Afghan Statehood

The Afghan factions meeting in Bonn today reached an agreement on how many seats in a six-month interim cabinet each faction would control. It's complicated, with factions based in Kabul (Northern Alliance), Peshawar, Rome, and a minor one in Cyprus. Besides balancing every faction, they had to balance the ethnic groups. If one faction agreed to take one seat less than it had planned, and said "OK, we can cut Mo Schmo from the Culture Ministry," then if Mo was a Hazera ethnic minority the Hazera's in other factions would make a stink. So it's pretty complicated, balancing ideologies and ethnicities with only partial correlation. There are only 2 women in the 30 seats, which I see as a negative sign. It's an extremely patriarchal society, and while I'm the farthest thing from a feminist I still think that for the women (who are less likely to be attached to private armies and more likely to legitimately care about humanitarian issues) to have any serious voice in the government there need to be more than a few. The setup has the Rome royal faction with the Prime Ministerial seat occupied by a relative of the royal family, a Pashtun named Hamid Karzai, though the preponderence of seats (17) are controlled by the Northern Alliance. The New York Times gives a good account of the agreement.

He noted that this agreement is legally binding, will be supported by the United Nations and all of Afghanistan's normally feuding neighbors, and will transfer the seat of Afghanistan to the new interim government, which will be the country's sole representative and "repository of Afghan sovereignty."
posted by Macro Guy at Thursday, December 06, 2001