Less than two years after its liberation from the Taleban, Afghanistan is debating a new constitution. The draft, prepared by an all-party committee, is expected to come into force next year after being amended and approved through a process of popular consultations.

Those who opposed the liberation of Afghanistan, largely because the US played the central role in achieving it, have already dismissed the draft constitution as either irrelevant or as bad as what the Taleban had on offer. For their part, those who wished to see the back of the Taleban, virtually at any cost, have rushed to fudge the weaknesses of the draft.

A closer examination, however, would show that the proposed draft, while welcome in its broad outline, suffers from a certain timidity on the part of those who wrote it. This was an opportunity to make a clean sweep of all the despotic and medieval measures imposed on Afghanistan since 1977 under the Communists and the Taleban. The draft, however, partly misses that opportunity because those who composed it apparently underestimated the capacity of the Afghans to adopt modern ideas of political organization.

The draft is partly designed to please the Americans. It borrows heavily from the Constitution of the United States. It also envisages a presidential system and a two-chamber legislative, with one modeled on the US House of Representatives and the other on the US Senate.

This causes at least two problems. The first is that the Afghan draft ignores the federal structure of the United States government. Far from organizing Afghanistan as a federal republic it emphasizes the powers of the central government in Kabul. The second problem is that the Afghan people are not ready for the extreme partisanship of American politics. Unknown to European democracies, that level of partisanship leads to personal attacks, negative campaigns, commissions of enquiry, and even law suits in the US. In Afghanistan it could lead to assassinations, gun-battles and even civil war.

The American model, while a source of inspiration, is unsuitable for Afghanistan where one either bows to the ruler or murders him. What Afghanistan needs is a system in which there is no need either to kiss the ruler’s boots or to have his throat slit. And this is precisely what Afghanistan’s two pre-Communist and pre-Taliban constitutions, in 1923 and 1964, tried to achieve. Both tried to divide the mystic of power from its actual exercise. The mystic was represented by the king, who, provided he maintained his moral authority, could exercise immense power on behalf of the nation as a whole. The actual exercise of power was bestowed on a prime minister who, though named by the king, could do nothing without the advice and consent of the elected Parliament.

This writer still believes that the Americans were wrong in vetoing the restoration of constitutional monarchy in Afghanistan. And a part of the proposed draft’s weakness stems from the fact that it does not foresee a national institution that could stand above political, religious and ethnic factions to assure the continuity of the Afghan state.

Is it too late to amend the draft? If not, one could devolve more powers to the regions, and extend the authority of the directly elected chamber of the Parliament. One could also imagine a bigger change which would provide for a ceremonial head of state to stand above partisan politics and ethnic considerations and act as an arbiter among rival parties and groups.

But even if none of that is done, the draft constitution must be welcome. It refers to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as the cornerstone of the new state. It also cancels the gender apartheid under which Afghan women were shut out of most walks of life. It envisages regular elections and makes government accountable to the people, not to any metaphysical principle.

Two years ago we had a bunch murderous fanatics who claimed that Afghanistan needed no constitution beyond the whims of the “emir al-momeneen” (Commander of the Faithful) Mullah Muhammad Omar who represented divine power on earth. The new draft, however, acknowledges that all power belongs to the people. And that, you may be sure, is a leap across centuries.