Karzai wants Taliban to convene Loya Jirga

KABUL (Pajhwok): Former president Hamid Karzai says he has handed over a plan to the acting government for convening the Loya Jirga on a future government and implementation of the Zahir Shah-era constitution.

In an interview, Karzai said Afghans had to come together to take decisions on important issues. Over the last 20 years, he said, Afghans had suffered on all sides.

“Afghans have lost lives on all sides: The Afghan army has suffered. Afghan police have suffered, the Taliban soldiers have suffered,” he told the Associated Press.

He added: “An end to that can only come only when Afghans get together, find their own way out.”

The former president has a plan. In his talks with the Taliban, he is advocating the temporary resurrection of the constitution that governed when Afghanistan was a monarchy. The idea was also floated during Doha talks.

At the same time, a traditional Loya Jirga – a grand council of all Afghans, including women – would be convened to decide the country’s future, including a representative government, a constitution and a national flag.

There is no indication the Taliban will accept his formula, though he says they have not rejected it in discussions.

The Loya Jirga is a centuries-old Afghan tradition for decision-making and is particularly popular among ethnic Pashtuns, who make up the backbone of the Taliban.

Karzai said a future Afghanistan had to have universal education rights for boys and girls, and women “must find their place in the Afghan polity, in the administration, in economic activity and social activity, the political activity in all ways of life. … That’s an issue on which there cannot be any compromise.”

bh/mud

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