Independent Commission will ensure that due attention is paid to
the representation in the Emergency Loya Jirga of a significant
number of women as well as all other segments of the Afghan
population.’
In Annex I, the participants in the talks requested ‘the assistance
of the international community in helping the new Afghan author-
ities in the establishment and training of new Afghan security and
armed forces’, and further requested the Security Council ‘to con-
sider authorizing the early deployment to Afghanistan of a United
Nations mandated force’ to ‘assist in the maintenance of security
for Kabul and its surrounding areas’. They anticipated that such a
force ‘could, as appropriate, be progressively expanded to other
urban centres and other areas’. Annex II outlined the role of the
Special Representative of the Secretary-General. Finally, in Annex
III the participants requested that ‘the United Nations and the inter-
national community take the necessary measures to guarantee the
national sovereignty, territorial integrity and unity of Afghanistan as
well as the non-interference by foreign countries in Afghanistan’s
internal affairs’, and that ‘the United Nations conduct as soon as
possible (i) a registration of voters in advance of the general elec-
tions that will be held upon the adoption of the new constitution by
the constitutional Loya Jirga and (ii) a census of the population of
Afghanistan’.
The Interim Administration
The composition of the Interim Administration was one of the
most contested issues in Bonn, but ultimately a consensus was
reached. Abdul Sattar Sirat had long been considered a likely can-
didate for Chairman, but his criticism of the United Front for mov-
ing into Kabul undermined his claims. Instead, the position of
Chairman went to the moderate Pushtun Hamed Karzai. Born in
1957, he had graduated with an MA degree from the University of
Himachal Pradesh in India and spoke fluent Pushto, Persian, and
English. While the Taliban had initially sought to coopt him, he
had become one of their fiercest critics, and a critic of Pakistani
The Fall of the Taliban 273