Saturday, October 24, 2009
If the United States is sincerely interested in resolving the leadership issue in Afghanistan, it should drop the idea of a runoff election and do things the old fashioned way by calling a Loya Jirga, says Patricia DeGennaro, a professor at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs. Jirgas are how Afghans have resolved crises for centuries, bringing together community and religious leaders, as well as elders (and don’t forget the women, too) in one grand assembly.
A jirga would allow Afghans to decide who should be running the country. A runoff election may only result in more fraud, or violence on the part of the Taliban, leaving Afghans no more confident in the outcome. The jirga would also give them a chance to alter “the existing presidential system as well as that imposed Constitution (written at the Bonn Conference) they so aptly ignore,” writes DeGennaro.
“A jirga may call for more work, it may call for more diligence and it may call for more patience,” she argues. “It may also take time, but I bet it would be less than the last two and half months that was wasted on the final decision to recognize the scam and call for a runoff.”
-Noel Brinkerhoff
Call a Jirga Not a Runoff in Afghanistan (by Patricia DeGennaro, Huffington Post)
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