Word: jirga
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Though most outside powers including, crucially, Iran, Pakistan and Russia, have signed on, keeping them on board may prove tricky. Once the loya jirga is convened, the real horse trading will begin. Says a senior U.N. official: "This is where we want the U.S.'s new engagement and immense power applied--to lean on the neighbors to pull in the same direction. Any one of them could mess...
...bill. The ethnic minorities of the Northern Alliance find him acceptable too. After dismissing past efforts to bring back the monarch, Pakistan is now inviting him to send an envoy to Islamabad to discuss the political future of Afghanistan. Once inside Afghanistan, Zahir Shah intends to call a loya jirga (gathering) of all the ethnic tribes to oust the Taliban...
...modernization, and the majority of Afghans are with us." Countered Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, 32, the fervently traditionalist "Amir" of the long-established Islamic Party: "A pure Islamic system was established 14 centuries ago, and any regime that differs from that ideal is unacceptable." At the end of the loquacious jirga, as such a gathering of tribes is called, the only agreement the squabbling chieftains could reach was to appoint a delegation of three elderly mullahs for a fund-raising journey to Saudi Arabia...
...women look like ambulatory potato sacks, need no longer be compulsory garb. In 1964, he promulgated a new constitution that in the long run, as its institutions evolve, will considerably reduce his own power. A year later, following the country's first free elections, the 216-seat Wolesi Jirga, or parliament, came into existence. Afghanistan seemed well on the way into the modern world...
...reform-minded for Mohammed Yusuf. The new legislature whipped up unproved charges of corruption against his regime, and Kabul's high school and university students followed up with a sit-in in the Wolesi Jirga, demanding Yusuf's ouster. Street demonstrations followed, and the police fired into the crowd, killing at least three. The King secured Yusuf's resignation and in his place appointed Mohammed Hashim Maiwandwal, 46, a lanky, Lincolnesque liberal who was born in a three-room mud hut and rose to prominence as Afghanistan's ambassador to Washington, London and Karachi. Maiwandwal quickly...