Two grand-scale contests grabbed my attention here in Kabul last week – one in a vast white tent, the other in an even bigger outdoor arena.tttt tt The tented struggle is deciding Afghanistan’s new constitution. Five hunered two delegates, a fifth of them women, began meeting Dec. 14 in a Loya Jirga or National Assembly. President Karzai and former king Mohammed Zahir inaugurated the gathering with expressions of patriotic unity. That wishful fancy collapsed on Day 4 when a young woman from a distant province gave the jirga a jolt. Twenty-five-year-old social worker Malalai Joya dared to denounce the jihadis – this country’s most sacrosanct political group.

“Jihadis” is the new term for mujahedeen, fighters who won Afghanistan’s holy war against communism (1979-1992) but then began fighting each other. In four short years (1992-1996) they squandered victory, blew their own capital city to bits, and reduced its populace to such desperation that even the Taliban (1996-2001) seemed preferable. Any peace, however harsh, was better than jihadi chaos.

Sept. 11 restored jihadi fortunes. Operation Enduring Freedom’s rout of the Taliban (2001) could not have happened without jihadi support. For the past two years jihadis have been very much back in business as regional warlords, religious conservatives and ambiguous allies of our Pentagon in pursuing Osama bin Laden. They thrive on stockpiled weaponry, pious sentiment, extorted money and carefully crafted myth – simultaneously saviors and wreckers of their country. Their legitimate usefulness may have waned, but their power hasn’t. Nor has their reputation for corruption, hypocrisy, and brutal abuse. Most ordinary Afghans hold them in fearful, whispered contempt.

Malalai Joya did more than whisper. Infuriated that jihadis were being given key Loya Jirga roles, she grabbed the mike and denounced them as “criminals” and “the main factors who led this country towards crisis and civil war.” As the audience sat stunned, she added, “In my opinion, they should be taken to the World Court.”

Afghans don’t stay stunned for long. Suddenly, as the saying goes, this heretofore staid Loya Jirga “became a buzkashi” – the wild, equestrian, “goat-grabbing” game of Central Asia and a metaphor for mayhem. Shouting “God is Great,” some jihadi delegates rushed the platform; others made for Malalai. Cries of “communist” and “atheist” filled the hall. The aged Loya Jirga chairman, himself a former jihadi leader, called Malalai’s remarks “astounding” and ordered her to leave. Surrounded by other women in their gender-separate section, she stood her ground. The old man then demanded an apology; the young woman refused. Bewildered and desperate to save face, the chairman accepted “the apologies of others.”

Amnesty International reports death threats. The female delegates’ dormitory was stalked that very evening by jihadis yelling – you guessed it – “God is great.” United Nations personnel guard Malalai during assembly sessions, then whisk her away to undisclosed sleeping quarters. Responding to press curiosity, a suave U.N. spokesman got it unarguably right: “I am afraid I will not be able to disclose to you details of security measures taken, otherwise they are no longer security measures.”

My driver Nazir is more incisive than suave. He reveres the anti-Soviet jihad but despises modern jihadis. Daily on the way to work, we pass an area where jihadis have seized state land from the poor in order to build rich villas. Nazir, like thousands of Kabulis, lost his home during the jihadi era. His take on Malalai Joya? The admiring Afghan equivalent of “You go, girl!”

By Friday I’d had my fill of tented hot air. Nazir and I headed instead to what remains of Kabul Military Club and its weekly buzkashi. What we witnessed there – in the spectator section as well as on the field – illustrates how the jihadis have endured and also why they’ll never provide a just and lasting government for Afghanistan.

Buzkashi’s biggest supporters these days are jihadis. Like the game, most jihadis come from the countryside. They tend to favor the old-style game in which individual horsemen each try to grab a single calf carcass from the ground and ride it free and clear of all the others. That free-for-all form still persists in the provinces … and finds political expression in the zero-sum game played by jihadi military commanders.

Regionally based, they battle each other in ever changing combinations but without conclusive effect. None has been able to grab sole control of Afghanistan and, in buzkashi terms, take it free and clear of the other claimants. They gang up, temporarily, against whoever happens to be strongest. Once he’s dragged him down, the rest go back to struggling all against all.

So it was on the buzkashi field this past Friday. Supposedly there were two teams, and play began according to “official” rules of a body hopefully known as the National Buzkashi Federation. But as the prize money rose, so the teamwork disintegrated. By afternoon’s end, each round of play had a $500 award. Teams meant nothing; everybody grabbed for himself and, when unsuccessful, ganged up on whoever seemed about to score. Just like jehadis.

Off the field in the VIP section were the two biggest jihadis in all Afghanistan. Front and center in the role of host was Defense Minister and self-styled “Field Marshal” Mohammed Qasem Fahim. Thuggish in physiognomy and temperament, Fahim once served as enforcer for Ahmad Shah Masood, the fabled commander who died by assassin’s bomb two days before 9-11. Within weeks, Fahim found himself the nation’s no. 1 warlord – first by inheriting Masood’s military command, and then by becoming America’s foremost anti-Taliban ally. For a time last Friday Fahim sat alone, brooding and brutish, while horses and riders clashed in front of him.

Then a black sedan with blackened windows and “CD0001” license plates rolled onto the oval arena. What grand government figure, I wondered, would merit such low number vanity tags? “CD” stands for diplomatic corps. Could it be some urbane ambassador? Guess again.

The stealth car purred its way to Fahim and the VIP section. Spectators held their collective breath, then gasped in surprise. Out stepped Afghanistan’s champion opportunist and top warlord opponent of Fahim. Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum has allied himself with every known Afghan regime and ideology – beginning, horrifically, as the leader of communist shock troops – for the past quarter century. His deeper purpose remains constant: autonomy for his home region and domination of it for himself. Dostum’s days as a vicious opponent of jihad are now, somehow, forgotten. Like Fahim, he’s become a jihadi – opposed to Karzai-based and no doubt furious at the remarks of Malalai Joya.

But otherwise Fahim (ethnic Tajik) and Dostum (ethnic Uzbek) are bitter enemies. For centuries Tajiks and Uzbeks have struggled over what, for now, is northern Afghanistan. Their “Northern Alliance” was concluded, briefly, to battle the Taliban. Since that victory, Fahim and Dostum – and their countless surrogates – have been at each other’s throats. Yet there they were, side by side, at Friday’s buzkashi: hugging each other, swigging green tea, and yukking it up like old pals. Why?

Because once again they’ve got a common enemy. The jihadis defeated the Godless Soviets and the God-distorting Taliban. Will they now defeat the forces of centralization and modernization – both so stunningly personified by Malalai Joya?

Stay tuned for more news from the big tent. Will the Loya Jirga succeed? Or will jihadis turn it into a buzkashi? If the latter, Nazir and all Afghanistan will suffer.

Dr. Whitney Azoy, a cultural anthropologist and former U.S. diplomat in Kabul, has worked for 30 years with Afghanistan and the Muslim world. The second edition of Dr. Azoy’s study, “Buzkashi: Game and Power in Afghanistan,” is available from Waveland Press.