Current mood:	bouncy
Current music:	"Zoo Station," by U2, from "Achtung Baby"

Afghanistan Constitutional Convention stalls
In what could be a blow to democracy in the Middle East, the Constitutional Convention in Afghanistan may collapse in coming days over a disagreement of how strongly to constitutionally ensure minority rights. Though no official word has come from convention leaders as to what has stalled the previously quick-moving process other than the fact that “a difference about one word” threatened to derail everything.

That one word may be Uzbek — the language of Afghanistan’s large Uzbeki minority. With no schools in the entire nation that even teach students how to read this prominently-spoken tongue, Uzbeki Afghanis may rightfully fear that their culture is imperiled. And no democratic Afghanistan can stand against the dual strains of the Warlords and the Taliban without uniting all strata of the nation.

Ethnic Pashtuns, the majority ethnicity in Afghanistan, are divided over whether supporting minority cultures will unify or balkanize their nation.

A democracy in the Middle East is sorely needed. Iraq will get there, but Afghanistan has the opportunity to get there first. And an Afghani democracy will be more politically potent, both domestically and abroad, than one in Iraq, since the Afghanis have mostly built their government on their own. The Iraqi nation is still controlled with a council dominated by American puppets.

Democracy spreads like a virus. That’s what scared the leader of 1900s Europe so much that they triggered World War I — and their fears were grounded. Once consolidated, liberal democracy enters a region, it spreads to surrounding principalities. Let us hope that Afghanistan helps infect the Middle East with the democracy bug as soon as possible.