AFGHANISTAN’S LOYA JIRGA finally got under way yesterday after a series of delays caused largely by disputes within the new ruling establishment about what the role of King Zahir Shah should be. It is far better that there should be delays at this point to allow politicians to strike deals than the Jirga break up in disarray because a basis for consensus had not been worked out beforehand. That would be a recipe for fresh civil war. All assemblies need not just an agenda but a pre-organized goal to at least discuss. But if anyone imagines that the Jirga is going to quietly rubber-stamp what the politicians propose, they had better think again. It was difficult enough to produce decisions at the Bonn meeting which launched the process of trying to put Afghanistan back together after 30 years of conflict and brutality. This, the second stage, is bound to be even more difficult.

At Bonn, the debate was left to a limited group of politicians who had the international community breathing down their necks to ensure that they came up with a workable proposal. For all their differences they knew they had to devise a solution — but that if they did, there would be a wealth of funding to their and the country’s benefit. The difference now is that there are 1,550 delegates to decide the political future until elections in 2004, and they represent every conceivable view and interest. The current government has just 53 seats. There is going a lot of wheeling and dealing. Whatever was hammered out beforehand behind closed doors by the politicians, there is bound to be some major changes before the Jirga is over. It is possible to see the general direction in which Afghanistan is going. The disagreement on the role of King Zahir Shah is not about whether he should have any role at all, but about the nature of the role. His decision not to be head of state again, instead accepting the role of Father of the Nation, creates a new, and uniquely Afghan constitutional arrangement.

The job of head of state is to be a day-to-day political one — hardly something that the 87-year-old former king would want to undertake. That is an understandable and necessary development. Afghanistan needs someone at the top (the king is supporting interim leader Hamid Karzai for the position) who can lead and inspire the country at this point in its history, not a prime minister who simply administers an existing system. What the job of head of state is not is a symbolic one — but symbols of national unity are still needed. That is where the king fits in. Offering him the role of Father of the Nation is no consolation prize. With the duty of opening parliaments and Loya Jirgas, having the constitution drafted in his name, presiding at national events, conferring titles and dignities, and with responsibility to uphold the country’s peace, he is being asked to fulfill the invaluable role that Europe’s monarchs play — that of constitutional ruler who symbolizes a nation’s unity, its past and its identity, but who plays no part in the country’s politics.

Ironically, that is the role that Zahir Shah always envisaged for himself. It was at the heart of the constitution he devised for Afghanistan as long ago as 1964, with a government accountable to a freely elected parliament along with civil rights and universal suffrage. The notion that Afghanistan could end up with both a king and an executive president may confuse those who think in terms of constitutional neatness. But there is no reason why the Loya Jirga should not come up with a uniquely Afghan solution to an Afghan problem — and if it enables Afghanistan to put conflict behind it and live in peace with itself, then does it matter that it has a system unlike anyone else’s?

Given the reverence in which the king is held, there is no reason to believe that the Loya Jirga will not approve this unusual combination. But there are still powerful issues that could derail the assembly, notably Pashtun fears that the country is being taken over by the mainly Persian-speaking Northern Alliance and disputes over the share of ministries. The king is doing much to resolve them, as are Hamid Karzai, former President Burhanuddin Rabbani who has now chosen not to stand against Karzai in the leadership contest, and a host of others. There is great desire for reconciliation and peace. May it succeed.