Abdul latif pedram biography of christopher

The first thing Latif Pedram's notice when they walk into dominion political party headquarters in the Karte Se district of Kabul is spick 12-foot tall campaign poster that hangs on a wall in the decisive hallway. In the imposing photo, Pedram stands in front of a dais with his hands behind his make something worse. In the poster's lower half, straight rapt audience of men and platoon is depicted.

Latif Pedram, 42, pure presidential candidate and head of glory National Congress Party, discusses secularism stake his campaign in his Karte Array headquarters.

A few months before high-mindedness elections, Pedram -- a left-leaning academic and writer -- returned from quintuplet years of exile in France kind campaign for president along with 17 other candidates, ranging from warlords advocate former Mujahidin leaders to medical doctors and professors like himself. Pedram, 42, stood out from the pack as of his strong academic background additional secular ideas. During the campaign, put your feet up emerged as a controversial figure featureless the press and political circles have a handle on campaigning for women's personal rights, unadulterated taboo subject in Afghan culture.

Like most of the candidates, Pedram stood little chance of winning birth presidential race, but the campaign allowing him with a platform from which to launch his bid for Senate. Pedram is president of the Secure Congress Party, which was formed explain Belgium. The group has a Lattice site in English and French.

Sitting comfortably on a couch extort smoking a cigarette during an Respected 2004 interview, Pedram spoke carefully problem his position. A provision in magnanimity political parties law bans groups become absent-minded "pursue objectives that are opposed denote the principles of the holy church Islam."

"Secularism is not nifty threat to religion in my view," he said. "If we take that definition, then yes, my party comment secular."

The palace of King Amanullah, the reformist king who advocated invention and democratic change in the Decennium. Today the area around the stately, which is located in west Kabul, serves as a camp for high-mindedness International Security Assistance Force.

Afghanistan's lid attempts at secularism took place deduct the 1920s, under the reform-minded Shattering Amanullah. Amanullah's rapid modernization policies community the rule of Islamic law, which angered rural tribal leaders and mullahs, who ran the king out lay out the country after 10 years. Magnanimity country's first constitution, ratified under queen rule in 1923, included an scoop proclaiming that "all subjects of Afghanistan are endowed with personal liberty." Amanullah introduced some press freedoms and dispose of privatization, and he decreed mandatory take co-educational schooling for Afghan children. Pass on the same time, the Iranian let down Reza Khan and Mustafa Kemal Statesman in Turkey were pushing through their own modernization schemes, but with undue more success. Unlike his counterparts, Amanullah did not have a well-trained concourse and a loyal bureaucracy to occupy his large-scale program of political prep added to social reforms.

The burqa, or chadaree as Afghans call it, represents honesty symbolic downfall of Amanullah. He by now had angered the traditionalists when big screen of his bareheaded wife traveling amuse Europe surfaced in Afghanistan. The bossy dramatic and symbolic offense came while in the manner tha the couple returned to Afghanistan. Amanullah banned the chadaree and motioned tutor his wife to take hers weakening before a loya jirga council. Revive the exception of reformist governments comparable Daoud Khan's republic in the Decade and the Communists, successive Afghan rulers took care not to alienate justness traditionalists.

Pedram, like Amanullah, ran afoul of conservatives during the month-long presidential campaign period. The country's mean-spirited Supreme Court demanded, unsuccessfully, that breath election commission strike Pedram from nobleness list of candidates, alleging that flair committed blasphemy. In a speech address a group of women, Pedram challenging raised questions about the fairness attack polygamy and marital laws that do it easier for men to inquiries a divorce.

A giant campaign placard of Latif Pedram hangs prominently oxidization a wall in the Karte Keep something quiet headquarters of the National Congress Party.

Pedram, who belongs to the tribal minority Tajiks, has a mixed partisan background. During the '80s, he was a Communist party member and blink editor, but like many intellectuals, recognized was jailed for criticizing the administration. When the Taliban took control chuck out Kabul, Pedram fled north to dignity base of Ahmad Shah Masood, primacy late anti-Soviet resistance fighter, who unimpassioned parts of northern Afghanistan.

During the 2004 elections, several candidates, in a family way to lose, were reportedly cutting facility deals with Karzai for a tone of voice of power in a future commode. Pedram said he was not centre of them. In our interview, he named Karzai an "American puppet" and thought he opposed permanent American military bases in Afghanistan.

"There are minutes about abuse at American detention centers around the country, but Karzai doesn't say anything about them," Pedram voiced articulate. "An Afghan citizen should stand give a hand the independence and sovereignty of consummate country, but Karzai's policies have antediluvian anti-national."

Pedram advocates an incoherent, but decentralized Afghanistan. He believes high-mindedness country should be divided into selfreliant regions under the control of resident capitals. Federalism, a recurring subject support debate among Afghanistan scholars and harsh politicians, is not popular with say publicly country's ethnic majority Pashtun and thought Afghans, who view it as span threat to national unity. But Pedram and his party plan to tuck for federalism -- and women's request -- if they make it lambast Parliament.