As expected, the Governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan have decided that tribal elders from the border regions of the two countries will meet in Kabul in the first week of August for the third meeting of the Grand Afghan Jirga.
About 700 tribal leaders, political and social representatives and intellectuals from both sides will consider ways and means to improve prospects of peace having a direct bearing on political stability of Afghanistan. A technical committee, set up during a recent visit here by the Afghan peace commission led by Pir Syed Ahmad Gilani, will firm up the names of the delegates to the Grand Afghan Jirga.
The agreement that tribal leaders representing the tribes straddling the Pak-Afghan border should meet to strength peace in their traditional way was clinched by the meeting at the White House, at the invitation of President Bush, between President Pervez Musharraf and President Hamid Karzai last year. The Pakistani leader gave his blessings to the Jirga meeting in Kabul by telling the visiting Afghan delegation that "a strong, peaceful and stable Afghanistan is in the interest of both the countries and the entire region".
The Jirga-centred parleys to resolve disputes is Afghans' time-tested tradition, but given the tenacity of power struggle now being waged in Afghanistan the Grand Afghan Jirga would have to contend with an array of formidable challenges. Firstly, as to who should be invited to the Jirga is a question that has provoked conflicting proposals. Only the other day, a member of the Afghan delegation told a news agency that Pakistan would be opposed to the presence of foreign observers.
Obviously, Pakistan would like the Jirga to operate in its traditional manner, in that the elders sit together and sort out disputes besetting the family without any interference from outsiders. As for the outsiders joining the peace process, there exist other forums like the two trilateral commissions, one including ISAF-Nato and other Turkey, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The latter was set up when the Presidents of Pakistan and Afghanistan met in Turkey in April and signed the Ankara Declaration which envisages setting up a trilateral commission, to be hosted by Turkey. Realistically speaking, if any third party can be of real help to the Jirga it would be the Taliban.
However, what would happen between now and when the Grand Afghan Jirga would meet in early August, is a question haunted by many imponderables. The Taliban have promised to gear up their resistance and extend it to other parts where the melting snows would open new battlefields. Then, in the light of large-scale collateral losses of life and property caused by the Nato forces, there is the growing resentment among the civilian population against them.
Opposed to these developments is the perception, as articulated by US Defence Secretary Robert Gates, that anti-Taliban war campaign is making progress. The political uncertainties now haunting Pakistan, an ally of the United States and Afghanistan, present one more addition to the list of the imponderables of the prospect in Afghanistan.