Afghan people hope for Loya Jirga
The Nation (Lahore)
KABULThe hopes for future peace and stability for the majority of
Afghanistan’s 26 million people rests not with US
forces, or international peace keepers and not even
with Hamid Karzai, the Chairman of the interim
government. Instead their hopes and expectations rest
with a group of 21 middle-aged Afghans, most of them
professors and lawyers who make up the Loya Jirga
Commission (LJC) which has been charged with holding
Afghanistan’s traditional tribal council by June.
Set up by the UN brokered Bonn agreement last December, the LJC is
responsible for calling together between 800-1000
people’s representatives to Kabul in the first week of
June and holding the Loya Jirga. The Jirga will
establish a new transitional government for two years,
nominate a head of state and a head of government,
choose a commission to debate the country’s future
constitution and create the modicums of a modern state
such as an ethnically balanced and representative
civil service and judicial system. The LJC members
were chosen by the UN, are independent of the
government and represent all the major ethnic and
religious groups in the country.
‘’It is the greatest challenge in the country today, everybody is
depending on us to do it right and do it well, the
future of the country rests on the decisions of the
Loya Jirga being accepted by the majority of people,’’
says Abdul Aziz Ahmed, Vice Chairman of the LJC. Aziz
was once Dean of the Sharia or Islamic Law Faculty of
Kabul University, but dressed in a pin striped suit
and a tie, his soft and non-confrontational manner
demonstrates how many Afghans once viewed Islam before
the arrival of the Taliban. ‘’Islam has everything to
do with modernism and democracy, not with the kind of
ideas the Taliban were propagating,’’ he adds.
There are three women on the commission and they along with the male
members are determined to ensure that there will be a
large representation of Afghan women. ‘’You will be
surprised when you see the eventual final list, we
will have more women in the Loya Jirga than in any
representative parliament or body of any Muslim
country,’’ says LJC member Soraya Parlika, a former
head of the Afghan Red Crescent which is affiliated to
the Red Cross. Other members say there will be at
least 100 women from all walks of life taking part in
the LJ. ‘’In some areas where we travel the men are
still not allowing the women to talk when we hold
meetings, but that is slowly breaking down as the
women are demanding to be heard,’’ says Parlika.
Nobody doubts that the presence of so many women in the Loya Jirga will
be path breaking for a country that has suffocated
under Taliban rule since 1994 and has known nothing
but war for 24 years.
The last genuine LJ was held in 1964. Since 1973 when former King Zahir
Shah was overthrown in a military coup, Afghanistan
has been plagued by illegitimate governments run by
strongmen from communists to Islamic mujahideen, who
have tried to legitimise themselves by calling Loya
Jirgas. But the membership of all these Loya Jirgas
were heavily rigged in the government-of-the-day’s
favour.
Now Ismael Qadimyar, a constitutional law expert who heads the LJC is
determined to bring together such a complete mix of
people that nobody will be able to question the
legitimacy of the LJ in June or its decisions about
the future of the country. ‘’This LJ will have
legitimacy because it has been mandated by the
international community in Bonn, the impartial UN is
helping us, the people support us and want it and even
the neighbouring countries will be scared to try to
undermine it or influence it adversely,’’ says
Qasimyar.
Traditionally the LJ was made up of tribal and clan chiefs and village
and town elders from all ethnic groups across the
country. Qasimyar is extending the membership to
include representatives from the millions of Afghan
refugees in Iran and Pakistan, the vast Afghan
diaspora from California to Berlin, women, technocrats
and businessmen and traders from inside and outside
Afghanistan and even nomads who have never been
represented before. UNICEF is even planning to hold a
children’s Loya Jirga before the real one starts.
‘’The only disqualification is that members cannot
belong to terrorist groups or the Taliban,’’ says
Qasimyar, who took part in Loya Jirgas in 1964, 1976
and 1987 and has also been Chief Justice of the
Supreme Court of Afghanistan. In 1992, after the fall
of the Afghan communist regime, the mujahideen
government gave him the task of formulating a new
constitution but he never had a chance to get going
because civil war broke out.
At the end of March the LJC will announce the rules and procedures of
how indirect elections will be held in communities and
members can be chosen. That will be followed by a
frenzy of political activity as communities discuss
who to send and they will arrive at a consensus
through a process of indirect elections in April and
May which will take the shape of mini-jirgas around
the country.
Then comes the difficult logistics of bringing the representatives to
Kabul safely when there is an uncertain security
situation in many of the country’s 32 provinces,
housing and feeding them and ensuring their security
in Kabul. Former King Zahir Shah, who will return to
Kabul after 30 years in exile will open the first
session of the LJ in June. Royalists want him to be
chosen as Head of State and retain Hamid Karzai as
head of government, but that is still to be opposed by
many of the warlords and factions.
Some warlords are already trying to derail the
process, by preparing the ground so that they can send
their relatives and loyalists to represent ‘the
people’ in the LJ. ‘’The warlords want to stuff the LJ
but we have one great tool that we have been given by
the UN - the Commission is empowered to reject those
candidates it does not believe reflects the will of
the people,’’ says Qasimyar with a chuckle. ‘’We will
reject those candidates whose hands are bloodied,’’ he
says.
UN consultants to the LJC admit the task is hard. ‘’There will probably
be no Western peace keeping forces in cities outside
Kabul to ensure free voting, there will be no new
Afghan army or consolidation of warlord armies, there
will still be millions of weapons, there will not be
enough money to conduct the process freely - but I
think the people want this to work and that’s the most
important thing,’’ says a senior UN consultant to the
LJC. ‘’The hardest thing is finding out how to have a
proper ethnic representation because there has been no
census for 30 years and no reliable figures - it’s the
biggest on going debate we have. What is the
percentage of Pashtuns or Tajiks or nomads, it’s a
guess at the moment,’’ he adds.
LJC members have so far toured six of the country’s 32
provinces to spread their message and elicit peoples
views. But many provinces are out of bounds, either
because the US is hunting down Taliban remnants or
warlords continue to make their territories unsafe.
‘’Where we have gone the warlords have seen the
massive public response to us and they are scared, so
we hope that this process will shut them up and cower
them so the people can express their views and choose
their candidates freely,’’ says an LJC member.
The BBC and Voice of America are preparing special radio programmes in
local languages to whip up support for the Loya Jirga
and explain the procedures. The LJC is soon to open
offices in all the major cities so that people can be
educated. More than 60% of the population is estimated
to be under 25 years old and has no recollection of a
genuine Loya Jirga. Like so many other things in
Afghanistan - the return of the King, the yearning for
peace and jobs - the Loya Jirga has already taken on a
mythological quality that will hopefully ensure its
success. ‘’Its like playing a chess match,’’ says the
UN consultant. ‘’Not only do you have to think several
moves ahead but you have to also think about what the
opponents will do and to determine their actions in
order to preempt them,’’ he adds.