Tough terms set for Loya Jirga members

Scores of candidates, particularly those belonging to the Northern Alliance and other armed factions, would be disqualified if the conditions fixed for candidature to the emergency Loya Jirga in Afghanistan were implemented in letter and spirit.

The tough conditions are listed in an affidavit that every candidate to the Loya Jirga must sign to become eligible for its membership. The candidates are required to pledge in writing that they accept responsibility to explain any breach of the declaration on their part.

The conditions were announced by the independent commission formed sometime back to organise the Loya Jirga in June.

The decisions of the commission were made public at a press conference by its dead Professor Ismail Qasimyar in Kabul on Sunday.

Under the conditions, the candidates to the Loya Jirga should have no links with terrorist organisations and must not be involved in spreading and smuggling of narcotics, human rights abuses, war crimes, looting of public property and smuggling of the cultural and archaeological heritage of Afghanistan.

Besides, the candidates should not be directly or indirectly involved in the killing of innocent people.

Though the Taliban are technically not barred from contesting election to the Loya Jirga, the condition disqualifying candidates for having links with terrorist organisations is primarily aimed at keeping them and their supporters out of the new political dispensation.

The other conditions apply to all armed factions, both past and present, and their commanders. Almost all of them committed one or the other crime listed in the affidavit for candidates to the Loya Jirga during the past 23 years of war and bloodshed in Afghanistan.

Most of them would be charged with war crimes if a fair assessment of their roles was done and each one of them would be considered guilty of looting public property. Some were involved in smuggling of narcotics, more so in provinces like Helmand, Nangarhar, Kunar and Badakhshan that produced most of the opium.

A considerable number of commanders and their men were also guilty of involvement in the smuggling of Afghanistan's cultural and archaeological heritage. And not many would be able to emerge unscathed if a proper investigation was carried out as to how many among the warlords now ruling Afghanistan were directly or indirectly involved in the killing of innocent Afghans.

It remains to be seen how the commission tasked with preparing for and hold the Loya Jirga is able to strictly implement the tough conditions it has proposed for the candidates. By doing so it would surely earn the enmity of many powerful commanders and their henchmen.

The violations of the listed conditions, on the other hand, would create doubts about the authority of the interim government and the intentions of the UN, which is supervising the Loya Jirga.

Already, certain political groups and intellectuals are criticising the non-implementation of some of the decisions made at the Bonn conference last year and listed in the UN-sponsored agreement.

One of the decisions was that Kabul would be demilitarised and all armed groups would leave the city. But the decision was never implemented and the UN as well as the British-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) turned a blind eye apparently out of political compulsions to the presence of armed men belonging to the Tajik faction of the Northern Alliance.