Shaharzad AkbarVerified account

A thread on our international partners and the love for short-cuts: Since Bonn, and then the Emergency Loya Jirga in Afghanistan (2002), in which my father, Ismail Akbar was involved for a short period, our international partners have looked for shortcuts in Afg.

Shortcut to end terrorism, shortcut to state-building, shorcut to democracy, and now I am afraid, a shortcut to ending the war. Our leaders, the Afghan political elite, have of course, for various reasons, have been part of the problem and supported this approach.

In his book,my father talks about discontinuing his engagement with d Emergency Loya Jirga technical team following UNAMA & Af gov's decision 2 lift restrictions on participation of wartime leaders as candidates.He felt that dis decision limited free public engagement & choice.

He comments how in the selection of the Loya Jirga Commission members, a lot of thought seemed to have been put into "ethnic" diversity, but it seemed like there was little effort put into selecting qualified candidates & people unattached to different political factions.

This trend continued & has now sadly been institutionalized & has become d norm, turning state institutions, including our judicial sector, & even "independent" entities, to battleground f different political factions & thus for d most part ineffective.

Most of this happened with direct involvement & endorsement of our international partners, or at least without any strong objections from them.

Elections is another example. N d process f creating a shortcut 2 democracy,no substantive thought has been given 2 creating credible dispute resolution mechanisms, thus making prolonged electoral disputes inevitable. One f several serious unaddressed flaws f d electoral system.