Afghan Peace Jirga 2010

Afghan President Hamid Karzai announced the holding of a consultative grand council called the Afghanistan's National Consultative Peace Jirga (NCPJ) or Peace Jirga in his inauguration speech on 19 November 2009, after winning elections for a second term, to end the ongoing Taliban insurgency. At the International Afghanistan Conference in London on 28 January 2010, he announced that the government would hold the event in April or May 2010, intended to bring together tribal elders, officials and local power brokers from around the country, to discuss peace and the end of the insurgency. "Jirga" is a word in the Pashto language that means "large assembly" or "council". It is a traditional method in parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan of resolving disputes between tribes or discussing problems affecting whole communities.

President Karzai organized the event on 2–4 June 2010, that was presided by the former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani, despite the Taliban rejecting any overtures. However, after a nine-year U.S.-led war with no clear victory in sight, there were signs many Afghans, including victims of the Taliban's 1996-2001 rule, would be increasingly tempted by the idea of negotiations with the hardline islamists. The event was billed as an attempt to gain consensus on how to approach peace talks with insurgents, but had already met skepticism and even a boycott from some Afghan leaders. About 1,600 delegates, including 300 women, tribal elders, religious leaders and members of parliament from all over the country attended the NCPJ. The three-day assembly represented the first major public debate in Afghanistan on how to end the war. The jirga was meant to be a consultative forum, aimed at the building of a national consensus on a peace plan, likely to be presented to the Kabul Conference on July 20, a gathering of the ministers of foreign affairs of over 70 partner countries of Afghanistan, international and regional organizations and financial institutions.

The NCPJ was expected to be comparable to the two loya jirgas that had been held in Kabul since the collapse of the Taliban regime end of 2001; the first one to confirm Hamid Karzai as a transitional leader and the second in 2003/2004 to approve the constitution of the newly founded Islamic Republic of Afghanistan after the ousting of the Taliban regime.