who often served as a troubleshooter for UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, was the
chief mediator. Brahimi was widely respected, especially for his ability to coax enemies
into compromising.
Despite the long history of sectarian and tribal conflict in Afghanistan, the dele-
gates reached agreement on a government framework and interim leaders in just two
weeks. Their agreement, signed and announced on December 5, called for an interim
government to serve for six months, followed by the convening of a loya jirga,a tra-
ditional assembly of notables. This meeting was to be presided over by former king
Mohammad Zahir Shah, who had been ousted from power in 1973, had since lived
in Italy, but still retained wide support in Afghanistan. The loya jirga would appoint
a “transitional government” to serve two years, during which period, another loya jirga
would draft a constitution under which national elections would be held for a per-
manent government.
As Afghanistan’s temporary leader the delegates chose Hamid Karzai, the head of
a prominent family among the Pashtuns, the country’s largest ethnic group. Karzai was
not a famed guerrilla fighter—as were many of the delegates and those angling for
power—but he was well-known in Western capitals and, the Afghan leaders believed,
would be able to secure the financial backing that Afghanistan clearly would need after
decades of war.
The UN Security Council endorsed the Afghan agreement on December 6, giv-
ing it a legal imprimatur. Karzai obtained the backing of Zahir Shah and key North-
ern Alliance commanders who still controlled Kabul and took office on December 22.
Among those pledging to support his interim government were two men who had not
attended the sessions in Bonn and had been critical of the resulting agreement:
Burhanuddin Rabbani, who had been president of Afghanistan after the communist
government fell in 1992 and for years afterward was recognized as president by the
United Nations, and Abdurrashid Dostum, an Uzbek warlord who was one of the
most important of the Northern Alliance commanders. In the past, Dostum had been
famous for shifting allegiances according to the prevailing winds of Afghanistan. His
grudging endorsement of Karzai was widely seen as a good sign for the new govern-
ment, at least for the moment (The Karzai Government, p. 615).
Military Decisions and Financial Assistance
After the Taliban’s removal from power, no single authority fully controlled the major-
ity of Afghan territory. The Northern Alliance controlled Kabul and much of the
northern part of the country; the U.S. military and U.S. allies had some control over
Kandahar and other key cities in the east and south; and the country’s many warlords
and ethnic commanders emerged to reassert control over their home territories.
UN officials and numerous experts on peacekeeping in postconflict situations rec-
ommended the creation of a large nationwide peacekeeping force to stabilize
Afghanistan while Karzai’s new government gained its footing and put together a new
army. The Bush administration, however, argued that such a peacekeeping force would
interfere with its ongoing military operations to track down remnants of the Taliban
and al-Qaida fighters. Key administration officials, from Bush on down, also had an
ideological aversion to international peacekeeping operations, which they insisted usu-
ally ended in failure. As a result, the Bonn agreement and UN Security Council Res-
600 AFGHANISTAN