Afghan Peace Jirga Concludes
After my first ever visit to Kabul, Afghanistan last month, I’ll be paying close attention to what action the Afghan government takes on the heels of last week’s “peace jirga,” which was attended by about 1,600 Afghan leaders from around the country, but did not include representatives from the Afghan Taliban, the Haqqani Group or Hekmatyar’s Hezb-i-Islami.
This is not the government’s first attempt at national reconciliation, of course, and according to experts at the Center for American Progress, past failures can be attributed in part to:
…inadequate political and financial support by Afghan and foreign governments, a lack of effective vetting mechanisms to determine who is a genuine insurgent, poor design and management of the programs’ difficulties in delivering on promises made including jobs and money, and failures to protect reconciled fighters.
For these reasons and others, the Afghan government’s legitimacy is both dependent on and crucial to the success of reconciliation.