Strategic Insight The Loya Jirga, Ethnic Rivalries and Future Afghan Stability

Abstract

On June 24 the Afghan transitional government and administration of Hamid Karzai was installed during formal ceremonies in Kabul. Karzai had easily won the June 13 election at a national political assembly, or loya jirga. The loya jirga consisted of 1500 representatives, elected or appointed from 32 provinces, and debated the political future of Afghanistan over a seven-day period. The Karzai government is supposed to rule Afghanistan through 2003. During the ceremony, Karzai and his new cabinet took an oath in both major Afghan languages (Pashtu and Dari), vowing to "follow the basic teachings of Islam " and the laws of the land, to renounce corruption, and to "safeguard the honor and integrity of Afghanistan."[1] How successful they are in achieving these vows will be critical to the near term future of Afghanistan, its reconstruction, and possibly the stability of the entire region of Central Asia. This transitional government was the result of an Emergency Loya Jirga and part of the Bonn Agreement (of November-December 2001). While not explicitly stating so in the Bonn Agreement, Lakhdar Brahimi, the Special Representative of the U.N. Secretary General suggested that the role of the Emergency Loya Jirga after six months was to remedy some of the defects of the interim government originally chosen at Bonn. One such defect was that the original interim government did not closely reflect the demographics