Afghanistan Should Have a Council of Grandmothers

After reading Thomas Ruttig's wonderfully detailed post for the Afghanistan Analysts Network, "Gulbuddin ante portas," I'm convinced now that what Afghanistan really needs is a grand council of grandmothers.

Just as the Karzai Administration publicly acknowledged the acceptance of the war crimes amnesty law passed in 2007 --a law which gives amnesty on any crimes committed before 2001 to the detriment of the peaceful majority and benefit of the warring 10 percent --  lo-and-behold, controversial Hezb-e-Islami leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar arrives to a palace meeting with Karzai to talk about potentially bringing his militia out of the insurgency and into alliance with the government.

Yet again another peace agreement is being discussed around a table with only the armed and angry represented. Imagine how different Afghanistan would be, how different the world would be, if every negotiation table and every war room hosted not just the warring parties who, according to my guess, represent the fighting 10 percent, but also the peaceful majority caught in the crossfire?

And rather than having that constituency represented by elite women leaders who Talibanists would spend the whole time trying to avoid, or the usual old men from the water buffalo club, why not have toughened women old enough to represent their mothers and grandmothers who just might take them by the ear?

While we're on the subject, go here to sign Oxfam's Afghan People First petition! Also, my friend Abdullah Kunari just wrote an editorial about how a front line village in the hands of the Taliban was wooed to the government's side with the construction of its first road linking it to the rest of the country.

Photo credit: MoonStarSilverWolf (An Afghan woman holds her eight-month-old grand-daughter who lost her hand during fighting in Helmand)