Global Policy Forum

By Sayed Salahuddin

Afghanistan has began the tricky process of electing delegates to a grand assembly in June which the United Nations hopes will be a decisive step in restoring peace after for more two decades of war.

In a country awash with guns, deep ethnic divisions, mutual suspicions and an unknown number of renegade bands of Taliban and al Qaeda fighters, U.N. teams began monitoring secret grassroot ballots in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

The electoral process would move around the country until all 1,051 elected representatives to the Loya Jirga had been chosen, said Mohammad Kazim Ahang, a member of the commission organising the grand council.

It began shortly before ex-King Zahir Shah was due to return home from nearly 30 years in exile in Rome and amidst increasing violence which has included attacks on international peacekeepers brought in to bring stability to Kabul.

Zahir Shah, now 87, is due to preside over the opening session of the Loya Jirga, scheduled for June 10. He is from Afghanistan's majority Pushtun ethnic group -- like most Taliban -- and some Tajiks in the interim administration oppose his return.

The Loya Jirga is a traditional Afghan means of deciding major issues, but usually comprises tribal elders summoned by the ruler. This one, in addition to the elected delegates, will also include 450 people selected by the commission.

At least 160 of those will be women, whom the ultra-Islamic Taliban forbade from leaving their homes unless clad in an all covering burqa -- a glimpse of ankle brought a beating from religious police -- and accompanied by a male relative.

LEADERSHIP DECISION

"The 1,501 representatives will nominate the future leader, take decisions over key government structures and important figures running the government," Ahang told Reuters.

It will decide whether the interim administration of Hamid Karzai, chosen at a U.N.-sponsored meeting of Afghanistan's factions in December, stays as a transitional government to guide the country to elections in a further two years, or is replaced. The 21-member monitoring team comprises Afghan experts in constitutional and customary law and U.N officials. The Loya Jirga commission had no objection to other foreign observers, Ahang said.

Commission chairman Ismail Qasimy, dubbed the council a "Peace and Democracy Loya Jirga", last month when he announced who would not be eligible for election to a June 10-16 event likely to rival its predecessors in passionate arguments. Anyone linked to a terror organisation, the drugs trade, war crimes, human rights abuses, looting, or smuggling of Afghanistan's cultural heritage would be barred, he said, although it is not clear how that will be enforced.

Qasimy said there would be no blanket ban on former members of the Taliban who controlled most of Afghanistan until driven out of power by U.S. bombing and Northern Alliance forces in December. Many Taliban simply went home after their leaders fled into the mountains. Anyone who fulfilled the criteria could be elected to the Loya Jirga, Qasimy said.

COLOURFUL, ROWDY

It will certainly be a colourful affair, and, if the past is any guide, rowdy. The Kabul hall will be packed, mostly by men wearing turbans, Persian lamb hats or embroidered quilt coats.

Arguments have not always been settled peacefully at Loya Jirgas, which have been held about once every 20 years for the past three centuries. In 1987, a gunbattle erupted and 30 people were killed or wounded, but the validity of that Loya Jirga was disputed since it was convened by a Soviet-backed government and the Soviet army was fighting U.S.-backed mujahideen.

One ruler, Zaman Shah, had all the participants in a secret 1773 Loya Jirga murdered after they decided they wanted him replaced. The last accepted Loya Jirga was in 1964 when it ratified a new constitution which put Afghanistan the path to parliamentary democracy.

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