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Afghanistan's 'Last Chance to Choose'
Saturday, February 23, 2002
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service

Conclave Planners Hear Touching Pleas but Face Daunting Task

KABUL, Afghanistan
The crumpled messages had been painstakingly penned by village leaders in remote Ghowr province and thrust hopefully into the hands of an official visitor from the capital. Now the notes spilled out of his briefcase, and their mandate was humbling.

"Please send someone to gather all the guns from our village," the official, Nur Karkin, read at random from the pile of petitions. "Please select leaders who understand our suffering and have at least a ninth-grade education. . . . Please do not allow those whose hands are polluted with blood to participate."

Karkin, a scholar from the ethnic Turkoman minority, is one of 21 Afghan professionals and intellectuals from all major ethnic groups who have been asked to plan and regulate the loya jirga, a traditional nationwide conclave that is scheduled to meet in June to choose a government to serve while a new constitution is written and the nation prepares for elections.

Across Afghanistan, the poor and mostly illiterate populace of 26 million is focusing enormous hopes on the loya jirga, a centuries-old form of grass-roots tribal democracy that has been convened from time to time to resolve national crises. After 23 years of war, civil conflict and religious repression that ended with the collapse of the Taliban militia in November, most Afghans yearn for a system that will bring them peaceful, stable and tolerant rule.

"People have a tremendous desire for this to happen," said Michael Semple, a U.N. official who is coordinating the commission's work and has visited several provinces with its members. "They see it as a last chance to choose their leaders, and not be browbeaten into accepting nondemocratic people."

But the task of setting up the conclave will be monumental, and the road to June is mined with an explosive mix of political and ethnic tensions, logistics obstacles and potentially violent opposition from regional militia leaders who have dominated Afghanistan for years and view the fledgling democratic process as a challenge to their power.
(More: The Washington Post News Source)
2002 © The Washington Post Company.

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