Afghanistan Working on Constitution
The former king, Mohammad Zaher Shah, inaugurated a special committee Sunday to draft a new Afghan Constitution.
The nine-member committee, headed by Vice President Nematullah Shahrani, will prepare a preliminary draft and submit it to a constitutional commission. The final draft is expected to be approved by a constitutional loya jirga, or grand council, next year.
Appointing a commission to draft a new constitution was one of the key tasks for President Hamid Karzai’s administration, which was named to an 18-month term in June. Zaher Shah, 88, returned this year after three decades in exile in Italy.
In another step forward Sunday, the government announced that it had abolished the overnight curfew in Kabul because security has improved.
The curfew had been in force in Kabul, in various forms, since Soviet forces invaded the country in 1979. Until Sunday, drivers caught at military checkpoints in the capital between midnight and 3:30 a.m. were stopped and forced to sleep in their cars by the roadside.
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