On October 9, 2004 Afghans voted for a president in the country’s first democratic election.

On October 9, 2004 Afghans voted for a president in the country’s first democratic election.
Hamid Karzai, at the helm of the country since 2001, defeated 17 other candidates in an election said by observers to be largely fair.
His government replaced an interim administration in place since December 22, 2001. This administration was formed at UN-brokered peace talks at which Afghan factions came to a power-sharing agreement. This followed the ousting of the Taliban administration in November 2001 after weeks of US-led aerial bombardment and attacks on the ground by opposition forces. The military action ensued in response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington and the Taliban refusal to hand over the suspected instigator Osama Bin Laden.
Despite the ousting of the Taliban, the influence of religious conservatives over the judicial system is still very strong. Fazul Hadi Shinwari, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, has declared his belief that Koranic punishment such as hand-chopping and stoning should be applied, although with more restraint than under the Taliban. The infamous "Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice", the Taliban's ruthless religious enforcement agency, has not been abolished, although it has lost its ministerial status and is now known as the Department of Islamic Instruction.
A new law approved by the Afghan cabinet of ministers in October 2003 proposed the death penalty for those who cultivate and traffic in narcotics. It was the first time ever in the country that capital punishment had been proposed for such a crime.
On January 4, 2004, after three weeks of ferocious debate, the 502 members of the Loya Jirga – or grand council - adopted a new constitution. The 160 articles make no explicit reference to Sharia law, but the constitution declares Afghanistan to be an ‘Islamic republic’ and states that ‘no law shall be contrary to the practices and beliefs of Islam.’
The death penalty is permissible under current Afghanistan's legal systems but all executions must be approved individually by the president.
In 2002, for the first time in decades, no executions were carried out and just one death sentence was issued. In the previous year, the last of the Taliban regime, executions had totalled at least 68, including at least 2 women.
In 2003, for the second year running, there were no executions and just two death sentences.
Afghanistan carried out its first execution since the fall of the Taliban on April 20, 2004, shooting dead Abdullah Shah, a former military commander convicted of more than 20 murders. On July 3, 2004 Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai signed a decree permitting the death penalty for those convicted of child smuggling in order to use the victim's body parts. The decree stated that the judiciary must hold public hearings into any cases of child kidnapping, trafficking or hostage taking. According to one of the articles, if the kidnapper's crime results in the disabling or death of the child through loss of body organs "then the perpetrator will be given the severest of possible punishments contained within the law".