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Afghans also have shown that they want and need some reckoning with theirimmense suffering over the past several decades. At the same time, many of those now inpositions of power or influence are widely held to be responsible for past crimes. TheAfghan government has adopted the Action Plan on Transitional Justice and the compactrequires it to implement this plan by 2008. The groups that formed the Northern Alliancefear that this process will be used against them, as they are political competitors with thepresident, and will spare both the communists, who now claim to support democracy, andthe Taliban, who are being wooed to put down their arms. The implementation of thisprogram should remove any such suspicion.Recommendations:• President Karzai should replace Shinwari as chief justice and form a courtcomposed of judges of top legal, scholarly, and personal credentials, trained inIslamic, civil, and constitutional law, including Shi’a and women.• Donors should support efforts to engage rather than confront or appease the ulamaby reviving engagement of Afghan Islamic scholars with the main centers oflearning in the Islamic world, as existed decades ago.• Donor countries and the UN should support implementation of the Action Plan onTransitional Justice without politicizing it. Assure that this process examinesabuses by communists, mujahidin, other militias, Taliban, and foreign forces(Soviet, Pakistani, al-Qaeda, American) impartially with a view to establishingtruth, reconciliation, and justice.GOVERNMENT INSTITUTIONSThe convening of the National Assembly on December 19, 2005, following theSeptember 18, 2005, elections to the lower house and provincial councils, effectivelycompleted the Bonn process, which aimed at reestablishing permanent institutions ofgovernment. The election of representatives, however, is a means to the accountableprovision of public services by the state. If the state is incapable of providing those public25