POLICY BRIEF Afghanistan: Ruling by Decree Hamzah

At the same time, the Emir has put in place a mechanism to provide actionable guidance for the administration via the Office of Administrative Affairs as well as established an empowered mechanism in Kabul, the High Directorate for the Oversight and Prosecution of the Emir’s Decrees, to supervise the implementation and compli- ance with the Emir’s decrees. [...] Apart from this setup, the Emir also seems to have either intenti- onally or inadvertently empowered both the defacto Ministry for Prevention of Vice and Promo- tion of Virtue as well as the Chief Justice as the head of the Supreme Court in dealing with the enforcement and review of compliance with the Emir’s decrees by various de facto institutions and by the general public. [...] With the establishment of the High Directorate for the Oversight and Implementation of the Emir’s Decrees, the Emir seems to have decided to focus only on using decrees to guide the de facto government. [...] The High Directorate for the Oversight and Implementation of the Emir’s Decrees and the de facto Ministry of Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue are seemingly in competition with one another over the monitoring and enforcement of decrees within the de facto institutions (in particular, they compete of decrees related to Sharia compliance). [...] The transformation of the Attorney Gene- ral’s Office into the High Directorate for the Oversight and Implementation of the Emir’s Decrees indicates the probable path forward, and that suggests decrees will continue to be the most important mechanism for shaping the course of governance of the de facto au- thorities.