Kabul gets a new concept — Parliament

‘‘We have no idea, no experience of what a Parliament is,’’ said Haseeb Noori, the institution’s spokesman. What’s clear is that September’s parliamentary elections, widely deemed a success despite a lower-than-hoped-for turnout, were merely a first step in the formidable challenge of building a democracy from the ground up. The task now is to establish the myriad rules, protocols and infrastructure that keep a Parliament functioning and then, perhaps more difficult, to teach the 249 newly elected lawmakers how the system works.

They met in Kabul a week before Parliament’s opening for an orientation session. But Ramazan Bashardost, a former government minister and one of the few intellectuals and professionals to be elected to the body, is skeptical. ‘‘I am sure we cannot educate a person in two weeks or two months to be a good representative,’’ Bashardost said. ‘‘The new generation arriving in this Parliament. They haven’t any real knowledge about Parliament, about the procedures of Parliament, about what the Parliament’s job is.’’

Because of the lack of training and general education, and because memories of war and conflict here remain fresh, analysts expect this inaugural Parliament—and possibly the next two or three—to resemble less a deliberative, technical, legislative assembly than a forum for factional fighting and fiery rhetoric.

The west Kabul building where the winners will convene once served as the headquarters of the rubber-stamp council set up under King Mohammad Zahir Shah, who was overthrown in 1973. It sits along a sandy stretch of road where vendors sell impossibly large pumpkins and a few shepherds corral their flocks, on the edge of a gracious residential neighborhood wrecked by bullets and rockets.

Officials decided last year to return the structure to its former use as a government assembly hall, a $3-million project to rescue the site from its more macabre recent past as a prison. ‘‘When we entered the building, it seemed as though there were ghosts inside,’’ said Said Sharif Hossainy, deputy minister for urban development and housing. ‘‘It was strange.’’ Walls have been ripped out to widen spaces, especially for the semi-circular, stadium-seating-style Parliament chamber. A media gallery has been added.

But don’t look for features such as an electronic voting board, phones and Internet access at each desk, or even individual offices and staffs for the representatives. ‘‘Afghanistan has a lot of economic problems, so we didn’t spend a lot of money on this,’’ said Ghulam Hassan Gran, general director of parliamentary affairs for the Secretariat of the National Assembly. Dignitaries have erected an official marker down the street at the site designated as the Parliament’s eventual permanent home, hard against a Canadian military encampment. Funded with $25 million from the Indian government, officials say the new Parliament building will be ready in three years—inshallah.