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Karzai Nominated Leader, Sets Out Vision for Afghanistan
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| Karzai:
The traumatized Afghan people now wanted peace, stability and
disarmament
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By
Asif Farooqi, IOL Afghanistan Correspondent
KABUL, June 13 (IslamOnline) - It became almost certain Thursday morning, June 13, that Hamid Karzai, the interim Afghan ruler, will be elected as head of the new government as a vast majority of the delegates at the electoral collage, Loya Jirga, nominated him as their candidate for the election of the head of the government scheduled for late afternoon.
Out of the total 1500 delegates, 1050 put their signature on the nomination papers for Karzai. Other candidates Dr. Masooda Jala and Mir Mehfooz Muhammd Nedayee received 188 and 173 nominations respectively.
The Loya Jirga was to elect head of the transitional government during the second half of the third day of the proceedings, following elections on the posts of the chairman of the Loya Jirga and his deputies in the early morning session. Ismaeel Qasimyaar was elected as chairman of the Jirga with Dr. Seema Samar and two others as his deputies.
The house became very orderly and organized with the elections for the Jirga posts. The candidates for the head of the governments were invited to address the gathering.
Hamid Karzai was the last one to speak before the Jirga rose for lunch and prayers. They were expected to come back and cast their votes for the highest government post. But the result was not expected till late evening on Thursday, the Loya Jirga Commission (LJC) officials said.
In his nomination speech, Karzai said the traumatized Afghan people now wanted peace, stability and disarmament.
Karzai, who spoke in both Pashtu and Dari, the two official and tribal languages of Afghanistan, was able to muster support from the Afghan political and ethnic divide as his speech was received with applause and delegates gave him a standing ovation when he concluded.
Tenure of the Afghan interim leader is to expire on the 22nd of this month as his government was given six months to rule the war-torn country.
Karzai, 44, has spent much of his life fighting what he characterizes as “foreign influences” in Afghanistan. He first rose to preeminence fighting the Soviet invasion in the early 1980s. As a member of the Mujahideen, he helped organize one of the largest Pashtun tribes, the Popolzai, headed by his father.
Karzai’s work, based in Pakistan, made him a staunch nationalist bent on forcing out neighboring nations that he felt were using Afghanistan for their own purposes.
“If the foreign intervention does not stop in Afghanistan from all around, terrorism will not end in Afghanistan,” he recently told a reporter for the Australian Broadcasting Company.
Following the Soviet pullout, Karzai returned and joined the rebel government of Northern Alliance leader Burhanuddin Rabbani in 1992. He served as the deputy foreign minister, but internal divisions and bickering crippled the new state.
When the Taliban first began to emerge in the early 1990s, Karzai supported them. A native of the region around Kandahar, he saw the Taliban as a force that could finally end the violence. But as the fundamentalist group gained power, Karzai became suspicious of the Taliban, saying it was also influenced by foreign groups.
In 1995, the Taliban approached Karzai, hoping to have the influential tribesman join their effort. They offered him the position of U.N. ambassador in a new Taliban government, but he refused, telling friends he felt the Pakistani intelligence service was in control of the group.
No longer welcome in Afghanistan after the Taliban solidified control in 1996, Karzai fled. In 1999, Karzai’s father was gunned down as he returned home from prayers in the Pakistani city of Quetta. Reports attributed the slaying to the Taliban.
After the bombing began, Karzai slipped back into Afghanistan to help organize anti-Taliban forces among the ethnic Pashtun tribes of the south.
Karzai will now head the effort to build political peace in Afghanistan. As a member of the same Pashtun tribe as the exiled king and the former Rabbani government, the delegates to the U.N.-sponsored talks hope Karzai can bring unity to the nation.
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