KABUL: As delegates from a week-long political assembly streamed out of Kabul’s technical university campus on Thursday, lugging satchels and overnight bags toward buses that would take them back to villages and towns across Afghanistan, they seemed to have come from two entirely different meetings.

Some described a freewheeling, ice-breaking talkfest that had led to cathartic encounters between longtime adversaries, created empathy among isolated ethnic groups and raised hopes for a democratic renaissance after 23 years of conflict that turned Afghanistan into a minefield of mistrust.

Others described a deeply disappointing experience in which the powerful intimidated the parochial, confusion and delays undermined the business of building a new government, and important decisions were made behind the scenes while irrelevant or histrionic speechifying ate up entire days.

In the end, several delegates suggested that both descriptions of the loya jirga were true.

“This was not a real loya jirga. It was not able to make decisions or exercise power. But it was a grand gathering, an opportunity for Afghans from all backgrounds to meet and talk, to sit and realize they face a common problem,” said Omar Zakhilwal, an Afghan economist based in Canada who attended the meeting.

The jirga wrapped up on Wednesday by inaugurating Afghanistan’s new president, Hamid Karzai, and ostensibly approving his top cabinet choices.

The election of Karzai, 44, who will head the government until elections are held, was the only concrete accomplishment achieved by the 1,600-plus delegates who spent nearly 10 days together, eating and sleeping on the guarded campus and meeting for daily work sessions inside a giant, donated tent.

The delegates failed to form a legislature after several days of fruitless debate, and were not given a chance to vote on an array of top officials announced on Wednesday by Karzai.

At the same time, however, the loya jirga delegates took an important informal step toward reknitting a deeply torn society. Ethnic Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks and Pakhtoons mingled politely and listened to each other’s speeches. Women and men, barred from socializing by rural tradition, took turns at the microphones and confronted each other in impassioned debates.

“After 23 years of war, not only the infrastructure but the soul of the people has been damaged. We need occasions where people can get their feelings and anger out,” said Gulbadan Habibi, a woman delegate from Jalalabad.

From the first full session on June 11, it was clear that many delegates had come with strident, single-minded messages that they were determined to deliver after years of isolation, exile or enforced silence, no matter how little their subject had to do with the task of forming a new government.

Hour after hour, delegates wearing tribal turbans, Western suits or northern militia caps, lined up to speak at microphones. Some voiced urgent local concerns, such as locust infestation or the lack of drinking water. Others unleashed windy polemical tirades against foreign intervention or monarchy.

A number of speakers, especially women, made emotional appeals for an end to violence and the abusive rule by militia leaders that flourished in the early 1990s. They also condemned the presence of powerful militia leaders at the loya jirga itself.

Yet several militia leaders, as well as respected clerics, passionately defended the role of fighters in freeing Afghanistan from Soviet occupation in the 1980s, and they spoke fervently of the need to preserve Islamic values in contemporary society.

Their comments suggested how deeply conservativism is ingrained here, since well before the advent of the Taliban rule in 1996, and how sensitive the new government must be to this phenomenon. Several hours were spent last Friday discussing whether to add the word “Islamic” to the transitional government’s title.—Dawn/The Washington Post News Service.