A key meeting of Afghanistan’s Loya Jirga, a top tribal assembly, is scheduled for this week but it will be held without a key member, former presidential candidate and opposition leader Abdullah Abdullah, who announced he is boycotting the assembly.
Abdullah aruged that the assembly has no legal basis in the current Afghan constitution and President Karzai was attempting to use it to circumvent parliament on key deals. The assembly insists parliament will be consulted only after they reach a decision.
The key topic of discussion for this week’s meeting is the “long-term” relationship between the Afghan government and the United States, and would seek to outline the terms under which US troops will operate in Afghanistan after 2014.
This doesn’t appear to site well with US officials, who are reportedly trying to convince Karzai to postpone elections to the jirga amid fear that the body might oppose the terms of a deal the US would find favorable.
A key issue likely to be discussed is permanent bases, as well as the US forces’ ability to detain Afghans without charges. The possibility that the US might use Afghan soil as a staging ground for attacks elsewhere in the region is likely to also be debated.
PAIN COMPLIANCE
To sustain itself, a dictatorship must have support of at least the 30% most wealthy, and as the Afghan dictatorship has only a 10% educated class in support, it needs the NATO muscle to keep the people in submission.
In effect, what is going on in Afghanistan is identical to the downgrading of our rich nobility dictatorship at home, for unemployment could double by the end of next year and “pain compliance” is police brutality that only a dictator class could love.
"keep the people in submission" ????? This is Afghanistan, not Arkansas you are speaking about. The people don't do "submission" there and haven't for several thousand years…. At least. Try collusion…. Perhaps it has a chance…..
Any agreement the invaders make that attempts to legitimizes their presence which sidesteps the government will actually de-legitimize whomever it is with whom the deal is made…..and the government too.. Is that what they want, to keep Afghanistan a failed state, and occupy it forever…?? I wonder if they have cleared making this $3,OOO,OOO,OOO.OO a week Jones "Forever"….with D'$$$boss…. Big Ben…??? P.S. Too… There is an election on the way AND….. our best buddies in the Hebrew Republic &&& [Our] No.1 [Rogue Nuclear] Welfare Queen wants to attack Iran…… What happens then..??
"The assembly insists parliament will be consulted only after they reach a decision."
OOOO that statement does not sound like it will sooth the Parliament, in fact it will surely accomplish the opposite…. Whose idea is that…?? Is it "O's" plan..?? Or someone at state…??? "H"..??? Why try to deal with the elected leaders, when there is a meeting of local thugs available…???? So goes their thinking….. Hopeless..!!
Maybe Jason missed a little article last week that said the Afghans turned down the US offer to stay after 2014 in negotiations in Germany. They have grown a pair and pointed out that quite like Iraq, that too many innocent civilians have been killed and that the US and NATO forces seem to take a cavalier attitude to all the collateral damage deaths. Any Loya Jirga meeting would not have reps from the Taliban side, but would probably be closer to the average Afghans than the national legislature.