai emerged from the meeting having achieved his major goal — securing a strong presidential system. But what promises the government was forced to make to prevail is not yet clear.

The central government has relied virtually entirely on security and military support from the United States, its allies in Afghanistan, and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). Except in a few locations around the country where U.S. forces have deployed to provide security and some reconstruction assistance, Karzai’s authority has not extended far beyond Kabul’s municipal boundaries.

As a result, much of the country is in the hands of warlords and factional leaders, most of whom identify with specific clans or ethnic minorities. The new constitution that provides for a strong presidency is therefore “almost surreal in its distance from the real distribution of power in Afghanistan,” according to Carnegie’s Lieven.

HRW called on the international community to provide better security for the country. It said expanding and extending ISAF into the countryside, as long called for by both the UN and relief groups, would signify the international community’s commitment to the new constitution.

“The United States and its allies in Afghanistan, especially NATO, need to keep expanding international security forces outside of Kabul, and have them focus on improving security,” said Sifton.

This will be critical in the upcoming months if elections are to be held successfully. Taliban and allied forces have renewed their presence in the Pashtun-dominated eastern and southern parts of the country in a direct challenge to the central government’s control.

Last week, the UN’s former top Afghanistan expert and currently the European Union’s representative in Kabul, Francesc Vendrell, warned that a free and fair election could not be carried out if the current security situation persists. “The danger is this,” he told the Christian Science Monitor: “Elections that are not credible among the Afghan people would be a setback for the process.”