President Hamid Karzai, who launched the traditional “peace jirga” of tribal elders on Wednesday amid the gunfire is hoping to get national support for his plans to reach out to the Taliban ahead of a gradual US military withdrawal from 2011.Nearly 1,600 delegates, many wearing turbans and long beards, were huddled in a giant tent in the west of the capital to finalize a resolution on a peace plan to end the deadly insurgency. It consists of luring Taliban foot soldiers back to the mainstream with cash and job incentives while seeking reconciliation with senior figures by offering them asylum in a Muslim country and striking their names off a UN blacklist.
“The main deliberations have begun on how we can come up with a peace formula for talks with the Taliban,” Mohammad Shah Hemad, head of one of 28 groups, set up to discuss the proposals. The delegates will report back to former president Burhanuddin Rabani who was named the jirga chairman on the opening day.
But even if Karzai does win the backing of the delegates drawn from around the battle-scarred nation, it would amount to little more than symbolic support, since the Taliban have vowed to press on with their campaign -- at its most intense since 2001 -- until all foreign troops leave. “The jirga is itself mostly for show. They have these things every few years, and they don’t change anything,” said Joshua Foust, a US-based independent analyst focused on Afghanistan and Central Asia.
Critics have also said that the jirga is packed with delegates loyal to Karzai and hence its decisions did not reflect the full spectrum of Afghan politics, tribes and geography.
About a 100 people staged a demonstration in Asadabad, the provincial capital of eastern Kunar province, saying three delegates they had chosen to represent them at the meeting were not invited.
