The appointment of Lakhdar Brahimi, the former UN envoy to Afghanistan, as a senior adviser to the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, opens the possibility that the United Nations and the United States may be able to achieve in Iraq what they have just achieved in Afghanistan—agreement among all ethnic and religious groups on a democratic constitution.
Brahimi has returned to headquarters in New York after spending two years as the UN senior envoy in Kabul, where he successfully organized and brokered agreement at the recently concluded grand council, or loya jirga, in Afghanistan....
The writer, director of the Rand Corp.'s Center for International Security and Defense Policy, was President George W. Bush's special envoy for Afghanistan.
The remainder of this op-ed can be found at nytimes.com.
This commentary originally appeared in International Herald Tribune on January 20, 2004. Commentary gives RAND researchers a platform to convey insights based on their professional expertise and often on their peer-reviewed research and analysis.