Word: jirga
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Evidence linking Hekmatyar to the attacks has yet to be produced and some Western diplomats dismiss the "coup plot" as a government attempt to sideline rivals ahead of the June 22 'loya jirga,' a national assembly that will choose an interim government to rule for the next two years. Even if the Hekmatyar threat is exaggerated, Karzai must still deal with internal splits. "The cabinet is deeply divided," says the interim leader's adviser. "But that's the government given to him by the U.N. in Bonn and he has to work with it." A power struggle between Defense Minister...
...Fires are expected to spread in the run-up to the loya jirga. "The next few months will be an especially fragile period," CIA director George Tenet recently told the U.S. Senate. Pashtun royalists hope people will rally around former King Mohammed Zahir Shah, even though he has returned with the constitutional rights of an ordinary citizen rather than those of a monarch. But Afghanistan's volatile ethnic divisions are just as likely to turn the frail 87-year-old king into a symbol of division than one of peace...
...TIME, concludes that a full-fledged "power struggle" is under way. "Those elements that have the most to lose from a stable and democratic order in Afghanistan have begun to react," U.N. undersecretary for political affairs Kieran Prendergast says. Moreover, in the run-up to the June 22 loya jirga, or grand meeting of all Afghanistan's regional elders, which will decide who succeeds Karzai's administration, tension is only expected to increase. Against the warlords, the frail 87-year-old former King Mohammed Zahir Shah is not anticipated to prove the instrument of peace his supporters hope...
...Italy while his nation was decimated by foreign invasion and civil war. But Afghanistan is again set to turn to its former King for help. As part of last year's Bonn accord, which established Hamid Karzai as interim leader, the former King will inaugurate in June a loya jirga, a traditional Afghan assembly to choose a new head of state and transitional government to lead the country to elections in 2004. The ex-King's presence, it is hoped, will give this meeting legitimacy and encourage rival Afghan leaders to accept its decisions...
...heard that Karzai had hopped a motorcycle, smuggled himself into southern Afghanistan and started his dangerous--but ultimately successful--campaign against the Taliban, all without his having to fire a shot. Today, in his Kabul palace, Karzai says he will stay on as leader if asked by the loya jirga tribal assembly convening in June. Otherwise, he joked, "Maybe I'll end up working in my brother's restaurant in Baltimore...