The Jirga

For three days, the getaway car sat in our driveway. A white behemoth of the type the UN and their cronies drive around in, complete with satellite antenna and first aid kit, although minus the big blue insignia.

Crates of water were stacked in the kitchen and in the safe room and the cupboards overflowed with food; boxes of cereal, chocolate, juice and of course, ryvita!

On the evening before the start of the three-day peace jirga, a traditional tribal assembly gathering in Kabul to discuss how to reconcile the various armed opposition forces in the country, the international community was in lock down. NGO and governmental workers were told to stay at home. No movement outside the house; none at all. Even the gym was closed. Everyone thought this would be the time for the big compound attack - where the Taliban and other insurgents overrun an embassy or guesthouse.

But asisde from the dribble of rockets that fell miles wide of the jirga tent on the first day, and the gunbattle between security forces and suicide bombers dressed in burqas (which sounds more like a Monty Python sketch!), it all went, well, rather peacefully.  There are of course conspiracy theories that Karzai orchestrated the attacks to gain sympathy and support for his peace plan.

But, by the second day, my housemates were begining to show evidence of cabin fever; They had slept, ate, answered thousands of emails, baked cakes and plucked apricots from the fruit trees, and it seems grown tired of eachother's company. "When are you coming home?" was one plaintive plea I received via skype from a bored housemate. (I was lucky enough to go to work for the three days).

That evening the gin came out and the friends came round (some breaking curfew).
We never did use the getaway car - well except for Saturday, when we decided to go for a drive and to buy some plants.

As for the jirga, it got underway in a grand marquee on the grounds of the Polytechnic University (yep, that's its name) bringing together 1,400 delegates; tribal elders, MPs, nomadic chiefs, and women.

Hamid Karzai, the president, wants to bring low-level Taliban back into the fold and give them jobs and money. Sounds sensible. But unemployment runs at about 30-40 percent, just in the capital, and if they give jobs to Taliban and not ordinary Afghans, won’t the same thing happen again?

The money for the reintegration programme is reportedly coming from a trust fund that donors pedged at the London Confernce in January - $160 million.

Not to mention that both the Taliban and Gulbudin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-i-Islam Afghanistan - neither of which were invited to the party - have ruled out any peace talks unless foreign forces withdraw (that’s not going to happen).

Karzai summed it up in his speech at the opening day when he mentioned this stand off between the insurgents and the US-led forces, saying: "It seems they both want to torment us."

But while no one really believes the jirga actually achieved anything useful, other than to rubber stamp a plan Karzai had already run past the US and other international powers, it certainly did not bring the brutal reaction from the Taliban many were expecting.

We're still waiting.