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Article: President's day.(Hamid Karzai's uneasy transition in Afghanistan)(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- U.S. News & World Report
- Article date:
- June 24, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 All rights reserved. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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KABUL, AFGHANISTAN--On the third day of the Loya Jirga, delegates began circulating a joke. It's a good thing the Americans chose our president, they said, because it took us three days just to finish the first item on the agenda--picking a chairman. Afghanistan's grand assembly eventually succeeded in electing a new government last week. But it wasn't easy.
Though the effort marked a major step toward democracy for post-Taliban Afghanistan, the week's events made clear the country's fragile state. Backroom deals before the assembly convened guaranteed that Hamid Karzai, 44, who headed the interim government, would win the presidency. Some complained that the ...