In October 2002, Interim President Hamid Karzai appointed a nine-member Constitutional Drafting Commission, chaired by Vice-President Nematullah Shahrani.
The initial draft, written primarily by Abdul Salam Azimi (who would become Chief Justice of Afghanistan's Supreme Court in 2006) was not the subject of in-depth political consultation.
This commission travelled widely throughout the country and reworked the draft, which was not released to the public until November 2003, only weeks before the Constitutional Convention (Loya Jirga) was scheduled to begin.
Interim President Hamid Karzai supported a draft constitution the created a presidential system, which would provide one nationally elected figure who could effectively direct the executive branch.
Others argued that for an ethnically diverse country coming out of years of conflict - a power-sharing model with a strong President presented the best hope for national unity and reconciliation.
On January 1, the loya jirga broke down when close to half of the assembly, consisting mostly of Uzbek, Tajik, Hazara and Turkmen minorities, boycotted the only ballot, forcing chairman Sibghatullah Mojaddedi to call for a 2-day adjourning.
Ms. Joya aroused controversy when she condemned the allocation of positions of influence at the council to certain faction leaders, including former president Burhanuddin Rabbani and Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, a deeply conservative Islamist.
Despite enough signatures, the jirga's chairman Sibghatullah Mojaddedi refused to hold a vote and publicly called the delegates "infidels", causing concern on freedom of speech.
[3] After weeks of contentious debate, a walkout by the chair and hundreds of delegates, and dozens of amendments, the loya jirga ratified the constitution without taking a vote, but by consensus, on January 4, 2004.
There were also complaints that many of the most important decisions were made by militia and party leaders, Karzai's favorites, and international representatives, such as U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, behind the scenes.
[4] A documentary film, "Hell of a Nation", produced and directed by Tamara Gould, Bonnie Cohen, and John Schenk, and aired on PBS's "Wide Angle" series covered the Afghan constitutional process in detail.