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International Community in
Afghanistan continues..
While fighting continued in Afghanistan, the UN conference to determine Afghanistan’s post-war order began in Bonn on 27 November.
While UN officials were optimistic about the outcome, several obstacles unsurprisingly arose. Among them was former Afghan President Rabbani who first refused to attend the conference in person, staying in his ‘presidential palace’ in Kabul, and then objected to a large international peacekeeping deployment.
The lesser-known Pashtun, Hamid Karzai was able to address the conference by a video link and called for unity among the assembled representatives. Rabbani’s personal representative at the conference conveyed that Rabbani was under strong international pressure to change his stand, a situation intensified when Russian diplomats, previous supporters of Rabbani, made clear to other members of the faction of Moscow’s expectation of their conformity to the desired international outcome. Rabbani may even have been facing an insurrection among his ranks, and in these circumstances, modified his position.
By December, a draft agreement was circulated which indicated that former King Zahir Shah, who was back in Kabul by that time with a triumphant parade, also would not stand as an interim president, and thereafter Rabbani publicly consented to other candidates to head the provisional government. On 5 December, the peace agreement was signed. Hamid Karzai, fresh from fighting with US forces against the Taleban in the south, where he was also injured by a mis-targeted 2,000-pound American bomb, was named President of the interim body. But just after its signing, the agreement seemed weakened when ethnic Uzbek, Abdul Rashid Dostum objected to what he called the under representation of his people.
To be continued...