Traditional loya jirga brings Afghans hope for future

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Ground down by decades of invasion, war and repression, Afghans are looking to this week's traditional "grand council" not only to choose a new government but to give them hope.

"If the loya jirga fails us, there will be no life for us," said Ehsanullah, a hotel owner in a southern province still full of Taliban sympathizers. "Our hope is that it will bring our nation together, that brother will stop killing brother, that we will live together in peace."

Starting Monday, 1,000 delegates chosen by ballot in districts throughout the country and 500 selected as representatives of Afghans living abroad will choose a new government to run the country pending elections in about 18 months.

The form of government, as well as its powers and its relationship to regional warlords, also will be decided by the council that adjourns next Sunday.

Former King Mohammad Zaher Shah, a unifying figure since returning from exile in April, will open the session in a huge, air-conditioned tent outfitted with modern conferencing equipment. More than 200 female delegates will attend.

Expectations among Afghanistan's 27 million people are high. Many sectors oppressed or marginalized by the Taliban, notably women and professionals, are looking to the loya jirga to open opportunities for them in public life.

But the task is difficult. Decades of war have created bitter ethnic and religious divisions in a country wracked by poverty and ravaged by a four-year drought. Trying to bring peace is much like repairing a shattered vase: Even if the parts fit, the fault lines are clearly visible.

Afghanistan is a patchwork of ethnic groups, all of which have at one time or another discriminated against, killed, robbed and exploited the others. Pashtuns, who were predominant in the ousted Taliban, are the biggest ethnic group, accounting for about half the population. Large numbers of Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras and others share a land nearly bereft of good roads, power grids, water systems and other infrastructure.

There also is a religious divide. Most Afghans are Sunni Muslims, but a significant minority are Shiite Muslims.

Bloodshed has been a fact of life for years. The Soviet army invaded at the end of 1979 to prop up a secular, Marxist regime under attack by Islamic guerrillas. After the Soviets were driven out in 1989 and the communist regime fell in 1992, the various insurgent groups turned on each other.

Tajiks dominated the new government formed in Kabul. The president was Burhanuddin Rabbani, but the real power was wielded by his fellow Tajik and defense minister, Ahmed Shah Massood.

Massood, who was mortally wounded in a suicide bombing shortly before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, kept the government in power between 1992 and 1996. During that time, Shiite Muslims were massacred by Massood's ally, Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, while a Pashtun rival, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, rained rockets on the capital.

The hardline Taliban religious militia drove the Tajiks from Kabul in 1996 and installed a Pashtun-dominated regime that extended its control over about 90 percent of the country.

The cycle of ethnic hatred continued under the Taliban, who are Sunnis. Sunni Muslims massacred Shiites. Taliban soldiers were slaughtered by Uzbeks and Tajiks.

Since the Taliban's defeat, ethnic favoritism has continued.

Many Pashtuns blame the United Nations, which brokered the interim regime to replace the Taliban. The interim government, cobbled together during December talks in Germany, is headed by a Pashtun tribal leader, Hamid Karzai. But key posts went to ethnic Tajiks from the Panjshir Valley in the Hindu Kush mountains north of Kabul -- Massood's former stronghold.

Since then, Pashtuns say they have suffered systematic attacks in areas where they are in the minority. Many have been refused entry into the national army, allegedly because Tajiks and others see every Pashtun as a Taliban sympathizer.

In the south and the east of Afghanistan, where Pashtuns dominate, people are looking to the loya jirga to devise a system in which all ethnic groups feel they have fair representation.

That won't be easy.

U.N. officials say considerable money has changed hands in an effort to guarantee that those holding power and influence today will emerge from the loya jirga with their bases intact.

Robert Kluijver, a U.N. political affairs officer, cited as one example Jamiat-e-Islami, which is led by former president Rabbani and is the party to which the three top Panjshiri ministers in Karzai's government belong. He said it has spent a lot of money to win favor among delegates, a charge Rabbani's followers deny.

"Jamiat tried very hard to influence, but I don't know how much they have been able to," Kluijver said in Kandahar, the southern city where the Taliban began. "I don't think much. I hope not much."

Throughout Afghanistan's Pashtun belt, there is strong support for Karzai, who also appears to command respect from other ethnic groups. Many of them -- as well as most of the Kabul diplomatic community -- hope the urbane, multilingual Karzai remains head of the new government.

Ironically, those who have lost considerable prestige are the people hailed a decade ago for leading the mujahedeen, or "holy warriors," who liberated Afghanistan from the Soviets.

They include many in the current interim regime -- such as Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim and Interior Minister Yunus Qanooni -- as well as some like Rabbani and Sayyaf who are seeking a return to power.

"We want all these former mujahedeen and party leaders to lose," said Said Nader Aga, a partner in Ehsanullah's hotel in Qalat, the provincial capital of Zabul. "We want to be finished with them. They are the reason for all our problems. They all just want power. That is all they have ever wanted."

Kluijver said influence peddling and bickering prevented elections of delegates to the loya jirga from Qalat. The national commission that organized the council had to select two representatives as a last resort, he said.

On May 19, when the loya jirga commission was in Qalat to try to oversee elections, men with guns destroyed some music cassette shops and attacked one of the owners, Kluijver said. The Taliban opposed music.

Ehsanullah said he removed the television set from his hotel after Taliban sympathizers warned him to get rid of it. He said he will wait for the results of the loya jirga before deciding whether to put it back.

If the loya jirga produces a government that looks like the current one -- heavy on Panjshiris -- Ehsanullah said his television set will stay at home.

"I know there will be fighting then," he said. "The new government has to be fair and neutral. It has to be for all of us, not just Pashtuns or Tajiks or Hazaras."